We are back for the Thousand Worlds Book Club and we're talking
about The Stone City. I am joined by the
Catspaw Assassin, who tried to kill Bran
back in A Game of Thrones. Hello, everyone.
The Stone City was originally published in 1977,
almost a decade before the last story
we read, The Glass Flower. It was published
around the same time as Bitterblooms and Dying of the Light
and we get a few passing references to both stories.
Our main character, Holt, is from the planet Ymir,
which is mentioned in Bitterblooms; in fact, Bitterblooms -
the flower - is native to Ymir. It's again worth
noting that the planet Ymir and the world from Bitterblooms
both have uneven seasons, just like Westeros.
Holt also idolizes Cain,
an old man from ai-Emeral in The Fringe, who
attended the festival on Worlorn in his youth. I suppose that
puts this story about two hundred years after Dying of the Light,
which means that's eight hundred years after the Interregnum,
about fifty years after The Glass Flower
and about a hundred years before Tuf Voyaging.
It also should be noted that House Uller of Hellholt,
that is Ellaria Sand's house, is a tribute to Holt
and the Ullish Civilization
that are referenced in this story. So The Stone City is
our only Thousand World story to take place outside the man-realm -
on the planet Greyrest, which is
pretty far in towards the Galactic Core.
When I first tried to map the Thousand Worlds,
I made the mistake of thinking that
Greyrest was in either Fyndii or Damoosh Space.
And this beautiful map by Caffeine is based on that mistake.
In fact, past Fyndii and Damoosh Space,
there is the space of the vanished Nor T'alush; then past them
are the Reaches of Kresh; then the squidfaced
Gethsoids of Aath; and then we get to the Cedrans
and the Dan'lai among the Ullish Stars.
This is where Greyrest is. Now we've actually heard
about the Damoosh, the Nor T'alush and the Gethsoids of Aath
in other stories, like Nightflyers
and And Seven Times Never Kill Man. These furthest races
are all new and only appear in this story. Anyway,
I do think it's interesting that the Thousand Worlds universe has
both a Reach and a Veil. So our story begins with Holt,
trapped on Greyrest, a cross-world, ruled
by a fox-like race, called the Dan'lai.
Before the Dan'lai, Greyrest was ruled by the Ullish race,
the ul-mennaleith, who worshipped the race
that came before them, the ul-nayileith.
They were the ones that built the Stone City. Neither the Dan'lai
nor the ul-mennaleith
know what the Stone City is really for,
so it lies vacant. Interestingly, once again,
our author has a setting of technological regression
and the decay of civilization. This has been a pretty
overwhelming theme in most of our author's work,
whether it be the regressed societies of Bitterblooms and
In the House of he Worm
or the old technologies of Tuf Voyaging or the decayed
tower in This Tower of Ashes
or the regressed Jaenshi from And Seven Times Never Kill Man
or the decaying festival city of Dying of the Light
or, you know, Westeros.
Anyway, Holt has been on Greyrest for a year, trying to get passage off
but the Dan'lai are insanely bureaucratic. Every day, Holt
tries to get passage off world and, every day,
he is denied by the fox men. Holt's crew-mate,
McDonald, had lost his temper with the Dan'lai and had been killed;
so Holt has been very careful to play the game
of bureaucracy. Now, the story is also inter-spliced
with flashbacks to Holt's life. We find out
that Holt grew up on Ymir, stargazing,
and always dreamed of traveling. He, eventually,
leaves Ymir for Finnegan and, along the way, meets Cain;
a man who has lived a very full life
and has traveled almost the entire Man-Realm. Cain,
as well as the ancient explorers Tomo and Walberg, become
Holt's inspiration. Cain, by the way, also
tells us a bit about the Hrangan Minds and says that
they're staying underground, awaiting their return.
This, of course, reminds me of the Children of the Forest.
Holt eventually decides to go to the center of the galaxy,
after visiting a Damoosh wisdom pool.
The Damoosh, much like the Children of the Forest or the Undying of Qarth,
have their consciousness transferred into a hive minded
state upon death.
However, even these Damoosh wisdom pools don't know
what's at the center of the galaxy. So Holt decides
to go in and find out. Holt's life on Greyrest
though is anything but adventurous.
The Dan'lai run the planet and its space-field
and there is a population of shipless aliens,
who are trapped on Greyrest, much like Holt.
When not dealing with Dan'lai bureaucracy, Holt
methodically robs the homes of nocturnal Cedrans
to get food cards. We eventually find out
what became of the rest of Holt's crew.
Ian McDonald was killed, trying to shoot his way into the
space-field; the Captain, Carlos Vilareal, Susie Benet,
Det, Lana and Maje, all
got lost in the Stone City; a woman named
Irai became super-religious and killed herself in a religious
ceremony; and another person named Davie Tilman
essentially killed himself by selling himself as a
Kresh egg-host. Which brings us to Takker Ray
and Holt's ex-lover, Alaina. They have both
fallen into drug use and hopelessness.
They live as sex workers to survive and seem to be controlled
by a drug dealer called the Shed Boss.
The Shed Boss can't speak but, for some reason, he knows
what people want. I suppose he might be a Gethsoid of
Aath but I'm really not sure. Holt lives with the final
crew member, Jeff Sunderland. Perhaps
House Sunderly is named after him. Sunderland
is a would-be academic. He spends his days
mapping the Stone City, in hopes that the Dan'lai
will pay him for his research. Holt and his
burglary keeps Sunderland alive. Sunderland's job,
though, is daunting. The Stone City itself is
massive and complex. Its streets have no logic
and it varies massively from place to place.
We have obsidian towers; then pyramids; then
grey plains. The variety reminds me a bit of the
different cities on Worlorn, which reminds me of the
different cities of Essos. It's likely that
the Stone City's variants is due to the un-nayileith
bringing in different styles from all over the galaxy.
Holt, though, is extremely pessimistic that Sunderland's
research will amount to anything,
as the city is huge and the Dan'lai are difficult.
Eventually, through flashback, we discover how Holt
ended up stranded on Greyrest. He finds a crew that
has decided that standard
faster-than-light ship drive is too slow and
they are about to try out a new Dan'lai jump-gun.
They're really un-mennaleith jump-guns but the Dan'lai
are using them. The technology seems to rely on a
telepathic collective consciousness bending space and time.
It's very George R. R. Martin.
Anyway, the big problem is, as the ship heads inward towards the
center of the galaxy, the laws of nature and the rules to the
universe seem to change. Once at Greyrest, after a painful
use of the jump-gun, that put Holt in a three-month coma,
none of their instruments work.
And so the action comes at about 3/4 of the way through our story.
Holt goes to the Dan'lai offices
at the space-port and finds a room empty.
He starts rummaging through the desks, only to be caught
by a Dan'lai. He is then, weirdly, finally,
offered a ship by them. Holt then goes through all of the
maddening, bureaucratic loops; only to discover at the end
that he needs his captain's signature. The captain, of course,
went missing in the Stone City. Holt cracks
and then kills the fox man. Holt is now a fugitive
and so he runs into the city of the shipless to get supplies.
He weirdly buys his dead crew man's laser riffle
from some merchants and he buys a light helmet that
reminds me of the one from In the House of the Worm.
He grabs two weeks of food from home and then heads into the
tunnels underneath the Stone City to hide. His hope is
to hide for two weeks and then maybe come back and get
food from Sunderland. But then the story gets
really, really weird. After descending
many stairs in the Stone City, he finds himself in a tower
overlooking the city, where Dan'lai
are hunting and torturing a Cedran.
He tries to shoot the Dan'lai but finds himself back in the tunnels.
He then begins to wonder and it's as if Holt is lost
in the House of the Undying, looking through doors.
He sees his old house on Ymir; then Sunderland
begging Holt to come back; and then the
Shed Boss appears to be Holt's guide. He sees the Dan'lai
and learns their history essentially. The jump-guns
have been slowly driving them insane and making them
more feral. He wanders and sees the ghosts
of other aliens wandering, including a man in uniform
and a Dan'lai. Later, that same fox man
has grown old. Many of the alien ghosts
enter different doors and enter different worlds.
He sees a Hrangan world in desolation
and then sees ai-Emeral and thinks about entering.
He thinks about going back for Sunderland, Takker Ray and
Alaina; but then he decides he needs to see a few
places first - Old Earth and Prometheus.
Our story ends way in the future with the universe now old;
but Holt still
wanders the Stone City - exploring.
So, Catspaw Assassin, what are your thoughts on The Stone City?
So George R. R. Martin really hates rich people, doesn't he?
Yeah, The Stone City seems to be
very much about our economic system and our author's early life.
Or, at least, his views back then - when he wrote this story.
George R. R. Martin grew up fairly poor in a shitty
part of New Jersey called Bayonne. That area of New Jersey,
especially when our author lived there, was pretty industrial
and rather depressing.
It's a whole lot of shipyards, warehouses and polluted water.
His father was a longshoreman and his family
lived in public housing. From this story and
our next one, Nobody Leaves New Pittsburg,
we can get some idea about how George feels about home.
You know, I grew up in a slum.
It seems that most people leave; or those that stay
are people with broken dreams, that have little
economic opportunity. Sometimes they fall into drugs
or crime.
You mean like you did?
I have no idea what you're talking about.
Greyrest is, of course, a thinly veiled Bayonne, New Jersey.
It's a shipyard surrounded by have-nots.
The have-nots have little opportunity to pull themselves up by their
bootstraps and all escape runs through the system
but the system clearly isn't build for the have-nots.
And so the have-nots scrape by and go nowhere.
Even Holt, with all his credentials and skills,
cannot escape. Keep in mind, back when George R. R. Martin
wrote this story, he was Holt.
He had undergraduate and master's degree at journalism
from North Western and was struggling and failing
to make it as either a journalist or a writer.
He was organizing chess tournaments for a living and had only
recently gotten a job as an instructor at Clark College.
Our author's criticism of the world's
economic system and the haves is pretty brutal.
The Dan'lai are currently in control
and spend all of their time abusing the shipless;
and they don't allow any of the shipless off-world
but here's the kicker: the Dan'lai didn't even
build the system; they inherited it -
from greater beings that came before them.
And the system has done nothing but corrupt the Dan'lai
and make them ever more cruel.
Meanwhile, the shipless are lost and forced to prey on each other.
George R. R. Martin has a serious problem with the haves.
Not that Holt isn't also frustrated
with the shipless: his friends have left;
found god; died; fallen into drugs;
or have become obsessed with ridiculous pipe dreams.
They are painful, constant reminders
of failure and the impossibility of rising in the system.
Holt fears becoming them. So, while our author
is mainly criticizing the haves, there is some
criticism of the have-nots. In fact, I do wonder how much of our author
is in Holt and how much is in Sunderland.
Sunderland's pipe dream of mapping
the Stone City and making money off it seems
almost as crazy as George R. R. Martin trying to make it as
a sci-fi writer. Holt picks apart Sunderland's
overly ambitious plans, warning that it'll take
many years and that success is
highly unlikely.
So Greyrest is a pretty clear metaphor for the rigged system
and the hopelessness one feels when
trapped somewhere but there is
a question to what the Stone City represents.
Yes, literally in the story, the Stone City
seems to be a nexus of space and time used for transportation;
but what is it figuratively?
Well, the Shed Boss
appears in the middle of it. Could it be some sort of drug?
Well, I definitely think it's a vice of some sort.
Holt clearly wants to travel forever and ever;
so much that he does it for thousands -
if not millions - of years at the end. However, what Holt
is doing is not quite traveling. He never
really escapes Greyrest. Holt looks in each door
but he never really goes anywhere.
While our author probably dreamed of traveling,
watching all of those ships come in and out of Bayonne,
he was never really a huge traveler.
Not like Holt. So I think that the Stone City represents something else;
something like a drug, in that it simulates escape
but is not actually escape.
Although it sounds cheesy, I think that the Stone City likely
represents reading for our author.
Reading, like the Stone City, is more about looking
into new places rather than going there.
Now I feel kind of bad about burning the Winterfell Library.
But if this story is really about reading,
it reminds me of Sam and his endless love of books.
Wouldn't he get lost for hours, reading?
He would; and, in interviews, George R. R. Martin says
that Sam is the character most like himself.
So this story about a man stranded on a crappy planet
and then finding technology for infinite travel
is really about George R. R. Martin stuck in Bayonne, New Jersey,
escaping the pain through books.
And that's all for The Stone City. I'd like to thank the Catspaw.
Next time we'll get more into New Jersey
and the walking dead in Nobody Leaves New Pittsburg;
the first story in The Corpse Handler Trilogy.
The link for the story is below. See you next time.