The City at World's End
Edmond Hamilton
Read by Mark Nelson
A surprise nuclear war may cause the End of the World, but not the way anyone could have imagined. A classic science fiction tale from Galaxy Magazine. (Summary by Mark Nelson) (7 hr 6 min)
Chapters
Reviews
Exciting and interesting take on the end of the world
Ikkeheltvanlig
I really enjoyed this book, and the reader's voice was comfortable and consistent. the story is great, and any discrepancies in scientific knowledge only reflects on how much has changed in common knowledge since this was written, which kind of suits this book well. The only thing I found myself reacting to was the outdated gender roles, but I expect they belong in both the rural area the protagonist comes from and the age the book was written. Otherwise, a great and entertaining experience :-D
A little dated, but still good.
Debryanread
The city at the end of the world is an incredible story about a man and his people being thrust into the distant future, to a dieing earth. If you enjoy a good sci-fi novel, this is a good book to look for. compelling narrative, wonderful story telling, and a constant feeling of every emotion of the characters. With out a true and true antagonist, this novel breaks boundaries on who a hero can be. Some issues I had with the novel come with problems of the time. Our main character is relatively old minded when it comes to women, even though he's portrayed as a forward thinking man. Some of the science, of course, has changed over time and some situations can be a little silly looking back, and an over use of 'things' made some larger then life situations and objects feel... mondaine and boring. All in all though, I feel it's a wonderful book for all ages to read.
Absolutely Fantastic!
Croc
I was deeply uplifted by this work. To the selfless people who brought it to us, many thanks. Your work was near perfect. I worked on Reagan's campaign in 1980. Not since then have I felt the buoyant sense of "morning in America." This work captures that spirit almost perfectly. My God people, how did we drift from our path? We need authors who don't reach to the gutter of "if it bleeds, it leads." We desperately need a return to the optimistic genius of the great age of good old SciFi. To hell with today's media and its constant drum beat of doom. Let us throw them on the scrap pile of history and resume our place as the imaginers of great things. Bravo Librivox! swanp
Depressing
Ruby
This book started well and had so much promise. Perhaps if it had been written more recently its potential could have been realised. In short The City at World's End is just plain depressing. The mc is a depressing pessimist, the setting is depressing, the writing is depressing. Nonetheless I pushed on until chapter six when the author threw down this line regarding the mc's irritation at his fiancé because of the "inability of the female mind to grapple with the essentials of a situation". Now I get that the book was written in a different era, when a woman's place was in the home. But really! Did the author have to present all the women in his book as hysterical simpletons? The really frustrating thing is I'm going to keep encountering this. I'm dependent on audiobooks for a lot of my reading, and I can't afford to buy them. So it's off to the public domain I go. And apparently there are two roles for women in public domain sci fi (on the rare occasion the author notices that there is more than one sex) - the helpless female, and the sex symbol. Sigh. This has been a depressing review of a depressing book.
Great book and nice voice
Mike Q.
This was my first full book on this app. I tried a few others but couldn't get into the voice. The gentlemen who reads this book has a nice clear and relaxing voice. He changes voices for different characters but it's not overly done. I would like to thank the narrator for making this recording. He allowed me to experience a story I wouldn't have read on my own. The story it's self is a great tale of human survival and has good pace. It's a real thinker :)
Worth listening to
Aaron V
This book won't rank as one of the top books I've ever read, but it is definitely worth listening to. For the most part it is well paced, and kept me mostly interested, except for maybe right around the initial court scene. Also, when the other comments made complaints about gender roles, I thought, "Surely, it won't be THAT bad", but though few instances in quantity, they were so outlandish in quality that I found them pretty amusing. Also, maybe it's because I'm not from that time period, but I had a hard time sympathizing with and understanding the middletowners POV.
well read - fast moving story
jaded_grl
i have considered listening to this story several times - because the reader is one of my favorites and does a great job. but the idea of a sci-fi written in the late 1940 / early 1950s had me cringing and thinking of bad sci-fi movies with rubber aliens, cities made of models, and strings on space ships! but i finally gave it a listen and right from chapter one i was engrossed! if you can get past the space time continuum thing - science fiction after all - it is a great story. never gets slow or boring. descriptions just vague enough to sound realistic. i do have some issues with a few unmentioned things - but can easily ignore those science points and enjoy the story. perfectly read, of course. it is like the twilight zone! i agree with that review!
City at World's Endthe
(p) a
The reading in this story is excellent. The author's story idea is interesting. The tale he weaves is one of our human resistance to change. All parties in this story have the same problem of wanting to keep the status quo. I suppose the ultimate moral would be: No one can return to the beginning; we must make new starting point from where we are. Wth that said, the characters are flat. There is little depth Romany of them. The relation between men and women, where presented, is kind of Tarzan and Jane. Grabbing a woman and shaking he to see reason is a really dated motif. This criticism is why I gave this a 3 ð rating.