Interesting... From the first paragraph, I feel the pressure and the busy rush of the throng. Reminds me of the City in Asimov's "The Caves of Steel;" but it also is hard for me to put a time period to it - like I am not sure if it's from the an alternate history from the past or from the present or future. (this is perhaps ACTUALLY because I am an American, and our cities have a different "feel" from European cities; European cities still have some things that our cities mostly lost decades ago) This city doesn't feel very personalized, but the commuting in a busy city is something I immediately identify with; I feel like I'm back in Vancouver going to catch the SkyTrain. So basically, it draws well on the readers' pre-existing experience if the reader has ever had to cope with transit in an urban center.Murrin wrote:Wrote this recently as the opening to a new story. Not my usual. I'm stopping here for now - I've given in, and I'm actually going to try to write an outline for this one before going any further. Anyway, I wanted opinions on how well this works as an introduction to the city of Del-fi.
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Clarus folded up the newspaper and placed it into an inside pocket of his long coat. Stepping away from the newsstand, he slipped back among the inner-city crowds of ÑF. Citizens of Del-fi (as they called it) pressed in around him, rushing back and forth between jobs and home; home and school; school and work; place to place and action to action, each playing their tiny part, gears in the greater workings of the metropolis. The air was filled with a constant hum of voices, vehicles, machinery, and the fliers passing in all directions overhead. Clarus lost himself in the throng, and let the ebb and flow of the crowd carry him off down the Edelstrasse and out from Astor Fel. The avenue was lined with businesses and department stores in their multi-story structures of steel and glass; in between them, in the alleyway openings and empty yards stood the vendors with their carts, hawking papers, magazines, confectionary, hotdogs, and second-hand doc-sheets. The sky was coloured violet with the early hours of dusk, but the city does not rest: as one man lays down his head, another rises and heads out into the world, ready to take his part in the perpetual city. Every street is a constant press of flesh.
The people of Del-fi come in all kinds – tall and short; light- and dark-skinned; fat and thin and round and straight and hideous and beautiful. They passed Clarus in their hundreds, in as many styles of dress. A smooth-skinned, dark-haired beauty, in a miniskirt and tiny top; a wart-nosed businessman swathed in the folds of a blood-red cloak; a young girl in a strangely cut dress, too-large eyes of a stunning sea green, chewing gum loudly; a woman, pale, in a crumpled suit and carrying a battered old briefcase; a stranger, tall, his long white coat hanging to his ankles, thin white hair hanging down to his shoulders - grey eyes watching the crowd, he moved through them, with them, down the Edelstrasse toward Astor Central.
He passed beneath an immense ivory arch, and was in the centre. From the avenues branched out to all the districts of Astor, from the peripheral streets of Mon to the hubward sprawl of Lay. The Astor Radius cut across the Central like a knife drawn across the district, pushing the houses aside to form the wide boulevard the ran from one end of Astor to the other and then further, into the heart of Del-fi.
P.S. If other ppl have already said some of this, sorry... didn't read past the first story.
