The City at World's End

Absolutely Fantastic!

(5 stars)

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

It was great but...

(4 stars)

Glumerlink

I fell in love with this book and the reader's voice was amazing. From the start the story is fairly straightforward and predictable but I feel that must only be because of how much time has passed since its creation. If I was to describe it in all but a few words I would describe it as "a great story with odd, sexist overtones." Though it is worth remembering it is a story from a different time. I would definitely recommend people give it a read!

A very good title, I like it.

(5 stars)

Paul Ajz

Complex in its scope and simple in its presentation, this is a story of facing an unfathomable future with inefficient, ineffective and out dated resources. The strength of the story is the portrayal of resilence and flexibility needed to adapt to new challenges both in moving foward while resisting change for the sake of change. One doesn't discard the resourcefulness which brings one to the benefits of today's world as they are needed to guide new approaches to tomorrow's world. In this story, the earth community advanced by allowing itself footholds in the past while moving deliberately and cautiously forward. Concerns about sexist roles and dated references are applicable to most of the great classics. This story's sexist subplot is a challenge to us to seek out the isms (sexism, racism, etc.) which still control"modern" life. How advanced are we today and pretend to be tomorrow when isms continue to flourish while technology leaps forward? The reader was fabulous, as always!

Great story!

(5 stars)

JB

I’ve never been a big fan of sci-fi stories, but this one really grabbed my interest. You are always left eagerly wondering what is going to happen next. It isn’t inundated with fictional technical jargon that I would normal gloss over. The story itself includes great examination into human behavior, and has fantastic political allegory that can easily apply to today’s current political environment without having to stretch the imagination too much. Mark’s reading style is fantastic as always and is a pleasure to listen to.

a very entertaining and enjoyable story

(5 stars)

DarthLaurel

Great reading. Thanks for your continued support of great stories for listeners like me. Anyone who listens to old sci fi and is offended by a guy shaking a woman during the end of the world should probably pick another genre. Maybe feminist lit.....where they won't have their reverse stereotypes offended. Anyone who thinks women are always logical and reasonable should read about how the female employees at Google had a meltdown hissyfit when James Damore's memo went viral. As a woman, I take the genre as I find it and am just grateful for the many great male readers (and female) that contribute to the literature and the reading.

good story

(4 stars)

null

the story and the naration are right out of the Twilight zone. it's a fun story to listen to. all and all if you can give it a few minutes to get acclimated to the reader it's well worth your time. please dont take my comments towards the narrator as a negitive review of his work. in all honesty I think he did a fantastic job and he spoke clearly and maintained a constant vibe thru out the story. his reading meshed very well with the story and gave it a almost nostalgic feel.

(3 stars)

Dated of course but pretty good Science Fiction. if you can get past the dated reference towards women it's not bad at all. I kept thinking how silly these people were passing up a chance to be moved to a new fertle world with a string sun and warmth rather than living on a dying earth just because they don't want to change. The illogical mob fighting against relocation from a dying earth to a great new perfect world. Sad comments on humankind of this era.

Depressing

(0.5 stars)

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.