User:Michael-stanton/Sandbox/City of Darkness (1976 novel)

City of Darkness is a dystopian young adult novel by Ben Bova, first published in 1976.

Plot
The novel is set in a dystopian future. Glass domes have been erected over the major cities in the US, and the cities have eventually been evacuated and closed (New York was evacuated twenty years ago), ostensibly because pollution and diseases have turned the cities into a health hazard. People live in sterile suburb-like settlements called tracts. At the center of each tract is a mall with offices on the top floors, where the tract’s residents work, an underground railway station and a car park. Life is strictly reglemented: people’s diets are permanently monitored, schools have mandatory workout programs, and curfews are in place to ensure everybody gets eight hours of sleep each night. Cars are electric; combustion engines are banned. Even the weather is controlled so that the sky is clear during the day, and rainfall is started at midnight.

Most of the cities have been permanently closed, but New York, San Francisco and another city on the West Coast are temporarily reopened to visitors each summer. Because of the health risks, a number of measures are in place: stays are limited to two weeks, minors must be accompanied by a legal guardian, and all visitors must undergo decontamination (including a lung-cleansing machine and disposal of all clothes worn in the city) when leaving. Nonetheless, the cities are popular (yet expensive) destinations for party travelers, not last because of the “adult” fun found there: movie theaters showing real murder films (movie theaters do not exist outside, and graphic content on TV is severely restricted), or “bedicabs”, cabs in which prostitutes offer their services during the ride.

The protagonist, 16-year-old Ron Morgan, lives in one of the tracts in Vermont. He has just finished school and taken his National Exams. Those who fail them are immediately drafted into the army, although those with affluent parents can still buy themselves free. Ron has scored exceptionally well and would like to pursue a career in science and technology, yet his father insists his son follow in his footsteps and major in business at Getty College. Following an argument with his father about his career, and being generally bored by life in the tracts, Ron decides to secretly leave for New York City. He has visited the city with his father the summer before, and he wants to take the last opportunity to spend a weekend there before the city is closed again, and before he has to decide on his future career.

In a movie theater Ron meets a girl named Sylvia and is immediately attracted to her. To his surprise, she tells him she was born in New York City and lives there all year. She helps him find a room for the night, but on their way there, they are assaulted by a youth named Dino. With his karate skills, Ron manages to defeat Dino, and he offers Sylvia to spend the night with him to be safe from Dino. At two in the morning, Ron awakes to find Sylvia is gone, and goes to look for her, fearing Dino might attack her again. But he is himself beaten up by Dino and loses consciousness. Upon awaking in front of the hotel, he finds his cash, credit card and ID missing, and manages to drag himself into the hotel lobby before losing consciousness again.

Ron regains consciousness in a shabby room, next to a sickly six-year-old boy named Davy. Upon realizing Ron is awake, the boy runs out and Sylvia enters the room. She explains to him that they brought him here to save him from the police, as without an ID, they would have mistaken Ron for a gang kid or drug addict and jailed him. It is Labor Day, the last day for Ron to get out before New York City closes. Sylvia tells Ron that the gang’s leader, Al, can help Ron get out without an ID. When Al appears, he tells Ron that, while Dino took Ron’s credit card, keys and ID, it was Sylvia who took his money. He explains that he will keep the money in exchange for telling Ron how to get to the nearest gate out of the city. On his way there, Sylvia catches up with Ron and tells him that he will be jailed if he tries to leave the city without an ID, but Al did not tell him this in order to to get rid of him. She also confesses that she indeed took Ron’s money, and offers to get Ron’s ID back from Dino. Ron declines, determined to retrieve his ID at all costs. Sylvia reveals to Ron the conditions under which gang kids like Al, Dino and herself live. As authorities have no records of their existence, they cannot get regular jobs and are not eligible for social welfare, and rely on petty crime to survive. When the city closes at the end of the summer, police leave with the tourists, and the gangs rule the city. Ron decides to get her and Davy out of the city, and together they head back to the house in which the gang lives. There, Sylvia offers Ron a bottle of juice, which is laced with a drug, causing Ron to pass out.

Ron awakes the morning after. The gates are closed, and he has no choice but stay in New York until the next summer. Sylvia suggests they get Al to accept him into the gang. While waiting for him to return, Ron repairs the broken refrigerator and air conditioner in the room. Al eventually agrees to accept Ron into the gang if he can do repairs for them. In order to get spare parts to repair the generator in the cellar, the gang and Ron break into the warehouse of a rival gang, where one member of Al’s gang dies in a shootout. Ron manages to repair the generator and is accepted into what is known as the Gramercy gang, a group of at least a hundred youths aged 13 to 23. Over the following weeks, while doing various repairs for the gang, Ron witnesses numerous violent attacks between the Gramercy gang and rival gangs. The motive is usually to steal food—which is always in short supply—or revenge for past attacks.

Al returns from a meeting with other gang leaders, in which a ceasefire has been negotiated between the gangs: The recent attacks have cost many lives, and they realize they need to stand united against the Muslims, a “super gang” in the north (despite the name of the gang, many of its members are indeed Latinos or black but not actually Muslims). As part of the deal, Ron will make the Gramercy gang some money by doing repairs for other gangs—weapons excluded—, and the Chelsea gang (from whom they stole the parts for the generator) will provide spare parts. Through his repair work, Ron discovers there is also a black market in the city. The goods sold there have been smuggled into the city, indicating that someone outside the city is making a profit from the gangs, especially since the goods are expensive and mostly unaffordable for the gang kids. The black market also seems to be the only place where people older than 30 years are found. Ron occasionally needs to purchase spare parts or tools from the black market which the Chelsea gang cannot supply. He befriends a marketeer named Dewey, who offers him shelter at his place as the Muslims appear at the market.

Through Dewey, Ron learns about the ongoing rivalry between the Muslims and the white gangs, as well as about the circumstances leading to the closure of the city: After the dome was built to contain pollution, conflicts and rife corruption led to a deterioration of the conditions in the city. When health authorities predicted that everybody in New York City would die within a year, residents started fleeing in masses and riots broke out. Whoever had not left the city was presumed dead, including some 2,000 people still living there. Dewey offers Ron to become his partner, and Ron asks if he can bring Sylvia and Davy along.

Before Ron can return to his gang, he sees smoke rising from the direction of the Gramercy territory, indicating a violent clash between the Muslims and a white gang. On his way back, he sees evidence of destruction, though the Gramercy territory seems to have been spared. He finds Sylvia and urges her to run away from the gang with him and Davy, but she is reluctant to go, saying the gang will find and kill him. The other gang members are relieved to see Ron return, having feared he had been killed. A heated discussion between Al and Dino has ensued during a meeting of the gang: Dino and a few others want to retaliate against the Muslims, but Al and most of the others refuse unless they can get all white gangs to unite against the Muslims. After Dino angrily leaves the meeting, Ron approaches Al with his suggestion to leave the gang and become Dewey’s partner, while still offering to work for the gang. However, Al refuses to let him leave amongst the conflict with the Muslims and Dino.

That night, Ron awakes and hears Davy scream. He goes to Sylvia’s room to investigate and finds that Dino, who has just left the gang, wanted Sylvia to come with him and beat her when she refused. When Davy tried to protect her, he beat Davy as well. Ron is determined to track Dino down and kill him, but Al intervenes and Ron reluctantly gives in.

Winter approaches, and as the gangs are running out of food and money, Ron is getting fewer and fewer repair jobs. Several attacks between white gangs and the Muslims take place, and even the ceasefire between the white gangs begins to crack as they resume to launch attacks on each other to get some money or food.

One night the Chelsea gang, with the help of Dino, mounts a surprise attack on the Gramercy headquarters. Through sheer luck, Ron manages to escape with Sylvia and Davy and hide in a cellar, but Al is killed. Ron is surprised to learn from Sylvia that Davy is her son, and Al was his father.

The gang’s headquarters have been looted and burned out. Davy, who has been suffering from a nasty cough since the beginning of winter, has now developed a fever. Ron makes his way to the black market to get food and medication for him from Dewey. When he returns a few days later, he finds only Dino and four other members of the Chelsea gang. Dino reveals that Sylvia came to him for help and is now his girl; Davy has died an hour earlier. Ron attacks Dino in rage, but is overpowered by the other gang members and beaten unconscious.

Ron awakes and finds himself locked in a small room. He hears a fight outside before the door is opened. His guard has been overpowered by two strangers, who direct him to a car which takes him to the north. They enter Muslim territory, which appears to be in somewhat better state of maintenance than the white gang territories. The driver ushers him into a former church, where he is met by Timmy Jim, the leader of the Muslims. He has learned from Dewey that Ron is in difficulties, and has skills which the Muslims need. Ron is not only to repair things, but mainly to pass his skills to younger Muslims.

Timmy Jim is tough towards Ron when others are watching, but friendly when the two are alone. Over the course of time, Timmy Jim repeatedly invites Ron to his office and asks him about life outside in the tracts, especially about police, the military and infrastructure. Ron realizes that Timmy Jim is planning to attack the tracts, and Timmy Jim reveals his plans: He is going to unite all gangs in New York within five years, promising them that they will attack the tracts outside the dome, counting on the military outside already being undermined by Muslims.

One spring day Sylvia appears. Ron learns that the Gramercy gang has reformed, and Dino has been killed after getting into a feud with the leader of the Chelsea gang. She returns Ron the keys, credit card and ID that Dino had taken from him. Initially still determined to take Sylvia out of the city with him, Ron begins to realize that there is no way for him to do so.

Until the city is reopened, Ron begins to plan his escape, while being watched meticulously around the clock by the Muslims. One night he manages to escape through an elevator shaft onto the roof of the building, going from roof to roof until reaching an empty building. He checks into a hotel room to take a bath and get new clothes. As he is just ready to leave, Timmy Jim enters the room and tries to prevent Ron from leaving. He reveals that the police are bribed by the Muslims and will turn a blind eye to a kidnapping, but Ron insists that Timmy Jim will have to kill him to prevent him from leaving. Timmy Jim tries to persuade Ron into staying, saying he saved Ron’s life, but Ron says he has repaid his debt by training a hundred Muslims. Eventually, Timmy Jim sympathizes with Ron’s desire to no longer be a slave. He reveals to Ron that, when New York was evacuated, non-whites were forcefully prevented from leaving and eventually declared dead: the main reason behind the evacuation was to get rid of non-white poverty (as whites were allowed out, whether rich or poor). Timmy Jim has managed to unite the Muslims by fighting against the white gangs, and he is planning to unite Muslims and whites with his plan to attack the tracts outside the city. He tells Ron that nobody outside will believe his warnings of an impending attack by the gangs of New York, which he promises will happen. Eventually he agrees to let Ron go. But Ron has realized that he has not regained freedom, but is just about to return into another world, with its own way of slavery. He resolves to open people’s eyes to the misery in which the people in New York are living, and fight the system that is letting it happen.

Background
In 1960, architects Buckminster Fuller and Shoji Sadao proposed a project called Dome over Manhattan, a 3-kilometer-diameter geodesic domed city covering Midtown Manhattan.

The plans inspired Bova to write a short story titled Manhattan Dome about a near-future New York City, which appeared in the September 1968 issue of Amazing Stories. The story is set in a dystopian future in which a plastic dome has been erected over Manhattan. Originally touted as a way to curb pollution, it has ended up causing many new problems, not all of which have been addressed. A sprinkler system has been installed to address fire safety concerns, as well as placate plumbers. The Dome shields Manhattan from the weather; while special UV street lamps (installed after lobbying from electric light corporations) still allow residents to get a suntan under the Dome, the lack of rain has driven up water prices, to the point that growing vegetables in back gardens has become prohibitively expensive. Worst of all, while the city council approved construction of the dome, they voted against the proposal to ban smoking and motor vehicles inside the Dome, under pressure from the industry but against the advice of the Chief Dome Engineer. As a result, more pollution is generated under the Dome than its infrastructure can handle, and air quality has worsened rather than improved. A year after the completion of the Dome, among ongoing protests from citizens, the government has decided to dismantle it. Just after the decision has been made, the Chief Dome Engineer and the newly appointed chief scientific advisor muse about evicting the residents of the Dome.

Another short story by Bova, titled The Sightseers, appeared in Roger Elwood’s 1973 anthology Future City. While there is no dome above New York City in this story, the city has been evacuated and can only be visited in summer. While health authorities have advised against opening a city for longer than two weeks per year, lobbyism from the tourist industry has resulted in the city being open all summer, shutting down on Labor Day. The first-person narrator is a teenage boy from Michigan who visits the city with his father. The story features many of the elements mentioned at the beginning of the novel—bedicabs, movie theaters showing graphic content, restaurants with human waiters and mandatory lung-cleansing upon exit. Eventually, the son resolves to return next year, possibly on his own. Bova himself writes: “Incidentally, this shortly led to my writing a short novel called City of Darkness, which takes up where this tale ends.”