[fantasyfan]

Simak's Jupiter is clearly not in our solar system. He used it as an image of transcendence which doesn't seem likely with our present knowledge--at least as he creates it. Much the same can be said of the re-creations of Mars and Venus by most science fiction writers of the "Golden Age". Mars had canals deserts and sometimes ancient civilisations still surviving while Venus was usually a swampy sweltering jungle though C.S.Lewis presents it as a water-world and second Eden.

Thus, Another Cat's idea of seeing City as a sequence of dream images is certainly a way of enjoying this type of older work. A friend of mine loves stories about Mars and her way out is simply to assume that such a planet could exist elsewhere in an infinite multiverse of alternate worlds. Philip Pullman does exactly that for his alternate Oxford in Northern Lights.

Personally, I just accept the fictional universe as given. I know that there are not strange alien malignant creatures on Mars who can manipulate our sense of reality as happens in Bradbury's chilling"Mars Is Heaven", but for the purposes of the story I suspend disbelief.

This works perfectly with fantasy but I can understand that those who prefer hard sci-fi are going to be annoyed with a work which uses science which has become clearly outdated. I found Doyle's The Maracot Deep to be annoying because he simply ignored the problems created by the existence of water pressure at great depths--even though the physical fact of this was well known to all--including him. I think that Simak probably was being speculative rather than deceptive in City concerning Jupiter and he got it wrong.

But I still like the story.