The City and the Cygnets

"Michael Bishop’s Urban Nucleus concept was one of the great extrapolative achievements of science fiction in the 1970s.  In the novel A Little Knowledge and the accompanying story cycle Catacomb Years, he gave it vivid life.  Now, forty years later, he has drawn both books together in revised and re-imagined versions to provide modern readers with a single unified text of this vast vision of the near future."   —Robert Silverberg, SFWA Grand Master

The City and the Cygnets ranks with the best of literary science fiction, on the level of Cloud Atlas or Life after Life. ... A Bishop book to savor.”         —Louise Marley, author of The Terrorists of Irustan

"Bishop [writes] in exquisitely crafted prose and with profound insight, compassion, and wisdom . . . If you’ve never read Bishop’s work before, I envy you what you’re about to experience.”       —F. Brett Cox, author of The End of All Our Exploring: Stories

Not all writers can sustain decades of excellence. But Mike can. Mike has. Mike does. This is not a simple book. But it’s a profoundly satisfying one. Satisfying in the answers it gives, and in the questions it asks that will never, ever be resolved.”    —Kelly Robson, author of Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach