Created as an experiment by the time-traveling goddess Pallas Athene, the Just City is a planned community, populated by over ten thousand children and a few hundred adult teachers from all eras of history, along with some handy robots from the far human future—all set down together on a Mediterranean island in the distant past.
They come from all eras of history. The student Simmea, born an Egyptian farmer's daughter sometime between 500 and 1000 A.D, is a brilliant child, eager for knowledge, ready to strive to be her best self. The teacher Maia was once Ethel, a young Victorian lady of much learning and few prospects, who prayed to Pallas Athene in an unguarded moment during a trip to Rome—and, in an instant, found herself in the Just City with grey-eyed Athene standing unmistakably before her.
Meanwhile, Athene's brother Apollo—stunned by the realisation that there are things mortals understand better than he does—has arranged to live a human life, and has come to the City as one of the children. He knows his true identity, and conceals it from his peers. For this lifetime, he is prone to all the troubles of being human.
Then, a few years in, Sokrates arrives—the same Sokrates recorded by Plato himself—to ask all the troublesome questions you would expect. What happens next is a tale only the brilliant Jo Walton could tell—a story of gods and humans, and the surprising things they have to learn from one another.
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There's a touch of time travel in The Just City, and a rabble of robots that may well be self-aware, but please, don't read Jo Walton's thoughtful new novel expecting an exhilarating future history, or an account of the aggressive ascent of artificial intelligence. Read it as a roadmap, though, and this book may well make you a better person.
A restrained, if regrettably rapey fable with a focus on exposing the problems with philosophy when it's applied as opposed to lightly outlined, The Just City takes as its basis a certain social experiment proposed by Plato:
When a nymph named Daphne opts to be turned into a tree rather than share in eros with the god Apollo, said son of Zeus turns to Athene, the goddess of knowledge, to find out why the woman went to such lengths to avoid his affections. By way of explanation, Athene invites Apollo to participate in a realisation of the Republic. He takes her up on her offer by taking on the form of a mortal boy called Pytheas: one of ten thousand ten-year-olds saved, as their new masters would have it, from a life lacking liberty.
Simmea comes to the just city Athene teases into being with hope in her heart—hope that here, by learning to live according to Plato's principles, she can be her best self. She and Pytheas soon form a fast friendship; a friendship Kebes, who met Simmea at the slave market on the day their contracts were bought, and thinks Pytheas preternatural, simply cannot countenance.
But wait, what's this? Jealousy in the just city, where no one person is to possess, or be possessive of, another? "The ship was barely out of the harbour [and] already the seeds of rebellion were growing." (p.26)
A restrained, if regrettably rapey fable with a focus on exposing the problems with philosophy when it's applied as opposed to lightly outlined, The Just City takes as its basis a certain social experiment proposed by Plato:
The Republic is about Plato's ideas of justice—not in terms of criminal law, but rather how to maximise happiness by living a life that is just both internally and externally. He talks about both a city and a soul, comparing the two, setting out his idea of both human nature and how people should live, with the soul a microcosm of the city. His ideal city, as with the ideal soul, balanced the three parts of human nature: reason, passion, and appetites. By arranging the city justly, it would also maximise justice within the souls of the inhabitants. (p.32)That's the idea, at least. Alas, in reality, justice is far harder to achieve than the great Greek believed.
When a nymph named Daphne opts to be turned into a tree rather than share in eros with the god Apollo, said son of Zeus turns to Athene, the goddess of knowledge, to find out why the woman went to such lengths to avoid his affections. By way of explanation, Athene invites Apollo to participate in a realisation of the Republic. He takes her up on her offer by taking on the form of a mortal boy called Pytheas: one of ten thousand ten-year-olds saved, as their new masters would have it, from a life lacking liberty.
Simmea comes to the just city Athene teases into being with hope in her heart—hope that here, by learning to live according to Plato's principles, she can be her best self. She and Pytheas soon form a fast friendship; a friendship Kebes, who met Simmea at the slave market on the day their contracts were bought, and thinks Pytheas preternatural, simply cannot countenance.
But wait, what's this? Jealousy in the just city, where no one person is to possess, or be possessive of, another? "The ship was barely out of the harbour [and] already the seeds of rebellion were growing." (p.26)