Published in the May 1944 issue of Astounding, “City” launched the series that was later collected in book form under that title.  Although I read it last year in The Ghost of a Model T, I reread it for this series.

The story takes place in what would have been considered the relatively near future, although it would certainly be considered our past. It’s set in 1990.

Cities have mostly been abandoned, with the bulk of the population moving out to country estates. Most neighborhoods have been abandoned, with only a few holdouts of the originals residents remaining. Farming is all done by hydroponics now. So the farmers have moved into the abandoned houses. They live a subsistence life by hunting, small gardening, and scavenging.

Many, if not most of the people who work in the city itself live out in the country. Keep in mind, this story was written before the mass exodus of city dwellers to the suburbs in the middle to late 20th Century, although the trend had begun.

The story concerns an old man and a friend of his who is trying to survive as a farmer. The old man’s son is the head of the Chamber of Commerce. He quits over a dispute with the City Council and the police chief, who wants to burn all the houses and run the squatters who’ve taken up residence off.

When he can’t find a job, he get recruited to work for a government agency, one that is trying to direct people, including the squatters, into certain paths.  For their own good of course. The squatters value their freedom more than anything else. Simak has set up a conflict between what are essentially collectivists and individualists. In the discussions, you see quite a bit of the idea that a one world government would be benevolent and the best form of government to have, an idea that was popular at the time and still is in some circles. I’m a bit too cynical to trust a government that tries manipulate me for my own good.

Clifford D. Simak

The resolution to the conflict is a compromise in which the squatters become a sort of living history reenactors in a theme park. Simak’s sympathy seems to be with the squatters and the older people who are holding on to their vanished way of life.

Overall, this was a pleasant and enjoyable story.  Simak has been science fiction’s pastoralist, and that description certainly fits this story. The conflict was small and personal, but it was set against a wider background. The societal change affected the entire world.