City by Simak Clifford D

Author:Simak, Clifford D. [Simak, Clifford D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Fantasy, Classics
ISBN: 9781882968282
Amazon: 188296828X
Goodreads: 222093
Publisher: Old Earth Books
Published: 1944-05-01T07:00:00+00:00

Notes on the Sixth Tale

If there has been any doubt concerning the origin of the other tales in the legend, there can be no doubt in this. Here, in the sixth tale, we have unmistakably the hallmarks of Doggish story telling. It has the deeper emotional value, the closer attention to ethical matters which are stressed in all other Doggish myths.

And yet, strangely enough, it is in this particular tale that Tige finds his weightiest evidence of the actuality of the human race. Here, he points out, we have evidence that the Dogs told these self-same tales before the blazing fire when they sat and talked of Man buried in Geneva or gone to Jupiter. Here, he says, we are given an account of the Dogs’ first probing into the cobbly worlds, their first step toward the development of an animal brotherhood.

Here, too, he thinks we have evidence that Man was another contemporary race which went part way down the path of culture with the Dogs. Whether or not the disaster which is portrayed in this tale is the one which actually overwhelmed Man, Tige says, we cannot be sure. He admits that through the centuries the tale as we know it today has been embellished and embroidered. But it does provide, he contends, good and substantial evidence that some disaster was visited upon the human race.

Rover, who does not admit to the factual evidence seen by Tige, believes that the storyteller in this tale brings to a logical conclusion a culture such as Man developed. Without at least broad purpose, without certain implanted stability, no culture can survive, and this is the lesson, Rover believes, the tale is meant to spell.

Man, in this story, is treated with a certain tenderness which is not accorded him in any of the other tales. He is at once a lonely and pitiful creature, and yet somehow glorious. It is entirely typical of him that in the end he should make a grand gesture, that he should purchase godhood by self-immolation.

Yet the worship which is accorded him by Ebenezer has certain disturbing overtones which have become the source of particularly bitter dispute among the legend’s students.

Bounce, in his book, “The Myth of Man,” asks this question: If Man had taken a different path, might, he not, in time to come, have been as great as Dog?

It is a question, perhaps, that many readers of the legend have stopped to ask themselves.

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