Monday, September 3, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The City, Not Long After by Pat Murphy




The City, Not Long After (hereafter "TCNLA") is a short post-apocalyptic SciFi novel written by Pat Murphy in 1989.  As with much SF/F written in that time, it is definitely influenced by the political situation of the time - the Cold War of course - but the book's setting and plot still works today (oddly, the plot almost seems like something that would've made sense being written in the 70s, rather than '89, but it doesn't really matter).  The result is a story about pacifist cooperation between artists to defend their home from an invading military force that somehow works without seeming too sappy or silly.


----------------------------------------------Plot Summary--------------------------------------------
In a not too distant future, humanity around the world has been devastated by a worldwide plague.  The result is a world transformed by the sudden massive depopulation, and not always for the better - Los Angeles for example has been taken over by a conservative religious group and Oakland is controlled largely by a street gang.

But San Francisco is different - with its occupants being an assorted variety of artists and other oddballs, who work together to ensure that everyone is able to live and is able to have their own space to do their work. Together they work together to create a new and better city, and the City itself seems to help its residents with their work.

But this society in San Francisco may face a threat to this existence - a man calling himself a "General" is bringing a military force to San Fran's door, with the intent of conquering the City into his new America.  A young woman, without even a name, comes to San Francisco to try and warn the occupants and to raise them in military opposition to the coming conqueror.  This woman has never known society, and doesn't know what to do with these strange people in San Francisco, who insist that they will not resort to military force, but will instead "fight" with their own tools for the San Francisco they want to build....
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The City, Not Long After is written largely around a decently sized but eclectic group of characters.  The book devotes time throughout, usually in small bits at beginning of chapters, telling the stories of the various side characters and their own perspectives on the world as it is now, before pivoting to the perspectives that guide the reader through most of the main story.  This works incredibly well at building each of the characters who live in San Francisco - from the guy who thinks he must be a machine - because how else would he have survived the plague - and spends his time creating automata to let loose in San Fran - to the woman who collects news for a newspaper, to the various other artists about with their own histories and backstories.  The result is that it's very easy to care about all of what are really ancillary characters.

Because the main focus of this story are three characters in particular.  The first is Danny-boy, a young man orphaned at a young age by the plague and by his caretaker's suicide, who discovered a love of art at a young age and wants to use his art and the art of others to transform San Francisco (his major project is organizing a group to repaint the Golden Gate Bridge blue).  Danny-boy is young and a bit naive, and yet the book never argues that this is a bad thing.  When the military enemy arrives, Danny-boy is one of the most strident that the San Franciscans should not resort to the violence of their enemies and should instead use their art to "defeat them" and "prevail.   It sounds cheesy when I write it out, but it's written excellently so that it never comes off that way whatsoever.

The second main character is a Young Woman born without a name (she gains a name about a third of a way through the book), who was raised by her mother in isolation, only to fall in love with a globe of San Fran and to run there to try and warn the people there of the oncoming force.  Unlike Danny-boy, when she sees the military force coming to San Fran, she repeatedly urges the people to take arms and actual military action, only to be repeatedly convinced by the others not to go through with such actions.  Again, this is a conflict that could seem really cheesy (pacifism over violence!) but the book does it in a way that it never really feels too much like that, and really works.  It helps because it's very easy to sympathize with her, as this young woman struggles to understand the first people she's really met outside of her mother and who have these very different and strange views of the world.

And then there's the last main character - the City itself.  In a sense, this book could be considered partly magical realism, because at times throughout the book, the spirit of the City itself seems to be alive and acting to preserve itself and its citizens from the invading force, whether that be through creating difficult weather for those who seek to destroy the City or through more supernatural forces.  When combined with the worldbuilding of the City, the result is what really feels like a third main character to join the other two characters, whose perspectives largely illustrate the second half of hte book.

The book ends on a kind of bittersweet note, which made me sad, but in general I enjoyed this book - which is a nice short length, a good bit.  Recommended for those who want a post apocalyptic book which is not about individuals breaking into anarchy but rather gathering together for peaceful cooperation in the face of difficulties in a rather quirky way.
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