The City and the Cygnets

by Michael Bishop

Overview

"[These] stories . . . elliptically chronicle the life of an alternative Atlanta, Georgia, 2000-2070. Beneath a huge artificial dome that blocks out the stars, hierarchically stashed on nine subterranean levels with computer-controlled simulations of weather and seasonal change, the citizens of this grim, bureaucracy-ridden sardine tin . . . contrive not just to endure but to prevail. Through 70 years of increasing repression, various free spirts turn a living cubicle into a facsimile of a starship in deep space, experiment with multipartner 'marriages' for the elderly, or dearly earn moments of mutual benison with an unwanted cubicle-mate. . . . bearing witness to the weedlike survival of human instinct and aspiration in the most confining and programmed environment." [from Kirkus Reviews]

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781933846781
Publisher:	Fairwood Press LLC
Publication date:	08/20/2019
Pages:	466
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.04(d)

Editorial Reviews

"Michael Bishop's Urban Nucleus concept was one of the great extrapolative achievements of science fiction in the 1970s. In the novel A Little Knowledge and the accompanying story cycle Catacomb Years, he gave it vivid life. Now, forty years later, he has drawn both books together in revised and re-imagined versions to provide modern readers with a single unified text of this vast vision of the near future." --Robert Silverberg, SFWA Grand Master

The City and the Cygnets ranks with the best of literary science fiction, on the level of Cloud Atlas or Life after Life. ... A Bishop book to savor." --Louise Marley, author of The Terrorists of Irustan

"Bishop [writes] in exquisitely crafted prose and with profound insight, compassion, and wisdom . . . If you've never read Bishop's work before, I envy you what you're about to experience." --F. Brett Cox, author of The End of All Our Exploring: Stories

Not all writers can sustain decades of excellence. But Mike can. Mike has. Mike does. This is not a simple book. But it's a profoundly satisfying one. Satisfying in the answers it gives, and in the questions it asks that will never, ever be resolved." --Kelly Robson, author of Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach

From the Publisher