Report on the Threatened City

by Doris Lessing

From the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Doris Lessing, a distinctive science fiction short story.

Unknown observers send reports on a city that is threatened with destruction. They gather information on the inhabitants and their behaviour. It soon becomes clear that this is far from an alien planet.

As in many of her acclaimed science fiction novels, in ‘Report on the Threatened City’, Doris Lessing uses the traditions of this genre to examine the world we know and human nature itself, from a completely new and often unforgiving perspective.

This story also appears in the collection The Temptation of Jack Orkney.

Genres: Short Stories, Science Fiction

50 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

Doris Lessing was born into a colonial family. both of her parents were British: her father, who had been crippled in World War I, was a clerk in the Imperial Bank of Persia; her mother had been a nurse. In 1925, lured by the promise of getting rich through maize farming, the family moved to the British colony in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Like other women writers from southern African who did not graduate from high school (such as Olive Schreiner and Nadine Gordimer), Lessing made herself into a self-educated intellectual.

In 1937 she moved to Salisbury, where she worked as a telephone operator for a year. At nineteen, she married Frank Wisdom, and later had two children. A few years later, feeling trapped in a persona that she feared would destroy her, she left her family, remaining in Salisbury. Soon she was drawn to the like-minded members of the Left Book Club, a group of Communists "who read everything, and who did not think it remarkable to read." Gottfried Lessing was a central member of the group; shortly after she joined, they married and had a son.

During the postwar years, Lessing became increasingly disillusioned with the Communist movement, which she left altogether in 1954. By 1949, Lessing had moved to London with her young son. That year, she also published her first novel, The Grass Is Singing, and began her career as a professional writer.

In June 1995 she received an Honorary Degree from Harvard University. Also in 1995, she visited South Africa to see her daughter and grandchildren, and to promote her autobiography. It was her first visit since being forcibly removed in 1956 for her political views. Ironically, she is welcomed now as a writer acclaimed for the very topics for which she was banished 40 years ago.

In 2001 she was awarded the Prince of Asturias Prize in Literature, one of Spain's most important distinctions, for her brilliant literary works in defense of freedom and Third World causes. She also received the David Cohen British Literature Prize.

She was on the shortlist for the first Man Booker International Prize in 2005. In 2007 she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

(Extracted from the pamphlet: A Reader's Guide to The Golden Notebook & Under My Skin, HarperPerennial, 1995. Full text available on www.dorislessing.org).

Reviews

[raghad · Rating 4 out of 5]

had to read this for my A levels and let me say it bored me sm i loved it. i love the realism and symbolism combined in this so much that i actually bothered to annotate the whole thing.

[Rohani · Rating 4 out of 5]

Told from the POV of a group of aliens in lengthy report style. When the human race is warned that Earth will be destroyed in 5 years, it's met with skepticism, ridicule and indifference. Quirky at some parts because of some the apt observations about human behaviour, culture and politics, but also really bleak about who will likely survive in an apocalypse. Didn't particularly enjoy this type of report style format because I felt I was reading a textbook, so it took quite a bit of rereads. I can, however, appreciate a unique reading experience, I guess.

Update:
Upon the second reread, I was able to appreciate it more. Our society really is doomed, aren't we?

[Yves S · Rating 4 out of 5]

This short story is a report prepared by a group of extra-terrestrial individuals, called Astroviewers, on a mission to warn the inhabitants of San Francisco of an impending earthquake which will destroy, or at least significantly damage the city within the next five years.
However, what they quickly find is, to their standards, an incomprehensibly and thoroughly unresponsive species which, despite being aware of their imminent doom, do not seem to have the will or the motivation to prepare for it and advert it. The older specimens of the earth population are even frankly aggressive when confronted to the need to take action. The younger specimens are found more responsive but in a “state of disabling despair”.
Now, when reading this short story I could not fail but to draw the parallel with our own pending crisis and the irrevocable damage we have done to our climate.
“The trouble with this species is not that it is unable to forecast its immediate future; it is that it does not seem to care”.
And of course, the parallel is daunting, by the end of the story San Francisco and the earthquake were completely gone from my mind, I was reading a report about our own 21st century planet.
And the conclusion of that report is without ambiguity and it is dark:
“We are now reassembled as our original six and will shortly be returning. We have a tentative conclusion. It is this: that a society that is doomed to catastrophe, and that is unable to prepare for it, can expect that few people will survive except those already keyed to chaos and disaster […] as we have already said, we have no idea why this should be so, what is wrong with them. But perhaps concealed in this city are groups of individuals we did not contact, who saw no reason to contact us, who not only foresee the future event but who are taking steps.”

[Megan-Eve Holyfield · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting short story with a really cool premise. I liked the science fiction aspect of it, I think that really worked with the arms race situation that it kind of discusses throughout. I also loved the little interruption transmissions, I found them so effective and they really expanded my thoughts on the story.

3/5 Different and an interesting take on the arms race.

[Marni Horowitz · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was horrible don’t waste your time reading.

[Cal · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this for a class assignment
Analyzing this story is much more fun than reading it, its better once you annotate and overthink every sentence.

[Fiona Bentley-reber · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting style of writing. Set in the 70s it screams of the social issues of the time, issues that are still obvious today. I'd like to think if a huge earthquake was to wipe out my city the government would take steps to do something about it, to know it was going to happen and remain ignorant of the facts would be devastating. Do we live in a different society?