Science Fiction Annotation

Author: Charlie Jane Anders
Title: The City in the Middle of the Night
Genre: Science Fiction
Publication Date: 2019
Number of Pages: 363 (paperback)
Geographical Setting: The planet January
Time Period: Distant future

Plot Summary:
In the distant future, humans are living on the planet January where it is always day on one side and always night on the other. The temperatures in both the day and the night are too extreme for humans to survive, so they live in the area in between the two in two main cities: Xiosphant and Argelo. In Xiosphant, time is the most important aspect of life and everyone must do the same activities (work, eat, sleep) at the same time, which can be stifling for its citizens. In Argelo, people can do anything they want at any time they want, which creates its own problems. After forming a relationship with a creature that is feared by other humans, Sophie questions almost everything about her life in Xiosphant. Meanwhile, Mouth is a smuggler who has spent her life traveling between the two cities. Preserving the memory of the nomadic people who raised her consumes Mouth while she simultaneously feels tormented by their premature deaths and her ensuing lack of identity. Both Sophie and Mouth’s relationships and motivations are tested as they must decide what, and who, truly matters to them, and how far they are willing to go to achieve their individual objectives.



Subject Headings:
Post-apocalyptic
Dystopia
Social class
Human/non-human relationships

Appeal:
The following appeal factors/characteristics of the Science Fiction genre were retrieved from The Readers’ Advisory Guide to Genre Fiction (Third Edition) by Neal Wyatt and Joyce G. Saricks.

1.     “These works explore moral, social, intellectual, philosophical, and ethical questions against a setting outside everyday reality” (Wyatt & Saricks, 2019, p. 94).

This book addresses social issues such as how social status affects access to resources and comfort, including who gets to live in the most temperate part of the city. This book also addresses ethical issues including how humans should treat and interact with non-human creatures. This book also addresses philosophical/moral issues regarding how important it is to preserve the memory and artifacts of people and cultures of the past and at what cost. The setting in which these issues are addressed is on another planet, January, that is entirely different from Earth.

2.     “Setting is crucial and invokes otherness of time, place, and reality” (Wyatt & Saricks, 2019, p. 94).

The setting of this book is the planet January. Climate and weather conditions play an integral part in the setting of this story and are explained in detail. Additionally, a sense of limited physical space is created by the fact that humans cannot survive in either the night or day sides of the planet and therefore must stay only within the area between the two that is more like evening. The other creatures and animals that inhabit January aside from humans are not the same as those found on Earth, and some of them are also described in detail. Finally, this novel is set in the distant future after humans have fled Earth to live on another planet, so it takes place in a totally different time period from our own.

3.     “Space Operas, Military SF, and Alien Encounters tend to use more straightforward language but often include invented terminology for alien species, imagined technology, and new planets and stars. The disorienting effect of language underscores the otherness of the worlds or futures in which SF is set” (Wyatt & Saricks, 2019, p. 97).

Overall, the language in this book is straightforward. However, some of the language can initially be disorienting to the reader because some words do not refer to the same thing they do in our vocabulary. This book actually begins with a "Translator's Note" that includes an explanation as to why this is the case. Additionally, there are references to historical events such as the “Circadian Restoration” (Anders, The City in the Middle of the Night, 2019a, p. 77) and “Fourth Age of Beauty” (Anders, The City in the Middle of the Night, 2019a, p. 77), which are never fully explained and remind the reader that they are not familiar with the full history of this other planet.

4.     “…generally the issues, story, and frame are given greater attention than the creation of dimensional, fully realized characters” (Wyatt & Saricks, 2019, p. 98).

Sophie and Mouth are the two primary characters in this novel (chapters alternate between their perspectives), but neither one is fully fleshed-out as a person. Similarly, the secondary characters that matter to them the most, Bianca and Alyssa, are also relatively two-dimensional. For example, the reader knows that Sophie and Bianca both feel that they share an unshakably deep bond with each other, but the background information about their relationship and why they feel this way about one another is comparatively shallow. Instead, the issues and questions these characters face (i.e. the best way for humanity to move forward, whether humans can co-exist with and learn from non-human creatures, who should hold power in society, etc.) are given greater weight in this novel.

5.     “Titles in which there are more physical action and adventure elements are usually experienced as fast-paced by fans, while those stories stressing philosophical or psychological elements strike readers as more leisurely” (Wyatt & Saricks, 2019, p. 99).

Although action and adventure are included in this novel (i.e. when Sophie and Bianca must make the dangerous trek from Xiosphant to Argelo with the Resourceful Couriers and have to traverse the Sea of Murder and face other hazards along the way), there is also a large amount of “down time” throughout the novel in which Sophie and Mouth contemplate decisions they have to make, what their relationships mean to them, their own identities and purpose, etc., so the pacing is overall slower due to that.

3 Relevant Fiction Works
The following three read-alikes were retrieved from NoveList Plus and were found in the Read-alikes section of the record for this book, The City in the Middle of the Night (EBSCO Industries, Inc., 2020a).

1.     Borne by Jeff VanderMeer

2.     Embassytown by China Miéville

3.     Too Like the Lightning by Ada Palmer

*All information about The City in the Middle of the Night in this annotation came from these two editions of the novel:
1. Anders, C. (2019). The City in the Middle of the Night. New York: Tom Doherty Associates.
2. Anders, C. (2019). The City in the Middle of the Night [audiobook]. n.p.: Recorded Books.

*The format for this annotation was adapted from Appendix A of the syllabus, which was from Saricks (Cataldi, n.d.).

Works Cited

Anders, C. (2019a). The City in the Middle of the Night. New York: Tom Doherty Associates.

Anders, C. (2019b). The City in the Middle of the Night. n.p.: Recorded Books.

Cataldi, E. (n.d.). SP20-IN-LIS-S524-22855 Syllabus. Retrieved from Canvas: https://iu.instructure.com/courses/1873760

EBSCO Industries, Inc. (2020a). The city in the middle of the night (Feb 2019). Retrieved from NoveList Plus: http://ezproxy.ilibrary.org/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=neh&tg=UI&an=10754965&site=novp-live

Wyatt, N., & Saricks, J. G. (2019). The Readers’ Advisory Guide to Genre Fiction (3rd ed.). Chicago: ALA Editions, An imprint of the American Library Association.