The Burning City
Encyclopedia
Larry Niven
Laurence van Cott Niven / ˈlæri ˈnɪvən/ is an American science fiction author. His best-known work is Ringworld , which received Hugo, Locus, Ditmar, and Nebula awards. His work is primarily hard science fiction, using big science concepts and theoretical physics...
and Jerry Pournelle
Jerry Pournelle
Jerry Eugene Pournelle is an American science fiction writer, essayist and journalist who contributed for many years to the computer magazine Byte and has since 1998 been maintaining his own website/blog....
set in an analogue of Southern California in an imaginary past shortly after the sinking of Atlantis about 14,000 years ago in the twilight of a civilization then struggling and now vanished for lack of a crucial natural, and essentially non-renewable resource
Non-renewable resource
A non-renewable resource is a natural resource which cannot be produced, grown, generated, or used on a scale which can sustain its consumption rate, once depleted there is no more available for future needs. Also considered non-renewable are resources that are consumed much faster than nature...
upon which almost all of its economy and technology depended. (In this connection it is perhaps notable that a close relative of Mr. Niven's was a famous pioneer in the petroleum industry.). The vanishing resource is not oil but mana, something vital to the technology of magic and the metabolism of the supernatural. As mana becomes scarce gods sleep and finally die, unicorns get smaller and finally turn into hornless ponies, and magic becomes less and less effective and finally vanishes.
The book was published in 2000, and was followed by a sequel, Burning Tower
Burning Tower
Burning Tower is a fantasy novel by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. It is a sequel to The Burning City, set some years after that novel concluded. It was published in 2005.-Plot summary:...
in 2005. It is part of the same timeline as The Magic Goes Away
The Magic Goes Away
The Magic Goes Away is a fantasy short story written by Larry Niven in 1976, and later expanded to a novella of the same name which was published in 1978...
Plot summary
The first and last parts of the novel are set in Tep's Town, on the site of modern Los AngelesLos Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
. The town consists of three classes: the Lords, the ruling class, who live in a separate area of the town; the kinless, essentially a slave class forbidden to carry weapons, descendants of a people conquered by the allied ancestors of the Lords and the Lordkin; and the Lordkin, proud, uneducated, undisciplined and indolent knife fighters organised into street gangs, who live by "gathering" whatever they wish from the kinless. The Lords supervise the kinless and placate the Lordkin. The kinless are unarmed and untrained in the use of weapons, and cannot resist the Lordkin. Some leave the town, but the surrounding vegetation is malevolent. The town is the base of a fire god, Yangin-Atep, who possesses the Lordkin every few years to burn the town down and rape any kinless woman they can catch.
The main character, Whandall, is an 11 year old Lordkin boy severely beaten unto scarring and broken bones by Lordsmen (police) for associating with a Lord girl and illegally entering the segregated Lord's Hills. As an adult he becomes a product of his culture - a thief, a rapist, and a murderer, but, strangely, not without regret, not without honor, and not without the reader's sympathy. He teams up with an ex-Atlantis
Atlantis
Atlantis is a legendary island first mentioned in Plato's dialogues Timaeus and Critias, written about 360 BC....
wizard and some kinless and they escape from the city. Beyond the city they find traders and Whandall founds a successful trading empire. Eventually, he returns to the city to establish a trade route there, and defeats Yangin-Atep.
In the epilogue the authors do make a handwaving attempt at an explanation. There they claim that the savage people who became the "so-called Native Americans
Indigenous peoples of the Americas
The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...
" wiped out the existing civilization, including horses (and presumably cats and wheels) in their conquest of the Americas.
Allegory
According to the afterword published with the book, Larry Niven originally developed the story in order to channel his feelings of frustration relating to the 1992 Los Angeles riots1992 Los Angeles riots
The 1992 Los Angeles Riots or South Central Riots, also known as the 1992 Los Angeles Civil Unrest were sparked on April 29, 1992, when a jury acquitted three white and one hispanic Los Angeles Police Department officers accused in the videotaped beating of black motorist Rodney King following a...
.
In keeping with the spirit of the allegory Niven and Pournelle drop into the text several anagrams and other oblique references that bring to mind modern people, places and events. Some examples:
- Jispomnos, anagram for O.J. Simpson: A legendary (in the story) Lordkin who married a kinless woman and adopted kinless ways. His story was made into an opera that is referenced several times in the book. As the story goes, Jispomnos killed his wife and her lover for her infidelity. On trial before a Lordkin jury Jispomnos claimed he was still a Lordkin and thus had the right to kill his cheating woman. He was, of course, acquitted. Here the authors betray their personal opinions when they do not have Jispomnos (Simpson) even pretend to be innocent of the killing.
- Arshur the Magnificent, oblique reference to Rodney KingRodney KingRodney Glen King is an American best known for his involvement in a police brutality case involving the Los Angeles Police Department on March 3, 1991...
: Arshur is clearly meant to sound like "Arthur," as in King ArthurKing ArthurKing Arthur is a legendary British leader of the late 5th and early 6th centuries, who, according to Medieval histories and romances, led the defence of Britain against Saxon invaders in the early 6th century. The details of Arthur's story are mainly composed of folklore and literary invention, and...
so that as events unfold the reader would link King to Arshur. Arshur is a lawless bear of a man from outside the Tep's Town (a looker) who is adopted is an honorary Lordkin. In one incident Arshur is beaten severely with sticks by kinless peacekeepers when he refuses to just lie still. Lordkin anger over this "unjust beating" leads to another Burning.
- Tras Preetor, anagram for Star Reporter: A looker, an outsider who has come to Tep's Town hoping to see the Burning. Tras makes his living by telling stories and trading information, so he sees the Burning as source of exciting stories that will make him rich. The authors present Tras as a "well-intentioned fool" who nearly gets young Whandall (and himself) killed with a hare-brained scheme to curry favor with the "Lords". The authors' treatment of Tras is somewhat nuanced, but they make their negative opinion of journalists fairly obvious by the end.
- Duddigract and Coscartin, anagrams for "drug addict" and "narcotics": Two minor characters, both Lordkin, who are used by the authors to make cautionary points about drug abuse; respectively, a user who dies of an overdose and a dealer who is killed for his drugs.
- Vedasiras Range, nearly an anagram for Sierra Nevada: Not long after Whandall joins up with the trader caravan, he glimpses the beast-god Behemoth in these huge mountains to the east.
- Mount Carlem, transparent anagram for Mount Carmel, near Carmel-by-the-Sea, CA: A mountain near the sea north of Tep's Town. The Atlantian wizard is trapped there in the post-exodus part of the novel. If you didn't get the anagram here the authors give you another chance with "Carlem Marcel", the remains of a town on the bay near the mountain, drowned when the sinking of AtlantisAtlantisAtlantis is a legendary island first mentioned in Plato's dialogues Timaeus and Critias, written about 360 BC....
caused world sea levels to rise.
- Others: Many other names are anagrams as well: Pothefit / top thief, Resalet / stealer, Dargramnet / grandmater, Seshmarl / harmless, Wulltid / dullwit, Tarnisos / arsonist. Forigaft is nearly an anagram for graffiti. And the name of the Toronexti betrays their main profession, which is extortion.