Civic dissonance

Today I was hoping to bring you a review of Alexander Hellene's The Last Ancestor, but that'll have to wait because I'm not finished reading it. So I'll talk about another book that's been gnawing at me over the years: The City & the City by China Miéville.

The City & the City is a police procedural/murder mystery with one of the most imaginative settings I've ever encountered. The story takes place in a city that exists simultaneously in two different countries. There's nothing supernatural going on here. People living in different countries under different laws and speaking different languages walk on the same sidewalks and drive on the same roads, but they act and think like the other side isn't there.

Any interaction with the other side is termed a "breach." It's so taboo that there's a shadowy police force endowed with fearsome power that prosecutes it. You have to pass through a "border" in a special part of the city to cross to the other side. The separateness is so well-kept that characters don't even blink at the irony of going across town to pass through the border only to return to the same neighborhood, just to deliver a package or question someone in relation to a crime investigation.

If you've spent any time in a city, you know how confining it can be. Space is at a premium and much of life is lived on the street. Over time you develop a sort of tunnel vision, an emotional distance from the teeming masses of humanity you encounter when walking to work or to the store. It's hard not to rub shoulders with other cultures day to day, but if you keep your head down and move along most of the time no one will bother you. Being ignored and ignoring others isn't rude; it's actually considered polite.

If social trust is the inverse of diversity (as Robert Putnam and other sociologists have found), and there is literally nowhere for anyone to relocate to, what is to be done to avoid conflict over who owns the public sphere? In Miéville's setting, the solution is more realistic than you think. People are good at pretending what's in front of their eyes doesn't exist, especially when the consequences of not pretending could hurt them. Fear is an effective palliative for cognitive dissonance.

The origins of the arrangement are a mystery in the book, but I thought it probable the two countries had very specific, meaningful claims to the land the city stands on, and were on the brink of war. A deal was brokered for the countries to divorce from each other psychologically. It would have made sense to install an overwhelming external power to check the natural desire among the denizens to fight.

Had that power not been installed, various organizations unequipped to enforce the psychological conditioning would have been thrust into that role. The disorganized, shambolic effort would have resulted in people on both sides continuing to publicly accept what their senses told them was true. They'd inevitably act on it with violence, which above all else the power brokers wanted to avoid.

It's a brilliant premise, and Miéville executes it with aplomb.

As always, let me know what you think in the comments. If you like science fiction, check out my books Seeds of Calamity and Tendrils to the Moon. You can find extended previews for each here and here.