Die Stadt und die Sterne Add a review

The City and the Stars is a science fiction novel by British writer Arthur C. Clarke, published in 1956. This novel is a complete rewrite of Clarke's earlier Against the Fall of Night, his first novel, which had been published in Startling Stories magazine in 1948 after being rejected by the editor of Astounding Science-Fiction, according to the author.

Several years later, Clarke revised his novel extensively and renamed it The City and the Stars. The new version was intended to showcase what he had learned about writing, and about information processing. The major differences are in individual scenes and in the details of his contrasting civilizations of Diaspar and Lys. Against the Fall of Night remained popular enough to stay in print after The City and the Stars had been published. In introductions to it Clarke has told the anecdote of a psychiatrist and patient who admitted that they had discussed it one day in therapy, without realizing at the time that one had read one novel and one the other.