[sun surfer]

I read this in what turned out to be a very unique way. In general I'm not a fan of spoilers in book 'introductions' and such that give it all away. So when I began reading, I went straight to the first tale to be greeted by 'notes' on the first tale and then saw in the table of contents that each tale had a notes section. Since I bought the version with extra commentary, I assumed these were notes by the actual editor and since they were before each tale I didn't want them to spoil what I was about to read, so I skipped all the notes and only read the tales. After I finished the tales I went back and read the introduction by the actual editor, then the introduction that turned out to actually be part of the book and finally the 'notes' on each tale. They certainly added a very different and more whimsical feel to the entire thing!

As I read I was reminded of various other stories (most of which came after). Fantasyfan already mentioned The Martian Chronicles that we read for the lit club, and another one is Cloud Atlas, which we read for the general book club here some years ago. Both it and City are a series of stories spanning a long amount of time and end up with man eventually (d?)evolving to a more primitive state. Another is Watership Down with an animal species forming a more sophisticated yet still naturalistic society. Another is the cartoon Up with dogs learning to talk with the help of man, and I wonder if whoever wrote Up was inspired by City. Yet another cartoon is Wall-E, in which man abandons earth and retreats to an entirely pleasurable existence, which is sort of a mash-up of the Genevans only worrying about pleasure and most of the others abandoning earth for Jupiter, and of course both stories have robots.