Ce roman court de Paul di Filippo fait partie du courant new weird, qui englobe les fictions urbaines dont le récit prend ancrage dans un univers réaliste auquel sont intégrés des éléments narratifs pouvant appartenir à la science-fiction, à la fantasy ainsi qu'à l'horreur. L'auteur a créé ici un monde particulièrement intriguant, proche du nôtre mais en même temps complètement différent. Les différents personnages, qu'ils soient importants ou qu'ils ne fassent qu'une simple apparition, prennent tous immédiatement vie sous nos yeux, chacun avec sa ou ses particularités. On passe au final un très bon moment à la lecture de ce texte extrêmement bien ciselé par son auteur, qui maîtrise parfaitement sa plume. ( )

The linear city is just two blocks wide but many blocks long, with Broadway running uptown and downtown in the middle. On one side, the city is bracketed by Tracks which run parallel to Broadway. Trains bring goods from far parts of the city. On the other side, ships cruise the River, likewise carrying trade. The sun rises uptown and sets downtown; a second sun moves at right angles to the first, invisible in the winter and high in the summer, bringing the city's four seasons. No one knows how far the city extends; protagonist Diego Patchen lives in the 10,394,850th block, but the numbering scheme is not understood by anyone. From beyond the river and tracks, humanoid creatures fly, cruising the skies, bearing away the recently dead.

Di Filippo uses his eerie setting for a Jack Vance homage, viewing events with Vance's sort of ironic detachment. Vancian name schemes are employed: Diego lives in the Gritsavage borough, and people are named Volusia Bittern, Milagra Eventyr, Jobo Copperknob, and the like.

Nothing of great import occurs. The principal irony is that Diego makes a living as a writer of Cosmogonic Fiction, a genre of stories wherein the writer speculates on the possibility of worlds differently configured from mundane reality - a reality which is, of course, quite fantastic by our standards. ( )

What will remian with me here is above all the spectacular setting itself: a city of mythological length (where the question if there really is an absolute centre, a block zero, is a philosophical one), but only two blocks wide, crammed between a river and a set of train tracks. Adding to the strange (yet clear) ambinence of this short story are also the "city beast", a huge subterranean monster on which's back the city rests and the avatars of death constantly circling in the sky, very literally carrying the dead away.

"A year in the linear city" has all the things I like about New Weird - a blend of sci fi and fantasy, a twist of strangeness presented as normality, and great detail in it's world building - and is considered a pioneer work of the genre. What keeps the rating down for me is a slight clumsiness in the writing, not quite letting me get to know the characters. Also, it's a bit on the short side for me. With such a richness in detail and imagination, it seems a bit of a waste that so many things are just hinted at. Nevertheless, a very memorable short story about a very memorable place. ( )

I felt the plot took a while to get going but I was prepared to wait around for it. A superb and vivid setting on an apparently endless city which is two blocks wide, and where the afterlife visibly comes to get you when you die. The protagonist is a science fiction ("Cosmogonic Fiction") writer; his spectacular girlfriend, his other somewhat disreputable friends, his father, his editor, and the mayor make up a memorable cast. ( )

I felt the plot took a while to get going but I was prepared to wait around for it. A superb and vivid setting on an apparently endless city which is two blocks wide, and where the afterlife visibly comes to get you when you die. The protagonist is a science fiction ("Cosmogonic Fiction") writer; his spectacular girlfriend, his other somewhat disreputable friends, his father, his editor, and the mayor make up a memorable cast. ( )