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It's a bit of a cheat, since I'm just copying what I said about this elsewhere, but I am trying to update this thing periodically. And I like talking about the things I liked.
I liked this quite a lot.
I just read Jo Walton's The Just City, and I enjoyed it so much. The premise is basically this: the goddess Athene decides to actually establish and try out the city described in Plato's Republic, to see how it goes. Apollo, who's trying to figure out how humans work, decides to be incarnated as human to be one of the many, many hundred ten-year-olds (the rest of them children bought from slave markets at a few points in history) sent to this brand new city, to see how it works from the inside.
As you would of course expect, things don't go exactly as planned. But it's a really fascinating rendition of "not exactly as planned". The masters of the city are people from across time who prayed to Athene to be able to actually see that city in action, which makes for a certain amount of friction when you have Cicero and a female professor from 21st century America on the same committee. The children are distinctly not blank slates--they're ten years old when they arrive--and much as they're encouraged to forget about their former lives and embrace this awesome new life in front of them, well, it's not that simple. And some of the practices suggested for this thought experiment city in the Republic have issues when being worked out in reality on real people. Even aside from the issues that come up with the robots that Athene sent to the city so that it could function without slaves...
Anyway, it's got a very blunt prose style that I quite enjoy (much as I usually go for more ~literary~ styles), and I deeply enjoyed the book. It ends on something of a cliffhanger, but the second book's already written, so it's not like you need to wait fifteen years to find out what happens next. And it's really fascinating to see this all play out from three perspectives: Apollo (as a god, and then incarnated as a human boy), Semmea (a ten-year-old girl bought from slavery to be raised in the city), and Maia (a young woman of Victorian England who had been raging against the limits of her sex while she was a brilliant scholar of Greek and Latin). The historical figures are, of course, being run through one author's interpretation, but oh, I liked the way they were being interpreted. (Of course Cicero is a bit of an ass.) It hit all the parts of my brain that really like city-building video games, while having characters I really liked, and then Sokrates!
When Sokrates is actually brought to the city, you'd better believe he's as much a troublesome sort to the people in charge as he's ever been in any situation he was in. Even when all the people in charge are deeply admiring fans of him. It's easier to admire someone from a safe distance, when they're dead and finite, than up close as they react to the environment around them.
Anyway. I highly recommend it. Great book, and I spent all day yesterday doing nothing but reading it. (Would've liked Maia's chapters to focus more on the practicalities of the city, because I wanted a lot more nitty-gritty on that, but the book already spends a lot of time on that.)
I liked this quite a lot.
I just read Jo Walton's The Just City, and I enjoyed it so much. The premise is basically this: the goddess Athene decides to actually establish and try out the city described in Plato's Republic, to see how it goes. Apollo, who's trying to figure out how humans work, decides to be incarnated as human to be one of the many, many hundred ten-year-olds (the rest of them children bought from slave markets at a few points in history) sent to this brand new city, to see how it works from the inside.
As you would of course expect, things don't go exactly as planned. But it's a really fascinating rendition of "not exactly as planned". The masters of the city are people from across time who prayed to Athene to be able to actually see that city in action, which makes for a certain amount of friction when you have Cicero and a female professor from 21st century America on the same committee. The children are distinctly not blank slates--they're ten years old when they arrive--and much as they're encouraged to forget about their former lives and embrace this awesome new life in front of them, well, it's not that simple. And some of the practices suggested for this thought experiment city in the Republic have issues when being worked out in reality on real people. Even aside from the issues that come up with the robots that Athene sent to the city so that it could function without slaves...
Anyway, it's got a very blunt prose style that I quite enjoy (much as I usually go for more ~literary~ styles), and I deeply enjoyed the book. It ends on something of a cliffhanger, but the second book's already written, so it's not like you need to wait fifteen years to find out what happens next. And it's really fascinating to see this all play out from three perspectives: Apollo (as a god, and then incarnated as a human boy), Semmea (a ten-year-old girl bought from slavery to be raised in the city), and Maia (a young woman of Victorian England who had been raging against the limits of her sex while she was a brilliant scholar of Greek and Latin). The historical figures are, of course, being run through one author's interpretation, but oh, I liked the way they were being interpreted. (Of course Cicero is a bit of an ass.) It hit all the parts of my brain that really like city-building video games, while having characters I really liked, and then Sokrates!
When Sokrates is actually brought to the city, you'd better believe he's as much a troublesome sort to the people in charge as he's ever been in any situation he was in. Even when all the people in charge are deeply admiring fans of him. It's easier to admire someone from a safe distance, when they're dead and finite, than up close as they react to the environment around them.
Anyway. I highly recommend it. Great book, and I spent all day yesterday doing nothing but reading it. (Would've liked Maia's chapters to focus more on the practicalities of the city, because I wanted a lot more nitty-gritty on that, but the book already spends a lot of time on that.)
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