Oh, "The City" is an interesting thing... I'll try to explain why -- if you forgive me for another page of unsolicited feedback peppered with typos :)
Brother's works consist roughly of 3 historic periods.
Early books, up to about 1962, are optimistic and pro-communist. But they are still geniuos! As a kid, I've read s shitload of Soviet sci-fi, and most of that was pro-communist [it had to be, because of the regime, you know]. Yet even as a kid I saw how unimaginably boring and stupid those books were. Most writers were talking about Communism winning just because they had to, or had no brains to see the other outcome. So that it had neither the talant nor the thought in it :) Brother's books were different. If you are not afraid of a scary feeling of being nearly converted :), consider checking the "Noon: 22nd Century" or "Monday Begins on Saturday" some day. No pressure at all, of course -- just a data point.
Anyways. Later to Brothers came the disillusionment. So for the next ~20 years, they were producing their best books, but teaching all the same desperate subject: the Impossibility Theorem. "Snail on the Slope" is maybe the most representative of them.
Finally, very late came part III. This is, they started seeing something else. Not the solution, but the hints of possibility to change something. It's far less clear. It's often too esoteric. Yet that's a way out of the disappointment which was surrounding them for so long. "The City" is the book of that period. Strange, eerie, breathing with fatigue -- and yet with some hope, too.
So I hope it won't turn into a disappointment for you :)
no subject
Brother's works consist roughly of 3 historic periods.
Early books, up to about 1962, are optimistic and pro-communist. But they are still geniuos! As a kid, I've read s shitload of Soviet sci-fi, and most of that was pro-communist [it had to be, because of the regime, you know]. Yet even as a kid I saw how unimaginably boring and stupid those books were. Most writers were talking about Communism winning just because they had to, or had no brains to see the other outcome. So that it had neither the talant nor the thought in it :) Brother's books were different. If you are not afraid of a scary feeling of being nearly converted :), consider checking the "Noon: 22nd Century" or "Monday Begins on Saturday" some day. No pressure at all, of course -- just a data point.
Anyways. Later to Brothers came the disillusionment. So for the next ~20 years, they were producing their best books, but teaching all the same desperate subject: the Impossibility Theorem. "Snail on the Slope" is maybe the most representative of them.
Finally, very late came part III. This is, they started seeing something else. Not the solution, but the hints of possibility to change something. It's far less clear. It's often too esoteric. Yet that's a way out of the disappointment which was surrounding them for so long. "The City" is the book of that period. Strange, eerie, breathing with fatigue -- and yet with some hope, too.
So I hope it won't turn into a disappointment for you :)