Plot Introduction
City of Illusions takes place on Earth, also known as Terra, in the future, twelve hundred years after an enemy named the Shing has broken the power of the League of All Worlds and occupied Earth. The indigenous people of Earth have been reduced in numbers and widely separated, living in highly independent rural communes or nomadic tribal societies. The Shing exercise control over these people using various strategies of indirect control, including divide and rule and deceptive telepathic mental control known as mind-lying. In contrast, innately truthful telepathy is known as mindspeech.
Prior to the opening scene, the main character, who is a descendant of the protagonists in Planet of Exile, has been involved in a ship crash, and since the Shing do not believe in killing, has had his memory erased and been abandoned in the forest; this leaves his mind as a blank slate or tabula rasa. As the story begins he must develop a new self-identity ex nihilo.
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