City

I'd think a book (why it's considered a "novel" I have no idea--it's clearly a short story cycle) which began with a property dispute between a city government and a group of transients, and ended with sentient dogs colonising alternate dimensions as ants took over the Earth, would be more endearing to a weirdo like me, but alas, it was not.

It took me about two months to dip in and out of this relatively short book. It spite of many interesting ideas--which were what really kept me involved--the book has strangely not aged well, while simultaneously being ahead of its time in its themes, but to the extent that the execution suffers.

It would have been a much smoother ride if Simak had dropped the introductions linking the narrative (they are more annoying than anything else, although I do appreciate what he was trying to do), and if he could've dropped the passages where he seems to get lost in his own prose. This sometimes had me reading while not actually taking it in, which facilitaed an irritated re-reading.

It's a shame, because so many of its themes--automation, the breakdown of social cohesion in an era of accelerated technological expansion, the decline of urban spaces (deurbanisation), alienation in opulence--feel so fresh, even though most of the stories here were published in the 1940s.