The City and the Stars

Alvin lives in the city of Diaspar. He's a young man who has a problem. He can't remember any of his past lives as expected, and as is the experience of everyone around him. The city births its citizens according to the inner thoughts of a central computer. And at the end of their lives it takes them back into itself, to be birthed again in some distant future.

But Alvin is a disruptor. He is curious. He wants to know what is outside the city. He goes exploring. All of these are not the life of his companions.

With the help of the mysterious city jester, another disruptor, he finds his way into the depths of the city and out to the wider world. And in that moment he seals the fate of the city to a future they have feared for a billion years.

The book is let down by long passages of descriptions of what Alvin sees on his travels, material that does not move the story along. The characters are also a bit thin until Alvin meets Hilvar who becomes his traveling companion and his first ever real friend. Hilvar brings a certain kind of humanity to Alvin and to the story.

Alvin and Hilvar travel to distant stars to try to understand the origins of Earth's current situation, a place trying to recover from inter-planetary warfare. They return to find the city in crisis, and Alvin at last learns the reason for his existence. The book closes on a world that knows it has change, and it is only in the closing pages that Alvin starts to draw some emotion from the reader as he realises who he is, what he has done, and what will be his future.