Sf novels where a city/architecture is key

[hegg]

I was asked an interesting question today by a customer which had me stumped. Wondered what the Chron hive mind made of it..

Are there any sf novels in which the focus is (or at least, a lot of attention is paid to) the cities or architecture involved?

The only story that popped into my head at the time was the moving city of Inverted World by Chris Priest.

Any more suggestions?

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Not sf, more urban fantasy (but felt reasonably PKD, in a way) - Francis Knight's Fade to Black series has the city as very central to it. Dune, too - the architecture, iirc, is mentioned a lot.

 

[J-Sun]

Not sure how close a match you need. Robert Silverberg's The World Inside is definitely about the Urban Monads. Asimov's The Caves of Steel and the Empire/Foundation stories dealing with Trantor have city-structures playing a major part. Simak's City has it in the title, though it's probably not what you're looking for. Seems like the city and architecture in Clarke's The City and the Stars played a significant enough role. I haven't read it but it's likely Fred Pohl's The Years of the City would suit. I'll probably think of some more (hopefully newer) in awhile.

 

[J-Sun]

For somewhat fantastic approaches, John Shirley has City Come A-Walkin', Pat Murphy has The City, Not Long After. Harry Harrison's Make Room, Make Room is about overpopulation but still may fit much in the way Silverberg's might. Cordwainer Smith has several stories that are very city-based and, while not a modern technological city, Fritz Leiber's fantasy Lankhmar is almost a character unto itself. Not genre, but some of her works are and the only thing specifically about an architect that comes to mind, is Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead.

Also, I figured such things existed, so I searched the ISFDB and came up with a couple of possibly good theme anthologies, though I haven't read them (or even much in them):

Future City, Roger Elwood, ed.
The City: 2000 A.D.: Urban Life Through Science Fiction, Olander/Greenberg/Clem, eds.

 

[alchemist]

Peter F Hamilton's Void series - I can't remember the name of the city, but it was a leftover from some alien race when humans colonised a planet far back in their history. The walls are so durable that they can't knock them down or shape them, and they are forced to live in bizarre buildings designedfor bigger bodies. There are other secrets too which I won't spoil.

 

[Vertigo]

I'd second Hamilton's Void series. The city is Makkathran which is almost a character in it's own right though only about a quarter to a third of the book takes place there.

Here's a few more that spring to mind:

Cities in Flight by James Blish - SF Masterworks but very very dated I thought.
Osiris by E J Swift - Very resectable post-apocalypse debut novel. The city and it's architecture is central to the entire story.
Perdido Street Station by China Mieville - Weird and stretching it a little to call it SF but maybe.
Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C Clarke - Not a city but definitely about architecture.
Eon by Greg Bear - again more architecture that a city.
Chasm City by Alastair Reynolds - The city is pretty much central to things.

Not a book, maybe, but the silent film Metropolis surely has to have a mention!

 

[Vince W]

Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert. The palace at Arrakeen is discussed in some detail.
Ringworld by Larry Niven. The architecture in this and subsequent novels is pretty central to the story. Not a city though.

 

[Toby Frost]

How about Our Lady of Darkness by Fritz Lieber? It's effectively about a city generating its own consciousness. And would the Gormenghast novels count?

 

[zaltys13]

The City and The City by China Mieville springs to mind.

 

[soulsinging]

Are there any sf novels in which the focus is (or at least, a lot of attention is paid to) the cities or architecture involved? Any more suggestions?

More fantasy than SF, but Elantris springs to mind. Unlocking the mysteries of an ancient city to save current civilization.

 

[hegg]

Wow! I knew I could count on you guys.

Thanks so much for all of the suggestions, these are great. Kicking myself over a couple which I've read but didn't think of at the time. The only other one I had come up with myself since yesterday was Highrise by Ballard.

If anyone has any more thoughts on the subject I'd love to hear them. As it stands, I'm going to pass all of these on to the person who asked, they'll be thrilled.

Cheers!

 

[alchemist]

Vertigo's mention of Reynolds reminds me of Terminal World. The city at the centre (Spearpoint?) is divided into zones which each have a maximum level of technology they support i.e. it's high-tech at the top but that tech won't work in the level below. It's like the 1800s at the bottom. This is all due to a quite well-explained SFnal cataclysm.

 

[Mirannan]

One more: Permutation City by Greg Egan. Ever-expanding city, with some distinctly brain-expanding concepts as well.

 

[ginny]

There are the City in Flight series of James Blish though the architecture described mostly centers on how they lift the Cities from earth and how they keep them in space. The rest is mostly a softer treatment of the maintenance of the city and its politics.

 

[Vince W]

Not a book, but MegaCity One from the Judge Dredd stories in 2000AD and the Megazine is less like a setting and more like a background character. In my mind anyway.

 

[Ogma]

How about Fountains of Paradise.

 

[Bick]

Some of the Ballard shorts are very much about the city the stories are set in (e.g. "Concentration City", "Chronopolis", "Billenium").
I'd second Asimov's Caves of Steel.
Possibly Dayworld, by Farmer? The World Inside is a decent shout.
There's no city in the novel Fountains of Paradise. I don't know if the space elevator counts as architecture in the way the OP meant.

 

[chrispenycate]

Arthur C Clarke's 'The City and the Stars', although not entirely architecture, as created to immediate demand.

Larry Niven's 'Oath of Fealty', an arcology, single piece planned architecture

Stephen Gould's 'Blind Waves', a floating city in a post-deluvian world.

Hannu Rajaniemi's 'Quantum Thief', a walking city on Mars.

China Miéville's 'The City and the City'. Not SF, you say? But not really fantasy, either.

Stephen Baxter's 'Coalescent'. The eternal city.

Perhaps Ben Bova's 'City of Darkness', decaying New York'?

 

[Rodders]

Chasm city goes into some detail about how the city was disfigured after the plague hit it.

 

[Ihe]

Hannu Rajaniemi's "The Quantum Thief". The prison, the moving neighbourhoods, the very nature of the city itself, etc.

Also, I don't know about architecture, but I would say Scott Westerfeld's "Leviathan" and subsequent books in that world. The biopunk-steampunk is very detailed and the surroundings and technologies (specially on the biopunk side) affect everything in society, and are practically another character in the book, and to some extent drive the plot forward as much as the MCs.

Oh, and the amazing film "Dark City".