Against the Fall of Night (or The City and the Stars) by Arthur C. Clarke: #tbt review

This is the book that turned me into a science fiction reader when I was 10 or 11 years old. I was at my godparents' house when I noticed this book cover on the stack of books kept in the half-bathroom off the kitchen. Of course I was completely intrigued and started reading it—and ended up taking it home with me. The rest is, well, history. So many scenes from this book are utterly vivid to me even now. I lived this book.

Against the Fall of Night (also called, in a different and longer edition that I don't actually recommend, The City and the Stars) is the far-future story of a teenager named Alvin. It's humanity's twilight; Alvin is the only child of his generation. He lives in Diaspar, a beautiful, fully self-contained city on an Earth that has become a vast, inhospitable desert. He has everything he could possibly need or want—at least, that's the idea.

But Alvin is a throwback, blessed (or cursed) with a trait that has been nearly bred out of what remains of humanity: curiosity. His curiosity leads him to discover that there’s a lot more out there than he’s been taught, and he becomes caught between forces that have been holding his world in a rigid balance as a defense against a power that threaten’s humanity’s very existence.

This story takes place in a very far future where humanity is long past its bloom and has hunkered down in one city on one planet to slowly, slowly die. What’s left of our species lives in parasitic luxury off the past, while denying itself or its children any knowledge of that past or why things are the way they are now. Basically we are a moribund species and have retreated so far back into our shell that we don't remember anything else when Alvin is born.

Or so it would seem.

Alvin represents both the past and the future of humanity: he’s a type that hasn’t existed in Diaspar for so many millennia that nobody quite knows what to do with him. He’s also the key to any possible future humanity might have. This is an allegory about old age and adolescence, and also a story of an existential threat to our species that’s very much born of the cold war. It's also an adventure. It's quite wonderful.

Do check out the link to The City and the Stars if you're at all interested. It will take you to a nice, long Tor Books review of both books that discusses the differences and interplay between the two versions. But maybe check it out after you've read Against the Fall of Night—because spoilers!