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| Indeed, the city has seen its share of revolts and wars. The original New Shanghai and Calgary populations had, by virtue of their contributions to the Mothership, held disproportionate influence among its inhabitants, and their descendants maintained that influence all the way to Xiosphant. Active acts of oppression against the others led a sizable group to eventually depart and build their own city, Argelo. The two cities have alternately traded and fought ever since; the last such cycle ended in complete isolation. | Indeed, the city has seen its share of revolts and wars. The original New Shanghai and Calgary populations had, by virtue of their contributions to the Mothership, held disproportionate influence among its inhabitants, and their descendants maintained that influence all the way to Xiosphant. Active acts of oppression against the others led a sizable group to eventually depart and build their own city, Argelo. The two cities have alternately traded and fought ever since; the last such cycle ended in complete isolation. |
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| Argelo's culture in many ways reflects its origin as a reaction to Xiosphant's. They have a single currency, no official timekeeping, a thriving club scene, and (on paper at least) no aristocracy. People proudly display their heritage through clothing. | Argelo's culture in many ways reflects its origin as a reaction to Xiosphant's. People proudly display their heritage through their clothing. They have a single currency, no official timekeeping, a thriving club scene, and (on paper at least) no aristocracy. Despite the lack of a unified state as in Xiosphant, Argelo is still very much an oligarchy. It's controlled by nine families whose frequent skirmishes soak the streets in blood. |
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| | By far the greatest similarity between these cities (and the few frontier settlements) is the ever-present specter of decline. Argelo's carefree atmosphere masks looming food shortages. Erosion of the Young Father has exposed Xiosphant to more merciless sunlight. Whole technologies have been lost to time, and major infrastructure, particularly computers and communication equipment, is falling apart across the planet. Acidic storms are becoming more and more frequent. Some of the outlying settlements have turned to piracy to survive. And that's to say nothing of the planet's natural fauna. Humans are very much out of place on January. |
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| | Humans are not, however, the only sentient beings on the planet. |
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| | ===== Thoughts ===== |
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| | The book's prologue strongly echoes the epilogue of [[.:The Handmaid's Tale]]. Both take place well after the primary plots and identify their respective texts as historical documents. While this frame works splendidly for //The Handmaid's Tale//, it rings hollower for //The City in the Middle of the Night//. |
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| | By granting us closure on some aspects of its narrative and sowing doubt about others, the epilogue //The Handmaid's Tale// both invites us deeper into its fiction and invites us to question features of our own world. The narrator's account, now recontextualized as a priceless primary source on Gileadean society, is of dubious provenance. While broadly in line with other sources, her story differs in enough key details to render its veracity debatable. This is a common occurrence in real-world archaeology. How do we compile overlapping but contradictory sources into a unified understanding of history? How do we address these complexities without getting bogged down by them or omitting them altogether? How much of what we think we know about history is derived from unreliable sources, sources who either misunderstood or outright lied about events? |
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| | //The City in the Middle of the Night//, by contrast, uses its prologue mostly as a hook. It tells us that the story to follow documents the emergence of a new species and introduces the linguistic theme that will carry through the text. Unlike in //The Handmaid's Tale//, this detail is at best inconsequential and at worst detrimental to the overall story. //The City in the Middle of the Night// is told alternately in first person (from Sophie's perspective) and third person (from Mouth's). If we accept that this is a historical document, then who composed it? Certainly Sophie's chapters could be assumed to be memoirs, but what of Mouth's? Sophie's new body allows her to share her own thoughts but not to extract them from humans. |
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| | This is admittedly something of a nitpick. As mentioned above, the prologue is largely inconsequential. |
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| | {{tag>fiction}} |
| ---- struct data ---- | ---- struct data ---- |
| | readinglist.author : Anders |
| | readinglist.title : The City in the Middle of the Night |
| | readinglist.summary : A young woman struggles to survive in a highly regimented city on an unforgiving planet. |
| | readinglist.status : read |
| | readinglist.subjects : fiction |
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