I do not think that word means what you think it means...

[ffutures]

Small thought on re-reading Weinbaum's Flight on Titan to refresh my memory on a couple of points.

Is it just me that finds it incongruous that the main settlement on Titan, repeatedly described as a city - e.g. "Nivia, the City of Snow" - is revealed towards the end of the story to have a population of fifty.

According to Wikipedia there's actual precedent for this in the USA: Maza, North Dakota, with only 5 inhabitants, was a city as by North Dakota law any incorporated location is deemed a city regardless of size. I suppose that the name might represent a hope for the future, but I can't help feeling that it's asking to be ridiculed. Any thoughts on this? Or examples of so-called cities that started that size but went on to justify the name?

Comments

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

Dunblane has a reputation for calling itself a City, when as of... not so very many years ago, they didn't have a single supermarket, and just a collection of small village shops.

They do however get to call themselves a city because they have a Cathedral.

Albeit a very small Cathedral.

They do however now have a Marks And Spencers, so they might finally have justified the name. :)

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Thanks - maybe I'll write in an (ice) cathedral.

[armb.livejournal.com]

Similarly St Davids is a city because of the cathedral.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallest_cities_in_the_United_Kingdom

And if there is an organised religion that has cathedrals active on Titan, it seems plausible that the main (only?) church might be designated as one. (IIRC, the deciding factor would be whether there is a bishop who can ordain new priests, or whether that has to wait for visiting bishop with his seat on another planet/moon. If the main settlement has a population of 50, having a bishop on site doesn't seem _that_ necessary, but maybe it's part of that "hope for the future" thing. And future Titan religion/naming won't necessarily follow those rules anyway.)

Or maybe they built the cathedral to justify calling themselves a city because they were tired of being ridiculed for it :-)

[vicarage.livejournal.com]

Surely all US cities started with such small numbers, excluding the itinerant Native Americans.

There is no concept of town or village in the US, so the North Dakota approach is common.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Fair enough. In fact what I've said is this:

Titan’s only colony is American, with a total population around a hundred. Roughly half live and work in Nivia, the rest are freelance traders living in cabins within a few hundred miles of the city, supplied by ferry rocket.

While its name may seem a misnomer for a settlement with a population of fifty, or a bad joke if you come from one of Earth’s cities and want to look at it that way, there’s ample precedent in American history for calling Nivia a city. The name is intended as a promise of things to come and a symbol of the colony’s hopes for the future. Officially Nivia is an incorporated city governed by a mayor, twinned with Kodiak, Alaska, and the capital and economic hub of Titan. It’s mostly built underground apart from its landing field and associated buildings, with a complex network of tunnels linking most areas.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

I would get rid of the first two sentences. You have enough auctorial disavowal by saying "Officially" at the start of the first sentence.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Most other countries in the world have some sort of rule about what constitutes a city, e.g. population, having a cathedral, etc. It's only the USA that doesn't work that way. Since a lot of my readers are British I need to say something about why it might seem unusual but isn't for Americans.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

The thing is. the line about "a bad joke if you come from one of Earth's cities" sounds contemptuous when I read it. If you began "As with other tiny frontier settlements in American history, the name of city is intended . . . " it would seem less condescending.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Fair point. OK,I'll re-phrase it a little.

[w00hoo.livejournal.com]

On a side note, I live near the city of Rochester in Kent, which managed to not be a city for a while because the council forgot to renew it in time... It's not _that_ big on its own but has a cathedral and the Medway Towns that it is part of are heading towards a million inhabitants (probably over it now).

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/england/1991827.stm

[pauldormer.livejournal.com]

In the UK, every so often there's a news item about another town becoming a city. Apparently, you need a charter from the monarch to become a city. Guildford has a cathedral and a university (I can see both from where I set) but is not a city.

In the US, any two-horse settlement can call itself a city.