Cheap City (Book) (Clifford Simak) Price

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Customer Reviews of City

It is extremely interesting how insightful Simak was about the impact of technology on the decentralization of knowledge. Witness the present medium. I orginally read the book about 25 years ago..... it seemed an unlikely although entertaining scenario. Still is but highly entertaining. Probably one of my all time favorite Sci-Fi along with "Earth Abides" and "The Postman".

Great fantasy sci-fi
I read City back in the late 60's. I was captivated by the tale, or several tales actually, that make up the story. I realized that trying to explain it to someone unfamiliar with it just made it sound silly (talking dogs, lopers on Jupiter, robot butlers, etc.) so I would just recommend it to friends and let them discover the magic. Most did. Simak himself said he wrote the story to reassure himself, in the darkest days of the cold war, that there was a better world coming. And, in some ways the book is dated to that period. But in more important ways it's timeless. There is a poignancy to the stories that's difficult to describe, but which moves the reader more than at first realized. This is what keeps me coming back, these many years later, to re-read them. They seem to stimulate feelings associated with similar settings and activities in the reader's life, almost like prosaic haiku poetry. There is no hard science fiction here, and no high fantasy. There are wonderfully written, fanciful tales that will enchant and entertain readers of many different ages. I highly recommend City, now a fantasy sci-fi classic, and to this reader, Simak's best.

When Sci-Fi was still trying to find a niche
Simak was one of those who helped it muscle in to the human consciousness.

If you've read the other reviews you'll have noticed a lot of people encountered the book first during the 1950s and 1960s, as I did. I'm uncertain about the others, but I was a lot younger in those days and Sci-Fi was a lot younger. A book of this genre didn't require as much to impress us.

During the past few years I've made an effort to go back and read a lot of books I loved or hated when I was younger. A lot of those I loved then were pure drivel to me now, and a lot of those I hated cause me to realize what a shallow level I was reading on. Or maybe, what a few decades of life does to change perspectives about literary works.

City's one of the books I loved as a young man that I'm happy to say is still in my list of books I'm happy to have encountered this lifetime. I think you'll be glad all the reviewers said such nice things about it if it causes you to get the book and read it yourself. What else can I say? I hope you read it now, then again when you're my age, and love it twice.