Review: The City Among The Stars, by Francis Carsac

First English translation of the celebrated Golden Age Science Fiction Classic.

“This stunning classic stands shoulder-to-shoulder with Arthur C. Clarke, Asimov, and Heinlein. No devotee of great sf should miss The City of the Stars.” New York Times and USA Today bestselling authors W. Michael Gear and Kathleen O’Neal Gear

Tankar Holroy, Lieutenant in the Stellar Guard of Earth’s Empire, floats in space after his spaceship is sabotaged. Rescued by an enormous, unknown ship, he awakes to discover himself saved by the People of the Stars who are born and live in space with minimal contact with planets and their occupants whom they call, with contempt, planetaries.

The chilly welcome he receives from the ship s leader, the Teknor, is followed by overt hostility from the other inhabitants of the Tilsin. Only a woman named Orena reaches out to him. 

Tankar soon realizes that he was rescued for his knowledge of tracers, the technology that allows Empire ships to track others through hyperspace, a technology the People of the Stars lack. Out of spite, he refuses to deliver the one piece of knowledge that can protect the people who saved but now spurn him – and the consequences will be catastrophic.

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My Review

Thanks to Anne Cater, of Random Things Tours, for organising this tour, and to Flame Tree Press for sending me a copy of the novel.

THE ROSIE SYNOPSIS

Tankar Holroy is 24, a lieutenant in the elite Stellar Guard. On a mission to the 7th Fleet his ship is destroyed by sabotage, leaving Tanker floating in space.

He’s picked up just in time by the Tilsin. a 5 km long city-ship. On board he finds the descendents of people he’s been taught to believe were traitors. A mix of artists, scientists and religious, their forebears escaped after centuries of persecution in the early years of the Empire. The people, Stellarans, are equally wary of this planetary, and one from Earth at that. One, even worse, who proudly follows the ‘divine’ Emperor. Confused and defensive, Tankar and the people of Tilsin, bash heads until an external threat forces them to work together. Grief overwhelms Tankar after the battle and he returns to Earth to find the EMpire has fallen, the decent bodies who tried to make things better are dead and plutocrats are in charge and making life miserable for everyone. With two trusted colleagues and a former Countess, Tankar returns to Tilsin and must try to survive his despair.

THE GOOD

I really was engrossed by this novel. I spent four hours immersed in the book.

The society in Tilsin and the other city-ships is complex, fair and equal. It has as many divisions as any other society but functions. It would be utopian if it didn’t have the flaws, individual responsibility is taken a little too far with duels for any insult. The Empire is also a complex society, but one any student of history would recognise, as is the Earth Tankar briefly returns to.

Tankar, Anaena and Iolia are an interesting set-up. Clearly, the worldly, educated, sophisticated Anaena is set in opposition to innocent, religious Iolia, and Tankar is forced to choose. His own arrogance forces him to make interesting choices. He regularly ‘cuts of his nose to spite his face’ and draws false conclusions based on his bruised ego. It’s surprising either woman tolerated him long enough to fall in love.

The style is more didactic than modern sci-fi, with bursts of action soon over. Part of one of the final chapters is a discussion of the purpose of human striving if there is no god.

Having seen a few dodgy 60s sci-fi films, not that I can recall names, I think they were on the telly in my childhood, I can see that this novel would have fit into the genre at the time. It even has the ‘compulsory yet random female nudity’, and ‘blundering Earth man among aliens’ tropes. I could definitely see a Robert Redford-type actor flailing in artificial zero-gravity (wires almost visible) and being picked up by an exotic ship, the bad costumes of the Mpfifi aliens, a half-naked Anaena (played by a tiny blonde attempting to channel Maureen O’Hara in ‘McClintock! and failing) stumbling around injured and half-naked on the nameless planet after foolishly crashing her exploration ship.

How times have changed. Definitely no sexism in Sci-fi these days (sarcasm).

THE NOT SO GREAT

I haven’t read the original, so I can’t say how true to it the translation is but sometimes the wording was a bit odd. I’m not sure if that is a result of the style at the time it was originally written or unpolished translation.

As I mentioned about, it was written by a French author in 1962. Not the most progressive of times, so plenty or random sexism in general and the main character is a bit of an arse to women. I mentioned a couple of the tropes found in the book, but to be honest, they’re tropes now because they were used so liberally then. Think ‘Star Trek’ but without the progressive element.

The philosophical musing tends to morph into sudden action and it got confusing at times, who was doing what and who was saying what.

THE VERDICT

As a classic piece of Golden Age sci-fi and a foundation, although not in English, of the genre this book is totally worth reading. It provides that background to the genre that puts more recent works in context. It’s a good story, I really did read it in a single sitting, just try not to forget that the style has changed in the last 60 years so it’s a different experience from reading a modern sci-fi novel.

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Francis Carsac, a pseudonym for the world-renowned French scientist, geologist, and archaeologist Francois Bordes, wrote and published six novels during the golden age of science fiction.

Never before published in English, these novels resonate with timely issues ranging from climate control to racism and greed and tell the stories of characters whose challenges and triumphs clearly relate to many of the problems we encounter today. He has been translated and published into Russian, Romanian, Bulgarian, Lithuanian, Latvian, Hungarian, Estonian amongst others.