A Year in the Linear City

A Year in the Linear City is a 2002 weird fiction novella by Paul Di Filippo, published by PS Publishing.

Synopsis

The Linear City is a world two city blocks across and unknowably many blocks long, with a river on one side and railroad tracks on the other. The story follows the lives of some residents of the 10,394,850th block throughout the course of a year.

Reception

A Year in the Linear City was a finalist for the 2003 Hugo Award for Best Novella,[1] the 2003 World Fantasy Award for Best Novella,[2] and the 2003 Theodore Sturgeon Award.[3]

In Locus, Claude Lalumiere described it as "Di Filippo at the apex of his idiosyncratic creative energy".[4] In Emerald City, Cheryl Morgan called it "wonderfully bizarre", noting that it is "aggressively SF in content" but "very mainstream in style", and commending Di Filippo for being "content to fill our heads with wonderful ideas and leave us to extrapolate from them." [5] Similarly, at infinity plus, Keith Brooke praised Di Filippo's worldbuilding as "lovingly painstaking", observing that it is "utterly convincing" and "fiction of the highest order."[6] Strange Horizons lauded it as "(m)ythic and grand, yet intimate and moving, (with) an impressive emotional range", and observed that protagonist Diego Patchen — an author of "cosmogonic fiction" — is a "transparent doppelganger" for Di Filippo himself.[7]

References
  1. 2003 Hugo Awards Archived 2011-05-07 at WebCite, at TheHugoAwards.org; retrieved May 13, 2018
  2. 2003 World Fantasy Convention, at WorldFantasy.org; retrieved May 13, 2018
  3. Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award, at the University of Kansas; retrieved May 13 , 2018
  4. Postmodern, Postindustrial, and Posthuman, by Claude Lalumiere, in Locus; published November 18, 2002; retrieved May 13, 2018
  5. Short Stuff: Novella Reprise, by Cheryl Morgan, in Emerald City #92, April 2003; retrieved May 13 2018
  6. A Year in the Linear City by Paul Di Filippo, reviewed by Keith Brooke, at Infinity Plus; published June 15 2002; retrieved May 13 2018
  7. Playfully Perverting Consensus Reality: A Critical Chronology of Paul Di Filippo's Fiction, by Claude Lalumiere, at Strange Horizons; published November 4, 2002; retrieved May 13, 2018
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