The City and the Stars

Clarke, Arthur C. The City and the Stars. New York: Harcourt, 1956. New York: NAL, 1957.

Revision and expansion of Against the Fall of Night (listed under The Lion of Comarre & Against the Fall of Night). The City is controlled by a central computer, located in an "underground city, the city of machines." See for a mechanized womb-world and for contrasts of the city, a garden world, and the stars. See opening paragraphs for an early version of what is now called "virtual reality" (VR). Discussed by E. Rabkin, Arthur C. Clarke, and others in the anthology of critical essays, Arthur C. Clarke, edited by J. Olander and M. Greenberg (see under Literary Criticism).

Note also the ambiguously successful attempt to create disembodied pure intellect, leading to "the Mad Mind" and later Vanamonde: "the second, successful experiment [... to produce] a being of pure intellect, [now] immensely old, immensely powerful, able to move instantly to any point in space — but entirely childlike and unsophisticated. Vanamonde's ultimate destiny [...] is to battle the Mad Mind, when it escapes its prison at the end of Time."[1]

RDE initial and 21Sep16, 4Jan21, 7Jun22