'City' is a fun collection of retro SF written in the 1940s and 50s, charting the future of the earth from the 1990s to thousands of years in the future when humanity is gone and intelligent Dogs consider Man a myth.
The stories are presented as mythological tales popular in Dog culture and each are accompanied by a brief introduction discussing the potential historicity of the story and the various disputes and interpretations among Dog academics (some of the Dog scholars mentioned have names such as Bounce and Rover).
The stories are very retro, though the first page of the first story did give me the feeling of reading a rough draft of the present: a man sits on his lawn while a robot lawn mower cuts his grass, while a kid 'settles down for a twitch session'. The stories exhibit many of the flaws typical SF from the period. There are no women characters that I can recall.
However, unlike many retro SF stories, these do have a lot of emotion in them. Simak was entering middle age when writing these stories, and the emotions he was feeling about his youth gone and old age approaching oversaturate the book. Each story has a character, usually the protagonist, who is middle age and is constantly reflecting on things past and things to come; in later stories the Middle Aged Man archetype takes the form of a rusting robot and then a middle aged Dog. This does make the stories rather repetitive, but also adds to their charm.
Simak is one of those authors who was popular and influential in his day but is not so widely read nowadays. The influence of his Dogs can be felt in the various 'intelligent pet descendants' across SF - the Cats of 'Red Dwarf' spring to mind, and I have a vague recollection of an episode of 'Samurai Jack' featuring Dog academics trying to learn about their ancestors who were pets to humans.
I would recommend this book for those interested in the history of SF, and those who find retro SF a tasty and comforting literary snack.
