(Probably Found) YA Dystopian Book featuring a domed city and people with yellowish eyes

[Einsteinium]

Hi all, I am looking for a book I read when I was younger (mid 2000s) although I think the book was older than that - possibly 80's or 90's. It opens with a girl waking up from an apparent hovercar(?) crash. She has a collar I believe and is disoriented. She runs away from the crash and has memories of earth from 'our' time. She tries to locate cities etc. but finds they are dilapidated. I remember a scene where she finds a road but does not realise that is what it is at the time as it has degraded so that it crumbles when she tries to walk on it. She encounters other people, particularity a young man who takes a fancy to her. His manners and customs are strange to her and she attempts to 'civilize' him. There is some sort of market scene I think. All the other people appear to have yellowish(?) eyes. The main character sees that she also looks like these people, but that doesn't track with her memories of what people look like.

Somehow they find out that the world is as it is because of some sort of disaster (maybe global warming or nuclear war) and that all the rich people took to domed cities to wait it out/wait for spaceships to live off world. Our main character was an experiment of one of the descendants of the rich people (a man who has a crippled leg) who explains that culture was lost and that the domed people have been dying off. He took a girl from outside (as the poor that were left to die when the domed cities went up have evolved into the boy and the other - this event happened a long time ago) and erased her memories/personality (she may not have had one(?)) and filled her head with recordings/various images and events from before the disaster to see if he could make people who were like him but with the ability to survive outside the dome. Eventually he dies or the ship comes (I'm not clear on that part). The main character decides that she cannot live with the outside people because her influence would damage their culture so she goes to leave. the original young man (the one she tried to civilize) goes with her. She allows this as she feels he has also changed too much to live among the outside people.

If anyone could help me find this book I'd really appreciate it.

 

[SilentRoamer]

This really sounds like Asimovs The City and the Stars.

The City and the Stars - Wikipedia

 

[chrispenycate]

The City and the Stars was Clarke, not Asimov - and the poulation (and everything elde) is maitained in digital storage, rather than by biological reproduction, so no worries about depopulation. Certainly, Asimov's trantor, in the 'Foundation' trilogy, is losing population, but that wasn't generalised over the galaxy, and I can't remember any of his that mention yellowish eyes.

 

[SilentRoamer]

Sorry @chrispenycate is right it's Clarke not Asimov. Getting my Big 3 mixed up! thanks for the correction!

It was the domed city and the journey out that I was thinking of. Also I'm sure there are a boy and a girl in the City and the Stars but it has been a long time since I read it.

 

[Einsteinium]

Unfortunately I dont think that is it. The main character was definitely a girl, plus the setting doesn't sound right to me. Thank you for trying though!

 

[PaulMmn]

Sorry @chrispenycate is right it's Clarke not Asimov. Getting my Big 3 mixed up! thanks for the correction!

It was the domed city and the journey out that I was thinking of. Also I'm sure there are a boy and a girl in the City and the Stars but it has been a long time since I read it.

I'm afraid it was just a 'boy' in City and the Stars (or Against the Fall of Night-- the 2nd version). I say 'boy' because he was just about at the age of majority.

 

[CassFrank]

A shot in the dark: Outlanders by Margaret Beames published in 2000

 

[IHateMakingMoreUsernames]

Hi all, I am looking for a book I read when I was younger (mid 2000s) although I think the book was older than that - possibly 80's or 90's. It opens with a girl waking up from an apparent hovercar(?) crash. She has a collar I believe and is disoriented. She runs away from the crash and has memories of earth from 'our' time. She tries to locate cities etc. but finds they are dilapidated. I remember a scene where she finds a road but does not realise that is what it is at the time as it has degraded so that it crumbles when she tries to walk on it. She encounters other people, particularity a young man who takes a fancy to her. His manners and customs are strange to her and she attempts to 'civilize' him. There is some sort of market scene I think. All the other people appear to have yellowish(?) eyes. The main character sees that she also looks like these people, but that doesn't track with her memories of what people look like.

Somehow they find out that the world is as it is because of some sort of disaster (maybe global warming or nuclear war) and that all the rich people took to domed cities to wait it out/wait for spaceships to live off world. Our main character was an experiment of one of the descendants of the rich people (a man who has a crippled leg) who explains that culture was lost and that the domed people have been dying off. He took a girl from outside (as the poor that were left to die when the domed cities went up have evolved into the boy and the other - this event happened a long time ago) and erased her memories/personality (she may not have had one(?)) and filled her head with recordings/various images and events from before the disaster to see if he could make people who were like him but with the ability to survive outside the dome. Eventually he dies or the ship comes (I'm not clear on that part). The main character decides that she cannot live with the outside people because her influence would damage their culture so she goes to leave. the original young man (the one she tried to civilize) goes with her. She allows this as she feels he has also changed too much to live among the outside people.

If anyone could help me find this book I'd really appreciate it.

The book is 'Scatterings' by Isobelle Carmody, here is the blurb:
Merlin wakes to a world that is utterly changed. She has no memory aside from a name whispered to her by one of the strange voices in her mind, and the knowledge that she is being hunted. She is determined to learn what happened to her and to her world but the way forward is full of pitfalls and she is swept up by the renegade Scatterlings and drawn into their rebellion against the all- powerful Citizen Gods.
But as she strives to separate herself from the telepathic clanfolk, she realises the path to self-discovery and the freedom sought by the Scatterlings leads to the same place – the forbidden domed city of the Citizen Gods.

Blurb with [] clarifications to explain:
Merlin wakes to a world that is utterly changed. She has no memory[after the hovercar crash] aside from a name whispered to her by one of the strange voices in her mind, and the knowledge that she is being hunted. She is determined to learn what happened to her and to her world[has memories from 'our' time] but the way forward is full of pitfalls and she is swept up by the renegade Scatterlings[one of them being the young man with an interest in her] and drawn into their rebellion against the all- powerful Citizen Gods[the people with coloured hair and eyes who hid away in domes].
But as she strives to separate herself from the telepathic clanfolk, she realises the path to self-discovery and the freedom sought by the Scatterlings leads to the same place – the forbidden domed city of the Citizen Gods.

[She discovers she has yellow eyes and short, neatly cut, hair while looking at herself in a puddle too pretty early on.]