Andando Vem a Cidade

by John Shirley, Paula Reis

"Club owner Stu Cole and rocker Catz Wailen are struggling to keep Stu's club afloat in the face of Mob harassment. Then they are visited by a strange manifestation - a brutal avatar of the city of San Francisco, crystallized into a single enigmatic being, an amoral superhero. Thus begins a terrifying journey through a rock'n'roll demimonde in the wake of the most compelling character in contemporary SF. This surreal masterpiece is one of the most influential precursors to the cyberpunk movement: a searing journey into the soul of the first punk explosion."--BOOK JACKET.

Genres: Science Fiction, Cyberpunk, Fiction, Fantasy, Urban Fantasy, Speculative Fiction, Noir

185 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1980

About the author

John Shirley won the Bram Stoker Award for his story collection Black Butterflies, and is the author of numerous novels, including the best-seller DEMONS, the cyberpunk classics CITY COME A-WALKIN', ECLIPSE, and BLACK GLASS, and his newest novels STORMLAND and A SORCERER OF ATLANTIS.

He is also a screenwriter, having written for television and movies; he was co-screenwriter of THE CROW. He has been several Year's Best anthologies including Prime Books' THE YEAR'S BEST DARK FANTASY AND HORROR anthology, and his nwest story collection is IN EXTREMIS: THE MOST EXTREME SHORT STORIES OF JOHN SHIRLEY. His novel BIOSHOCK: RAPTURE telling the story of the creation and undoing of Rapture, from the hit videogame BIOSHOCK is out from TOR books; his Halo novel, HALO: BROKEN CIRCLE is coming out from Pocket Books.

His most recent novels are STORMLAND and (forthcoming) AXLE BUST CREEK. His new story collection is THE FEVERISH STARS. STORMLAND and other John Shirley novels are available as audiobooks.

He is also a lyricist, having written lyrics for 18 songs recorded by the Blue Oyster Cult (especially on their albums Heaven Forbidden and Curse of the Hidden Mirror), and his own recordings.

John Shirley has written only one nonfiction book, GURDJIEFF: AN INTRODUCTION TO HIS LIFE AND IDEAS, published by Penguin/Jeremy Tarcher.

John Shirley story collections include BLACK BUTTERFLIES, IN EXTREMIS, REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY WEIRD STORIES, and LIVING SHADOWS.

source: Amazon

Reviews

[Bbrown · Rating 3 out of 5]

Before reading this book I would have said that Ridley Scott's Blade Runner (1982) was the first true piece of cyberpunk, because it introduced the aesthetic that has defined the subgenre more so than any common story elements. But John Shirley’s City Come A-Walkin' (1980) had the cyberpunk aesthetic even earlier, a different strain of it perhaps, but cyberpunk nonetheless.* The ways in which this work serves as the origin of many cyberpunk elements and also breaks from some of the most common cyberpunk tropes is thought provoking, and the best part of the book. As a story, however, the book has some problems.

To briefly describe the book's premise, in near-future San Francisco down-but-not-quite-out bartender Stu Cole and punk rocker Catz Wailen fight against a criminal syndicate and corrupt government that are trying to implement new technology to control society. They do so at the behest of a man wearing mirrorshades, who is able to manipulate technology throughout the city, and who isn’t really a man at all. Seems like archetypical cyberpunk, right? But the fascinating thing is that it doesn’t map on quite so cleanly to what we think of as cyberpunk today: the mirrorshades manifestation isn’t a hacker or an A.I. manipulating the city through computers, it’s a gestalt of the city of San Francisco that has taken human shape, and its powers and motivations are unlike those found in any other work of cyberpunk with which I'm familiar.

City Come A-Walkin’ provides an interestingly skewed take on cyberpunk in other ways too, for instance the book was written pre-internet, so the level of technology is relatively low. The most advanced technology shown is electronic currency, which doesn’t appear to have any advantages over credit cards, and which is centralized in a way that is antithetical to the digital currencies popular today. There are prescient instances of Shirley predicting e-mail and people working remotely, but those aren’t a reality yet in this world, and overall there isn’t much of a futuristic sheen on the setting. Instead, it’s the fantasy elements brought on by City’s abilities that differentiate this setting from the real world more than any technological advancement. In this version of San Francisco there are self-driving cars, but only when City is exerting its nebulous powers to make them drive.

Perhaps the most interesting way in which City Come A-Walkin’ differs from most of later cyberpunk is that, despite all the punk trappings, disco loving Stu Cole is actually fighting to maintain the status quo, to perpetuate the current power structures, and indeed ends up becoming the physical vessel of the doomed old guard. There are other cyberpunk works where the same general thing is likewise true, but it is contrary to what is ostensibly a key feature of the subgenre, and worth noting since Shirley leans into the “punk” side of things so hard.

Now, so far I’ve used the words “fascinating” and “interesting” to describe City Come A-Walkin’ but I haven’t used any words like “good.” That's intentional. The story isn’t bad by any means, but the book has a couple of pretty big problems and doesn’t have any strengths that outweigh them. The first big problem is that the powers of City are undefined and therefore seem arbitrary. City ostensibly requires Stu’s assistance, but also shows itself able to rip up sidewalks, disable technology, and make guns fire (or not fire) at its direction. Why doesn’t it just give its targets aneurysms, or drop them in elevators to their deaths, or disable the breaks on their cars when the time is right? If it can’t do these things, why not? I think the answer is “because then there wouldn’t be a story.”

I think that the question “why doesn’t Stu act in ways that make sense?" has the same answer. Despite City lying to him and screwing him over, Stu keeps doing City’s bidding, sticking around even as the violence and danger escalates. Shirley tries to hang a lantern on Stu’s nonsensical behavior by having Catz confront Stu about how stupid he’s being, but Shirley's focus on it just makes it more of a problem because Shirley doesn’t actually provide a satisfying explanation. It’s like when the family doesn’t leave the haunted house when the creepy shit first starts, you better get a pretty good reason from the author why they don’t get out of Dodge right then and there; in the absence of such a reason there’s a layer of ridiculousness on the entire thing, which you can somewhat ignore if the story is effective in other ways, but that patina of ridiculousness always remains.

The arbitrary nature of City’s powers and the illogical behavior of the book’s main character combine to make City Come A-Walkin’ a banner example of “the story only works because the author is inorganically forcing it to.” Of course in any work of fiction the author is making it work, but the trick is to make it feel organic and not artificial, to not let the seams show. In City Come A-Walkin’ the seams are shoved in your face. This is exemplified neatly by the fact that Catz, with her psychic powers, gives what amounts to a teaser trailer for the rest of the book in the first chapter. Prophecies like this are one of those narrative devices that cannot be inherently impressive—any author can finish the first draft of their book, then go back and add hints at what is to come. At best, prophecies can serve as hooks to keep you reading, while at worst they undercut the effectiveness of the rest of the book by spoiling it. The prophecy in City Come A-Walkin’ lands somewhere in the middle of that spectrum, mostly it’s symbolic of Shirley having certain story beats he wanted the book to hit even if it required the book’s characters to act in ways that made no sense.

A few other issues: the frame narrative adds nothing, the time travel thing was unsatisfying, and there were some hints of racial stuff that made me glad that Shirley didn’t focus on race or nationality any more than he did.

Taken together these are significant problems, but they could be more than counterbalanced if, for instance, the writing was excellent, or the relationship between Stu and Catz was particularly well realized, or if the work had something to say that resonated with me. But, besides its role in the genesis of cyberpunk, a subgenre I’m partial to, City Come A-Walkin’ didn’t have anything going on that particularly drew me in. Outside of its aesthetic it’s just an average quality sci-fi/urban fantasy thriller. 3/5.

*Since I think of the aesthetic of cyberpunk as its defining feature I suppose I should try to define what comprises that aesthetic, at least a bit. In my view no individual element is critical to the aesthetic, you don't need neon or mirror shades to be a work of cyberpunk. Rather, I think the circumstances of the setting that feed into the aesthetic of the world are paramount. Cyberpunk is the near future, with technological advancements that seem not too far over the horizon at the time of publication. Yet the world is covered in ethical (and usually physical) grime of some sort or another. It's more technologically advanced and yet a worse place to live in, with shiny synthetics covering the rusted undercarriage of society. Any artistic depiction of near-futuristic technology sitting atop of the elements of everyday life somehow made worse has the potential to be cyberpunk, though I'll note that whether a work fits into the cyberpunk subgenre or not is still a case-by-case thing even if it meets my personal criteria. For instance, while this work crosses the line into Cyberpunk, the earlier work Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep does not. I think this is because the latter work depicts a society too far in the future, too unlike our own, even though it features a more technologically advanced world where things have gotten worse.

[Xach · Rating 5 out of 5]

HOLY SHIT.

Really, just...holy shit. This book takes "amazing" to a whole new level. Aside from one typographical error (a capital A following a comma), not one piece of this novel was out of place.

Forewarning, I may just write "holy shit" a lot to convey my love of this book.

First off, if you read it, make sure you get an edition with the intro by William Gibson. I was hooked just from that, I didn't even need the narrative. It also provides a bit of context, not that you'll need it.

Now, just...I don't quite know where to begin, even. The intro and outro provide a structural frame for the narrative, mirroring each other very nicely and in such a way that the reader can easily forget they're even there. You don't *need* them to enjoy the novel, but reading them lets you enjoy it in an even deeper level. So, really, read it.

In Chapter "WUN" the narrative tells you exactly what's about to happen in the rest of the book. It goes through ten beats, "WUN" through "TENNN" and each beat is reflected in the TENNN chapters of the novel. Structurally? HOLY SHIT. The talent required to make that work is just enormous. To think of doing that structure almost makes me want to cry because I'd never have thought of something like that. I kept flipping back to the page where the beats occur as I read through the novel, to refresh my mind on what I should be looking for. I didn't want to miss anything. The structure is so sound that the narrative virtually carries itself along the rails set by those ten beats, never skipping a moment and never letting up. Once you're in, you're in for the long haul. Fortunately, this book is a flight of a read, it's over very quickly--too quickly.

The language of the narrative is also beautiful. It's fluid, poetic, and wonderfully reflective of the surreality in which the novel takes place. Shirley paints a picture of a world where things are so much more than the physical manifestations we mortals perceive, and gives the reader a world where--and I flipped to a random page for this because I knew I would find an example no matter what page I turned to--"caffeine's fight with alcohol produced a headache that rang like a prizefight bell." There is a grace to Shirley's writing, his ability to turn a phrase just the right way to make the reader understand the inherent beauty in the destruction and chaos that is so artfully manifested in this novel.

Gibson's introduction clearly states that this novel is where all cyberpunk comes from, and reading through it the imagery and concepts embodied in the narrative are easily identified as the same ideas that came about in Neal Stephenson's works, as well as William Gibson's, and--as Gibson points out--in Ridley Scott's "Bladerunner." It's felt or seen in other movies and novels as well, all from the science fiction genre. The near-future setting, as seen from 1979--is full of technology that reminded me of Philip K. Dick stories and the world they existed in, a world oddly prophetic from the 2012 perspective. And yet, I hesitate to clump this in with science fiction. Nor is it science-fantasy. But it isn't quite pure fantasy either. It's something unrepeated and unidentifiable. There are elements of surrealism, Marxism, Jungian concepts of collective consciousness, transcendentalism, Nihilism, and probably a lot more that I either can't identify or am simply unable to find words for. They all mix in with science fiction and fantasy to create a world where so much is possible that the reader's mind may literally go reeling.

Therein may lie the only critique I have of the novel. The concepts embodied in the narrative are so high, so mighty, so HUGE, that the narrative often has to break from its flow to explain them in explicit terminology for the reader. There's not much left to subtext, not much to analyze as far as what the narrative was looking to show on a linear level--though I assure you there is plenty to analyze on a multitude of different levels in this novel. But even when the narrative takes a break to explain itself to the reader, it's done in this florid manner and handled usually by explaining it to a character that needs to understand it. So while it broke the flow, it didn't break the narrative. Not for me, at least.

But really, I just can't get away from the structure of the narrative. Shirley tells the reader in the beginning--in the INTRO--what happens at the very end of the main narrative. Cole tells Catz right there about the last image, and the reader knows well before it happens that it's going to happen because the structure gives it all away. Even knowing the end, the journey is such a beautiful, tragic, inescapable ride that there's no way to not keep going. It's not enough to know *how* it ends, the narrative insists on knowing the *why* of the ending. It's a tactic that I've seen employed a few times, but never--NEVER--so successfully as in this novel. Hence, holy shit.

So, really. Read this book. ESPECIALLY if you live in San Fransisco.

[Antonio Ippolito · Rating 4 out of 5]

Le uscite di Urania a fine anni ’70 sono a volte prese a esempio di una edizione frettolosa e di scelte discutibili, forse dovute anche al ritmo settimanale che la collana aveva di nuovo preso; alla fine del decennio però, grazie anche ai cambi nella curatela, sia la qualità editoriale sia l’acume nelle scelte tornano a stupire, per esempio con le antologie di Disch, Shaw, Watson.. questo romanzo venne pubblicato poco dopo una memorabile doppia antologia di Dick ma anche dopo un Jongor, terrore della giungla di Robert Moore Williams probabilmente men che dimenticabile; ma aver portato in Italia John Shirley, prima con Transmaniacon (Urania 834) e poi con questo Rock della città vivente (Urania 902; seguiranno Eclipse nel 1995, poi altre opere) è un gran merito!
Nell’81 la fantascienza aveva pienamente assorbito l’immaginario da catastrofe urbana, popolarizzato nei Guerrieri nella notte, in 1997 Fuga da New York, ecc, e diffuso anche da romanzi come L’ultimo guerriero (Urania 807), Guerra tra le metropoli (Urania 837), l’immenso 334 di Disch.. ma con questo romanzo Shirley getta le basi di molti futuri sviluppi del genere: il cyberpunk e l’influenza musicale innanzitutto. Qualche anno prima del film Blade runner, di Tron della Disney, di Strade di fuoco con Michael Paré, scrive un romanzo che pulsa al ritmo del punk-rock (e disprezza la disco come fascistoide.. vecchia polemica!), è illuminato da neon, stroboscopiche e ologrammi e rigurgita di idee ancora attuali; dall’auto a guida automarica al calcolatore a stato solido, dalla valuta elettronica che sostituisce il contante permettendo ai governi, e quindi alla malavita organizzata, di controllare la vita degli individui, alla singolarità che permette a un sistema complesso come una città di diventare autonomo e manifestarsi tramite un avatar di apparenza umana o meglio ancora possedere un umano; umano che a sua volta può migrare a un altro stato di coscienza..
La storia è in sintesi una ballata rock: la passione tra il proprietario di discoteca Stuart Cole e la cantante rock Catz Wailen, intrecciata alla lotta di lui contro il crimine organizzato.
Un punto di forza è la traduzione di Vittorio Curtoni: quando il traduttore è di razza, e scrittore per di più, non mi accorgo nemmeno di certi dettagli che noterei in un altro (tutti quegli “Okay”, Catz che usa “uomo” come intercalare: “cosa ne pensi, uomo?”..), perchè il testo ha ritmo e personalità, i testi delle canzoni sono resi addirittura in rima, le invenzioni non mancano, e non c’è mai l’ombra di un difetto che nelle traduzioni mediocri purtroppo trovo spesso: frasi singolarmente impeccabili che però, alla fine di un periodo, non risultano in un significato chiaro..
Se a tutto ciò aggiungiamo una brillante copertina di Thole, otteniamo un Urania davvero da collezione.

[Geoffrey Dow · Rating 2 out of 5]

Note: I came across this as a Facebook note from January 11, 2008. As of today's date (Monday, Janary 11, 2021), I don't remember a thing about this novel - indeed, I have to take my own words for it that I read it at all. Nevertheless, I did read it, and I did review it, so here it is, for any of you who might be interested.

City Come a-Walkin (and a-Killin' and a-Smashin' and a-...)

Much Ado About a-Nothin'

I somehow came late to cyberpunk, not reading William Gibson's seminal novel, Neuromancer until the late 80s or early 90s.

I don't remember much about the book at this point, but I do know what my reaction to it was was I closed it: Is that what all the fuss was about?

Sure, Neuromancer came dressed in a (ahem) gritty, decaying urban guise, all cynicism and punk-rock, but beneath the mohawks and shabby leather was, I thought, just another take on the old science fiction trope of the Lone Hero battling impossible odds.

New bottle, old wine; if I wanted escapism I prefer that it spam the galaxy, not the back alleys of San Francisco, thank you very much.

Still, when I came across a copy of John Shirley's apparently even-more seminal 1980 novel, City Come a-Walkin', with a foreword by none other than Gibson himself, I picked it up.

Gibson's foreword acknowledges City as a vital influence on his work. "I was somewhat chagrined, rereading it recently, to see just how much of my own early work takes off from this one novel."

If my own memory of those few novels of Gibson's that I've read is true, his acknowledgement is legitimate. Shirley's novel is set in San Francisco's punkish demi-monde, circa the year 2000, a bleak, nihilistic world of violence and self-destruction, heading quickly to becoming ruled, quite literaly, by organized crime.

Until the City itself, product of its citizens' collective unconscious, comes to life and walks into Stu Cole's club, The Anesthesia, on a crowded Saturday night.

Shirley write's a staccato noirish prose and his chapter titles are self-consciously funky. Too funky - "Wun!", "-Tew!", "SEV-uhn!" &cetera. But maybe they're appropriate, because when stripped of its style, what's left is a novel that might have made for a decent Frank Miller comic during his Ronin [hase - ie, stylistically interesting, but ultimately derivative and shallow in terms of content.

Club owner Stu Cole is the protagonist, an upright, arts-supporting businessman who is resisting the influence of the Mob, a cabal which has infiltrated the computer-run economy and is poised to take it over completely.

For reasons which never do become clear, "City" chooses Cole to be his human accomplice as "he" begins a bloody campaign to quite literally eliminate the gangsters.

We then follow through a series of adventures, in which he fights a losing battle against City's control of his own self, culminating in his transformation into some sort of being who can wander time and space, though this reader at least never did understand why or how that happened.

Shirley certainly appears to deserve Gibson's introductory credit for writing the first cyberpunk novel, but the question of why cyberpunk itself deserves any attention remains an unanswered question in my mind. As I said, I prefer a little more imaginative meat on my escapism than is provided by a nihilistic worst-case vision of what might happen, "if this goes on".

[Bart Everson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Four stars for seminality. (Is that a word?) Two stars for my actual reading pleasure. So I split the difference for this rating.

This book really puts the "punk" in cyberpunk. In fact this is the first cyberpunk novel ever written. Future entrees in the subgenre tended to stress the "cyber" element more. But City Come a Walkin' is one of the most punk books I have ever read. That's a good thing. It's got punk attitude and one of the main characters is a rocker.

It's got a hard, tough edge, depicting gritty street life with plenty of action and violence. And that's the main disconnect for me. I've never liked action-oriented stories. I've read many a compelling narrative ruined by the seemingly obligatory big action scene in the final act. Yawn. I find reading descriptions of fights the absolute opposite of exciting. To me, it's boring. And that's the problem here. Too much action.

(To be clear, it's not that I'm squeamish, nor is the violence here extreme or gory.)

That's not to say it's brainless. To the contrary, there are some interesting ideas here. That's the "cyber" part, which looks at the interconnectedness of our modern systems and imagines how they might progress and what might go wrong. Considering it was published in 1980, before most folks knew anything about the internet, it's prescient stuff.

I think I would have liked the story better if Shirley had thought more about that.

Also I found the central conceit of cities manifesting a collective consciousness to be, well, silly. That's too magical-fantasy to be either cyber or punk.

[Joachim Boaz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Full review: https://sciencefictionruminations.com...

“It’s the gestalt of the whole place, this whole fuckin’ city, rolled up in one man. Sometimes the world takes the shape of gods and those gods take the form of men. Sometimes. This time. That’s a whole city, that man” (18).

John Shirley’s City Come A-Walkin’ (1980), an early cyberpunk novel, succeeds as a surreal and earthy paean to diverse urban community and punk rebellion. A club owner and angst rocker join forces with a physical manifestation of San Francisco [...]"

[Adrik Kemp · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love a good story about a city come to life, and this doesn't disappoint. Also an excellent example of the predictive imagination of cyberpunk and its authors.

[Ralph Pulner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Part dystopian, paranormal, urban-urban fantasy with a tender, convincing romance. I would say it is a good alternative to (he who shall not be named) American Gods.

[Smiley III · Rating 5 out of 5]

John Shirley's breakout work — now back in print — presages a lot of "cyberpunk" fiction (even this review just draws off the Wm. Gibson introduction, the case is so obvious), albeit in a way that still is hard to pin down, quantify, categorize ... barring that it's rip-roaring, punk-rock, many-layered Fiction pleasure!

City — as realized, as a "character" — isn't your prototypical bad guy, good guy, or "anti-hero", either; rather, as a sort of Faustian bargain-maker for a world too sanguine about how iffy-and-tempting real "Faustian" deals would manifest, in Real life, he-slash-It reveals how troublesome a matter it would be to the Single Human Self to be too near the truly, truly necessary ... how would one gaze into those Potentialities and want to follow them, truly follow them, to their unavoidable End Terminuses?

Read on, Reader! (A World of "Cities" awaits ye ... !)

[Linda Robinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was mentioned in Lost Transmissions, with an excerpt of the William Gibson introduction included in this edition. Gibson credits Shirley as being "patient zero" in the cyberpunk realm, so yes, indeed, I needed to read this book.

I was dazzled by other books that give The City an anthropomorphized makeover, although we know cities have personalities. San Francisco feels like a woman. New Orleans secretive and sexy. NYC is one of those relatives you appreciate for chutzpah, but do not want to spend the holidays with.

San Francisco as film noir. Grit, bad guys in fedoras, set in a future adjacent bar crowd of punk-alt psych-ops musicology, and a love interest who may be existing in 2 parallel universes and we can't stand upright in either. And cars and taxis that stretch, morph like a black & white retelling of Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

A storytelling jab with an oversized fist.

[Justin Howe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oddly prescient while also dated -- I read this trying to remember what it was like reading SF at 16 years of age. A simple straightforward SF read in the same vein as Matheson's I AM LEGEND, Leiber's OUR LADY OF DARKNESS, and Dick's MARTIAN TIME SLIP.

[Duane Poncy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book for its raw creativity. While it is as much urban fantasy as cyberpunk, it has been very influential in the cyberpunk genre, inspiring no less than William Gibson.

[Fastnbulbous · Rating 5 out of 5]

I got to experience the emergence of cyberpunk with William Gibson's stories in 1981-82 via my subscription to Omni magazine, but two important pre-cursors that Gibson was indebted to were Bruce Sterling and John Shirley. I was first exposed to them via Sterling's Mirrorshades (1988) anthology, and then some stories in a magazine called Mondo 2000. Like Gibson, early novels like The Artificial Kid (1980) and City Come A-Walkin' crackle with creative energy, are action packed, and in Shirley's case, pretty vividly violent. Having served time in punk bands, he also convincingly conveyed the grubby atmosphere of a punk club in our hero Stu Cole's Club Anesthesia in San Francisco. When resident punk (or angst rocker) Catz Wailin isn't performing, the default house mix is disco in this queer-friendly sanctuary. Unfortunately this cultural oasis is disrupted by organized crime and hyperviolent vigilantes. The city has had enough, and manifests itself in human-ish form, with all the knowledge and power that circulates through wiring at its disposal. Music is described as dense and heavy along the lines of Killing Joke's apocalyptic post-punk and Ministry. Parts of the book had been revised for a 2014 edition, and some descriptions and references to CD-ROMs and the Pet Shop Boys couldn't have been in the original 1980 edition. One could easily imagine a movie treatment of this, like a merging of Bladerunner with The Terminator.

[Eran · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great cyberpunk, well deserved of the praises for being formative to the genre.
Cool ideas both about technology - that now seems common place and slightly less dystopian, but then not always. And about a fantastic world where city's are embodied entities, people who are attuned to the "spirit world" (such as Catz) and the actual spirits roaming space-time (such as Cole ends up being).

Thoughts:
- Less cyber and more punk, great writing that's fun to read.
- I like the chapter names, and how they are incorporated into the song in the beginning
- From the title I had in mind comparisons to the DFZ series where thoughts of a city "moving" stuck with me. But this is a very different conception. Not really comparable and leaves a different impression on me.
- I liked how at the beginning it seemed like Cole sending a message over music to Catz is a weird thing that will freak her out, but as the story progressed it became clear why she would not, and by the ending I really appreciated the way it was handled as a story line.
- Particularly about the then futuristic tech seeming common-place now: the "death of cities" due to communication globalisation seems very close to home after the last couple of years of working-from-home and seeing these kinds of trends.

[Chris Tannhauser · Rating 2 out of 5]

When seedy nightclub owner Stu and punk rock chick Catz Wailen get mixed up with the mob, the city of San Francisco shows up embodied as a sociopathic demigod to, uh, "save" the day. Murder and weirdness ensue.

Published in 1980, this is the book that William Gibson credits as the genesis of his 1984 magnum opus Neuromancer—something he admits without ego or shame in the foreword to the 2000 edition. And man, it really is Neuromancer, just in an uneven chalkboard prototype form. We have the Molly Millions mirrorshades; the dirty-violent city-stuff reflected top to bottom; vast, complex systems becoming self-aware and enforcing their own agendas, using human pawns to go where they can't go and do the things they can't do. It was shockingly cribbed, an unpardonable literary crime if Gibson weren't so open about the influence. In the end I'm glad for it—Neuromancer is one of my favorite books—and the language and imagery here are both beautiful... but this archaeology expedition became a slog when the whole affair sagged in the middle and I understood why I'd never heard of it until now.

[Rob · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was maybe a 2.5 star read for me. It is lauded now for being an early cyberpunk novel or maybe a proto-cyberpunk one. It has that spirit but it is almost more urban fantasy in some says than cyberpunk. The city manifested as consciousness is more in a supernatural-combined-with-technology way, rather than an unintentional-AI way, which would be more cyberpunk. This was almost more a precursor to American Gods and The City We Became. The kinetic, frenetic writing, the brutality of the violence, and the noir/dystopic feel were pretty unique for scifi from 1980. Some of the concepts were impressively prophetic. But overall, it was just okay for me; I think I'm missing why it considered now by some to be so seminal.

[Peter Landau · Rating 4 out of 5]

William Gibson in his introduction to CITY COME A-WALKIN’ says that with this novel John Shirley all but invented cyberpunk. Gibson even admits unconsciously stealing from the book when he wrote his groundbreaking sci-fi. All this is true, I just wish I’d come across Shirley’s weird tale of San Francisco as a sentient being when it was first published in 1980 or even when this reprint was reissued in the late 1990s. The story is fun to read if ridiculous and even the rock-and-roll color added borders on silly, though Shirley is also a seminal figure in the Portland punk scene of the 1970s. All this is to say that it’s not you, it’s me.

[Sean · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't care for this book. I picked up City Come a-Walkin' because of its influence on early cyberpunk fiction. Shirley's fingerprints are all over stuff like Neuromancer - particularly a dark futurism focused on street life, outsiderdom, and sense of 'cool'. Shirley's sense of cool, unlike Gibson's, is really quite corny though.

City Comes a-Walkin' has some really interesting core ideas. An entity that is the gestalt manifestation of the city is a live and present like an animist god moving through the urban infrastructure. BUT, those interesting ideas are wrapped in poor prose, a nonsensical story and some blatant libertarian propaganda.

Not recommended.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can see why this was on a list of must-read sci-fi. At times, it's so prescient it's spooky. At other times, it manages to highlight how the more things change, the more they stay the same -- much of the book could be written in 2018 without sounding out of time in the least. If anything, I was left wanting more of the big picture, more of the story after The Sweep, rather than everything leading up to it. I enjoyed the storytelling style, and the big questions it includes (but doesn't answer). Recommended.

[Reader · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was really hoping for this to kick ass. Unfortunately, it's just mediocre. People (William Gibson) claim that this is the 1st cyberpunk book. I'm not sure it really qualifies. There are a few ideas that might be considered proto-cyberpunk, but mostly it's just a book about violence and the mafia. Meh. Decent writing, but a waste of time.

[Micha Hershman · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to love this, but did not. You can see the roots of a William Gibson here, and maybe some of the foresight and a fraction of the cool. But the lyrical prose is absent. The story is jerky, sometimes moving too fast to follow and sometimes dragging on. Recommended if you’re a historical of the genre or if you collect stories about alternate San Francisco’s.

[Heather Warner · Rating 5 out of 5]

“City Come a-Walkin’” reads like an acid trip…..and that makes for one wild and crazy ride! You have to read this book for yourself, see cyberpunk at its beginning and an imagination let loose. Just a fantastic book!!!! I strongly recommend it-fast action packed read full of rock and roll and weirdness!
Top book of the year!!

[K115987 · Rating 1 out of 5]

Devo dire la verità? Brutto. Noioso. Personaggi antipatici. Trama così così. Musica inesistente (avete presente Armageddon Rag di George Martin? Dimenticatelo). Un libro che mi ha deluso e che ho sinceramente fatto fatica a finire.

[Pachyderm Bookworm · Rating 5 out of 5]

The first book (and. perhaps the only "hardcopy book") of. John Shirley's which I'd previously remembered. and read some years ago. Reminiscent of many of Norman Spinrad's longer novels, specifically RUSSIAN SPRING, PICTURES AT 11, and

[Charles Johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

older cyberpunk but very well written

Very unusual story line. It deals with the collective unconsciousness of a city manifesting as an entity. Very innovative story line, and it is a well written book.

[Supine · Rating 4 out of 5]

When a book really makes me take a step back and think, "what the fuck am I reading?", it tends to leave a good impression. City Come A Walkin' does that as well as anything I've read in a while.

[Kris · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very particularly punky kind of cyberpunk novel. It has some of the flaws common in the genre but is a high-paced thriller with some really interesting takes.

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

The ur-source of cyberpunk. Semi-mystical, surreal, and bizarre, this is not an easy read, but well-worth reading.

[Andrea D. McCarthage · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredibly strong prose. I'd like to expand on this review when I have more time, but for now I'll just say I recommend it.

[ROBERT · Rating 5 out of 5]

misses this book the first time around. Interesting and fast read of a city's consciousness.