The City and The Stars - Overview

Overview

Against the Fall of Night was Clarke's first novel. It was published in Startling Stories in 1948 (after John W. Campbell, Jr. rejected it, according to Clarke's own account). A few years later he revised the book extensively and retitled it as The City and the Stars. The new version was intended to showcase what he had learned about writing. The major differences are in individual scenes and in the details of his contrasting civilizations of Diaspar and Lys. To everyone's surprise, Against the Fall of Night remained popular enough to stay in print after The City and the Stars was published. In introductions to it he has told the anecdote of a psychiatrist and patient who admitted they had discussed it one day in therapy, without realizing at the time that one had read one book and one the other. Most recently it has appeared with a sequel by Gregory Benford called Beyond the Fall of Night. What follows is a summary of The City and the Stars, but it is a broadly accurate description of either of the books about Alvin, except for the role of Khedron (who replaced a different character in the earlier novel) and for the nature of the immortality of the people of Diaspar.