City at the End of Time is a 2008 science fiction novel by American writer Greg Bear. It was published in August 2008 by Del Rey in the United States, and Gollancz in the United Kingdom. The story follows three drifters in present-day Seattle who are tormented by strange dreams of the Kalpa, a city one hundred trillion years in the future. The Kalpa is attempting to ward off the Typhon, an inexplicable entity that has consumed the rest of the ancient universe and broken down the laws of physics.
The novel belongs to the Dying Earth subgenre. It is rooted in hard science fiction, but also incorporates several other genres, including fantasy and horror. Bear called it science fiction "stretched to the nth degree".[1] He said that in the novel he honors those writers who changed the face of science fiction and fantasy, including William Hope Hodgson and Arthur C. Clarke, and pays homage to Hodgson's 1912 novel, The Night Land, with which City at the End of Time shares a number of plot elements.
The novel received a mixed reception from critics. Some reviewers were impressed by the novel's scope and grandiosity, while others felt that the characters were underdeveloped and the story was difficult to follow. New Scientist described the first half of the book as "a gripping, original tale", but complained that in the second half Bear over-complicates the story with "too many ideas, images, mythologies and distractions".[2]City at the End of Time was nominated for the Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award in 2009.
Plot summary
City at the End of Time is about the Kalpa, the last city on Earth, one hundred trillion years in the future. The novel's backstory describes how the aging universe continued expanding and its spacetime fabric weakened. With the galaxies burnt out, humanity dispersed across the cosmos, where they encountered the Typhon, an inexplicable entity that was destroying the decaying universe. It consumed matter and replaced space-time with emptiness and inconsistencies beyond the laws of physics. The resulting Chaos spread rapidly, driving some humans back to ancient Earth with its rekindled sun. In an attempt to fend off the approaching Typhon, leaders of the dying Earth sent for Polybiblios, a human living with the Shen, an ancient alien race. Polybiblios returned to Earth with his adopted daughter, Ishanaxade, a being he had constructed from "fate-logs"[3] of intelligent species collected by the Shen. After the Shen system fell, and the Chaos surrounded Earth, its leaders instructed everybody to convert themselves from primordial (real) matter to noötic (virtual) mass. As each city fell, its inhabitants retreated to the last remaining cities, the Kalpa and Nataraja. Using knowledge he had gleaned from the Shen, Polybiblios built reality generators to protect the Kalpa. Nataraja, which had rebelled against the instruction to convert to noötic matter, was left to fend for itself.
The novel alternates between the Kalpa and present-day Seattle, where three drifters, Ginny, Jack and Daniel are in possession of sum-runners, small stone-like talismans that give them "fate-shifting"[4] abilities, whereby they can jump between fate-lines (world lines in a multiverse). Ginny and Jack also have disturbing dreams of the Kalpa, and are inexplicably connected to Jebrassy and Taidba, two "breeds" living in the future city. Fate-shifters and their sum-runners are hunted by "collectors"[5] working for the Chalk Princess, an entity controlled by the Typhon from the future. These hunters place adverts in local newspapers inviting "dreamers" to contact them for "help".
In the future, the Typhon is destroying history and world-lines are being broken, merging the past and the present. With the Chaos closing in on the Kalpa, the inhabitants (all noötic) are unable to venture outside the city walls. Under Ishanaxade's instructions, they create "breeds",[7] copies of ancient humans, using primordial matter. They send them in groups into the Chaos to find out if Nataraja still stands, but none return. Ishanaxade herself ventures out, but is not heard from again. As the Typhon starts breaching the Kalpa, the last batch of breeds, including Jebrassy and Taidba, leave the city in search of help. Armed with portable reality generators, they slowly progress through the unreal landscape in search of the rebel city.
Meanwhile, the Chaos has reached all the way back to the present day, and an event called the Terminus hits Seattle: the past, present and future collide and world-lines are severed. Ginny, Jack and Daniel, having evaded the hunters, trek across a degenerating Seattle. Protected by their sum-runners, they are drawn to Nataraja, where Ishanaxade is waiting. While still in the Kalpa, Ishanaxade had instructed Polybiblios to create the sum-runners containing "fragmented Babels",[8] and in the Chaos she had sent them back to the "beginning of time".[8] The sum-runners were programmed to lead the bearers to Ishanaxade when the expected Terminus occurred. The breeds, programmed to see Ishanaxade as their "mother", are also drawn to Nataraja, and Jebrassy and Taidba find their counterparts Jack and Ginny in the ruined city. The Kalpa falls to the Chaos, but in Nataraja, the sum-runners and their Babel fragments are united and history is recreated, causing the Typhon, now a failed god, to implode.
Bear called City at the End of Time his "longest and most ambitious science fiction novel" he has written for a while.[12] He said it is a "significant departure" from any of his previous works, and that it has a future history unlike anything he had tackled before.[13] In an interview with Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine in September 2008, Bear said that what inspired him to write City at the End of Time was the question, "What if we're still primitive in our thinking [about physics and cosmology]?", and this led to the idea for a story of "a Universe that goes on and on and on, and how reality might have to be changed by that circumstance."[1]
Bear told Locus magazine in August 2008 that he had found what appears to be a "continuity" in British science fiction: H. G. Wells's The Time Machine (1895), Arthur C. Clarke's The City and the Stars (1956), and Hodgson's The House on the Borderland (1908) and The Night Land (1912), all speculate on the evolution of humankind in the deep future. Bear said that these works, and their author's imagination, were a big influence on City at the End of Time.[9]
Analysis and genre
Science fiction critic John Clute said "City at the End of Time is an example of a novel in dialogue with past works of SF."[14] He said that Bear pays homage to William Hope Hodgson's 1912 novel, The Night Land, with which City at the End of Time shares a number of plot elements. Both books include characters who dream of cities in the far future (the Kalpa, and the Last Redoubt in The Night Land) which are surrounded by encroaching chaos.[15] The Kalpa also draws on Arthur C. Clarke's future city, Diaspar in his 1956 novel, The City and the Stars.[15] Influences of other past works on City at the End of Time include H. P. Lovecraft's novella The Shadow Out of Time (1936), in which people exchange personalities in dreams across time, and Olaf Stapledon's Last and First Men (1930), in which the last of humanity in the deep future mentally contact people from the past. Lovecraft's The Shadow Out of Time was in turn also influenced by The Night Land, which Lovecraft is said to have thought highly of.[14]
Bear admired Hodgson's imagination which, in The Night Land, had created the Last Redoubt as a "technological preserve" in the far future to keep out monsters that humanity had previously created, and which had evolved over long periods of time.[9] But Bear's interpretation of The Night Land is that this future landscape is a "metaphysical place", and the monsters are "not creatures of this Earth".[9] For Bear, this explanation broadens the novel's scope, and opens the door to other interpretations.[9]
Another influence on City at the End of Time are the short stories, "The Universal Library" (1901) by Kurd Lasswitz and "The Library of Babel" (1941) by Jorge Luis Borges, which science fiction and mystery author Peter Heck believes is intentional. Books feature prominently in the novel in both present-day Seattle and the Kalpa in the future, and Heck sees it as "a metaphor that anyone whose life is built around books—whether as a writer, reader, or bookseller—can readily empathize with."[16]
Clute notes that the Kalpa is not, as the title suggests, the last city; they believe they are, but the last city is Nataraja, "the city beyond the city at the end of time".[15] Clute says that the Typhon is "a kind of god and a kind of quasi-animate principle of destruction" that is attempting to destroy the universe because it "cannot tolerate being told" or "observed".[15] The creation and evolution of the universe is observed and recorded, and the Typhon will not tolerate this telling. In the Kalpa, Polybiblios creates Babel fragments ("Borgesian libraries that do not end") that, when brought together, will form a "backstory" that retells the history of the universe and overwhelms the Typhon.[15]
City at the End of Time is rooted in hard science fiction,[17][18] but includes several other genres. SFF World said the novel is similar to Stephen King's Dark Tower, where "an ultimate destination that defies both space and time are at the heart" of both stories.[19] But whereas King focuses on "fantastical elements", Bear adopts a "scientific approach".[19] SFF World described City at the End of Time as "an Epic Science Fiction novel [with] elements of thriller and horror with some downright creepy characters."[19]Kirkus Reviews called the book an "eschatological fantasy",[20] and science fiction critic Paul Kincaid says the novel has "plotting and language [that] seem to have been borrowed wholesale from fantasy".[17] Bear himself said the novel could be fantasy or horror, but called it science fiction "stretched to the nth degree".[1]City at the End of Time is generally referred to as a "Dying Earth" story, and is categorized under the Dying Earth subgenre.[21][22]
Reception
A review in Publishers Weekly described City at the End of Time as a "complex, difficult and beautifully written tale [that] will appeal to sophisticated readers who prefer thorny conundrums to fast-paced action".[23] A reviewer for the Library Journal said the novel "plung[es] readers into a visceral experience of cosmological theory and the big creation stories of mythology".[24] A review in New Scientist described the first half of the book as "a gripping, original tale" with the portrayal of the fate-shifters's talents as "nothing short of brilliant", but complained that in the second half Bear over-complicates the story with "too many ideas, images, mythologies and distractions".[2] The reviewer said that a promising story "whips itself up into a virtually incomprehensible final act".[2] Science fiction critic John Clute described the book as "cosmological [science fiction] without a net", and complained that Bear rushes through the story too quickly and does not dwell long enough on locations like the Kalpa to make it memorable.[15] He said that the flight to the future of Ginny, Jack and Daniel "gets a touch Frodo-in-Mordor at places".[15]
Writing in a review in Asimov's Science Fiction, science fiction and mystery author Peter Heck called City at the End of Time a "big, sweeping, heavily symbolic tale", and "one of Bear's most ambitious".[16] He said that while the story could have focused more on the future city, "in the end, the plotlines come together, and the complexities merge into a satisfying unity".[16] Speculative fiction writer Simon Petrie writing in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine was impressed by the book's "grandiosity to the total synthesis of cosmology and myth", and Bear's "ability to encapsulate a universal future history in just the one book",[25] but found the mix of science, fantasy, horror, mythology and religion a little "incongruous" at times.[25] Petrie also felt that the use of so many "viewpoint characters" results in these characters being underdeveloped, and tends to "[blunt] the pathos as the plot edges towards climax".[25]
In a review in the online speculative fiction magazine Strange Horizons, Tony Keen was critical of Bear's novel, saying that the present and future passages "do not mesh terribly well", and that it is "too long" with "too many ideas".[14] He complained that the book was difficult to follow and that Bear keeps "moving the goalposts as it suits his narrative".[14] Keen said that for a science fiction novel, he was surprised at its "lack of consistency", and called it more a work of fantasy than science fiction. He said the "revelations" at the end still did not help explain what had happened, but that "by this point, it was for me hard to care".[14] A review in the Oakland Tribune complained that Bear, who it felt is not strong on "crafting memorable characters", "struggles" with the novel's multiple viewpoints.[26] The review added that while he "takes a long time to get there, and arrives with a palpable scent of anticlimax, [Bear] does deliver at the end", although with not enough to satisfy the reviewer.[26]
Science fiction critic Paul Kincaid had mixed feelings about the novel. In a review at the SF Sitewebzine he criticized the characterisation saying that he could not always separate the main characters. Kincaid questioned the need for the supernatural entity, the Typhon, which is never developed. He described the "end of time" sequence as "the most powerful science fictional moment in this entire book", saying that he found it "far more scary, far more gripping, than any supernatural intervention".[17] Kincaid said that while he found the book "ambitious" and "intellectually satisfying", "somehow the whole feels less than the sum of its parts".[17]
In another review at the SF Site, Greg L. Johnson wrote that while City at the End of Time provides plenty of "wonder, awe, and a sense of humanity in the face of an implacable universe", he feels that Bear does not quite succeed with this ambitious story of the fate of reality and the universe at large. Johnson described it as "an immensely complicated story" that unfolds by means of "hints and allusions".[18] He said that even the book's ending only hints at what the gathered role players had achieved. Johnson wrote that while Bear's depictions of events on a grand scale, like the decay of Seattle, are good, his portrayal of the key players against this backdrop is not as strong.[18]
Science fiction is a genre of speculative fiction, which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel universes, and extraterrestrial life. Science fiction can trace its roots to ancient mythology. It is related to fantasy, horror, and superhero fiction and contains many subgenres. Its exact definition has long been disputed among authors, critics, scholars, and readers.
Gregory Dale Bear was an American writer and illustrator best known for science fiction. His work covered themes of galactic conflict, parallel universes, consciousness and cultural practices, and accelerated evolution. His most recent work was the 2021 novel The Unfinished Land. Greg Bear wrote over 50 books in total.
Philip José Farmer was an American author known for his science fiction and fantasy novels and short stories.
Galaxy Science Fiction was an American digest-size science fiction magazine, published in Boston from 1950 to 1980. It was founded by a French-Italian company, World Editions, which was looking to break into the American market. World Editions hired as editor H. L. Gold, who rapidly made Galaxy the leading science fiction magazine of its time, focusing on stories about social issues rather than technology.
Gene Rodman Wolfe was an American science fiction and fantasy writer. He was noted for his dense, allusive prose as well as the strong influence of his Catholic faith. He was a prolific short story writer and novelist, and won many literary awards. Wolfe has been called "the Melville of science fiction", and was honored as a Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.
Gordon Rupert Dickson was a Canadian-American science fiction writer. He was inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 2000.
Joe William Haldeman is an American science fiction author. He is best known for his novel The Forever War (1974). That novel and other works, including The Hemingway Hoax (1991) and Forever Peace (1997), have won science fiction awards, including the Hugo Award and Nebula Award. He was awarded the SFWA Grand Master for career achievements. In 2012 he was inducted as a member of the Science Fiction Hall of Fame. Many of Haldeman's works, including his debut novel War Year and his second novel The Forever War, were inspired by his experiences in the Vietnam War. Wounded in combat, he struggled to adjust to civilian life after returning home. From 1983 to 2014, he was a professor teaching writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Damien Francis Broderick is an Australian science fiction and popular science writer and editor of some 74 books. His science fiction novel The Dreaming Dragons (1980) introduced the trope of the generation time machine, his The Judas Mandala (1982) contains the first appearance of the term "virtual reality" in science fiction, and his 1997 popular science book The Spike was the first to investigate the technological singularity in detail.
John C. Wright is an American writer of science fiction and fantasy novels. He was a Nebula Award finalist for his fantasy novel Orphans of Chaos. Publishers Weekly said he "may be this fledgling century's most important new SF talent" when reviewing his debut novel, The Golden Age.
John Stewart Williamson, who wrote as Jack Williamson, was an American science fiction writer, one of several called the "Dean of Science Fiction". He is also credited with one of the first uses of the term genetic engineering. Early in his career he sometimes used the pseudonyms Will Stewart and Nils O. Sonderlund.
John Frederick Clute is a Canadian-born author and critic specializing in science fiction and fantasy literature who has lived in both England and the United States since 1969. He has been described as "an integral part of science fiction's history" and "perhaps the foremost reader-critic of sf in our time, and one of the best the genre has ever known." He was one of eight people who founded the English magazine Interzone in 1982.
Michael Lawson Bishop is an American writer. Over four decades and in more than thirty books, he has created what has been called a "body of work that stands among the most admired and influential in modern science fiction and fantasy literature."
Unknown was an American pulp fantasy fiction magazine, published from 1939 to 1943 by Street & Smith, and edited by John W. Campbell. Unknown was a companion to Street & Smith's science fiction pulp, Astounding Science Fiction, which was also edited by Campbell at the time; many authors and illustrators contributed to both magazines. The leading fantasy magazine in the 1930s was Weird Tales, which focused on shock and horror. Campbell wanted to publish a fantasy magazine with more finesse and humor than Weird Tales, and put his plans into action when Eric Frank Russell sent him the manuscript of his novel Sinister Barrier, about aliens who own the human race. Unknown's first issue appeared in March 1939; in addition to Sinister Barrier, it included H. L. Gold's "Trouble With Water", a humorous fantasy about a New Yorker who meets a water gnome. Gold's story was the first of many in Unknown to combine commonplace reality with the fantastic.
A sense of wonder is an intellectual and emotional state frequently invoked in discussions of science and biology, higher consciousness, science fiction, and philosophy.
Gordon Eklund is an American science fiction author whose works include the "Lord Tedric" series and two of the earliest original novels based on the 1960s Star Trek TV series. He has written under the pen name Wendell Stewart, and in one instance under the name of the late E. E. "Doc" Smith.
There have been many attempts at defining science fiction. This is a list of definitions that have been offered by authors, editors, critics and fans over the years since science fiction became a genre. Definitions of related terms such as "science fantasy", "speculative fiction", and "fabulation" are included where they are intended as definitions of aspects of science fiction or because they illuminate related definitions—see e.g. Robert Scholes's definitions of "fabulation" and "structural fabulation" below. Some definitions of sub-types of science fiction are included, too; for example see David Ketterer's definition of "philosophically-oriented science fiction". In addition, some definitions are included that define, for example, a science fiction story, rather than science fiction itself, since these also illuminate an underlying definition of science fiction.
Immortality is a common theme in fiction. The concept has been depicted since the Epic of Gilgamesh, the oldest known work of fiction. Originally appearing in the domain of mythology, it has later become a recurring element in the genres of horror, science fiction, and fantasy. For most of literary history, the dominant perspective has been that the desire for immortality is misguided, albeit strong; among the posited drawbacks are ennui, loneliness, and social stagnation. This view was challenged in the 20th century by writers such as George Bernard Shaw and Roger Zelazny. Immortality is commonly obtained either from supernatural entities or objects such as the Fountain of Youth or through biological or technological means such as brain transplants.
Will McIntosh is a science fiction and young adult author, a Hugo-Award-winner, and a winner or finalist for many other awards. Along with ten novels, including Defenders, Love Minus Eighty, and Burning Midnight, he has published dozens of short stories in magazines such as Asimov's Science Fiction, Strange Horizons, Lightspeed Magazine, Clarkesworld, and Interzone. His stories are frequently reprinted in different "Year's Best" anthologies.
Dying Earth is a subgenre of science fantasy or science fiction which takes place in the far future at either the end of life on Earth or the end of time, when the laws of the universe themselves fail. Themes of world-weariness, innocence, idealism, entropy, (permanent) exhaustion/depletion of many or all resources, and the hope of renewal dominate.
Science-fiction and fantasy magazines began to be published in the United States in the 1920s. Stories with science-fiction themes had been appearing for decades in pulp magazines such as Argosy, but there were no magazines that specialized in a single genre until 1915, when Street & Smith, one of the major pulp publishers, brought out Detective Story Magazine. The first magazine to focus solely on fantasy and horror was Weird Tales, which was launched in 1923, and established itself as the leading weird fiction magazine over the next two decades; writers such as H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith and Robert E. Howard became regular contributors. In 1926 Weird Tales was joined by Amazing Stories, published by Hugo Gernsback; Amazing printed only science fiction, and no fantasy. Gernsback included a letter column in Amazing Stories, and this led to the creation of organized science-fiction fandom, as fans contacted each other using the addresses published with the letters. Gernsback wanted the fiction he printed to be scientifically accurate, and educational, as well as entertaining, but found it difficult to obtain stories that met his goals; he printed "The Moon Pool" by Abraham Merritt in 1927, despite it being completely unscientific. Gernsback lost control of Amazing Stories in 1929, but quickly started several new magazines. Wonder Stories, one of Gernsback's titles, was edited by David Lasser, who worked to improve the quality of the fiction he received. Another early competitor was Astounding Stories of Super-Science, which appeared in 1930, edited by Harry Bates, but Bates printed only the most basic adventure stories with minimal scientific content, and little of the material from his era is now remembered.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
