- City of a Thousand Suns
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City of a Thousand Suns 
Cover of first edition paperbackAuthor(s) Samuel R. Delany Illustrator Jack Gaughan Cover artist Jack Gaughan Country United States Language English Series The Fall of the Towers Genre(s) Science fiction novel Publisher Ace Books Publication date 1965 Media type Print (Paperback) Pages 156 pp ISBN N/A OCLC Number 1539300 Preceded by The Towers of Toron City of a Thousand Suns is a 1965 science fiction novel by Samuel R. Delany, and is the final novel in the Fall of the Towers trilogy.[1][2]
As in the other two books, the setting is the post-apocalyptic empire of Toromon, confined by a surrounding "Barrier" of highly-radioactive land, and inhabited by mutant/evolved "forest people" (some of whom are telepaths) and devolved "neanderthals", as well as normal humans. The events of the book focus on a claimed war. Soldiers are told repeatedly "we have an enemy behind the barrier" and placed in coffin-like modules to be teleported into enemy territory to do battle.
However, it turns out that the matter transporter or teleportation system has never actually worked, and the war is a hoax. The soldiers are wired into a computer prior to their "teleportation" experience but actually remain in their coffins. They hallucinate battles, with their experiences generated and coordinated by the computer. The pre-determined fatalities are killed by an enemy energy weapon within the communal reality, as the survivors remember it, but in reality are electrocuted and burned within their coffins. In some respects, this foreshadows the 1999 film The Matrix.
However, Toromon actually does have a real enemy of sorts, on another plane of existence, and at the end of the book there is a cosmic conflict which leads to this entity being prevented from conducting further malicious experiments on Toromon.
The stories of the Fall of the Towers trilogy were originally set in the same post-holocaust Earth as Delany's earlier The Jewels of Aptor; however, linking references were removed in later revised editions.[3]
References
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Barbour, Douglas (1979). Worlds Out Of Worlds: The SF Novels of Samuel R. Delany. Frome, Somerset, UK: Bran's Head Books Ltd.. ISBN 0-905220-3-7.
- Clute, John; Nicholls, Peter (1995). The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (2 ed.). New York: St. Martin's Griffin. ISBN 0-312-13486-X.
- Tuck, Donald H. (1974). The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy. Chicago: Advent. ISBN 0-911682-20-1.
External links
- City of a Thousand Suns publication history at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
Categories:- Novels by Samuel Delany
- 1965 novels
- 1960s science fiction novels
- 1960s science fiction novel stubs
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