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eBook Category: Science Fiction Hugo Award Nominee
eBook Description: On an alternate Earth of political chaos and harsh atmospheric extremes, Ernst Weinraub sullenly idles away his days and nights at the Café de la Fée Blanche. A carefully administered intake of alcohol fuels the regretful daydreams of the aging European as he mourns the loss of his creativity as a literati, his loves as man of passion, and his freedom as a permanent resident of an isolated city surrounded by the deadly heat and fiery sands of the 3000-mile wide African desert. [Publisher Note: This is the author's original, unedited version of "The City on the Sand"--more than 1000 words longer than its first publication in 1973.]

eBook Publisher: Fictionwise.com, Published: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1973
Fictionwise Release Date: July 2003

21 Reader Ratings: Great Good OK Poor

Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [179 KB], eReader (PDB) [66 KB], Palm Doc (PDB) [56 KB], Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [50 KB], Microsoft Reader (LIT) [90 KB] - PocketPC 1.0+ Compatible, Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [123 KB], hiebook (KML) [142 KB], Sony Reader (LRF) [79 KB], iSilo (PDB) [46 KB], Mobipocket (PRC) [58 KB], Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [86 KB], OEBFF Format (IMP) [78 KB]
Words: 16515
Reading time: 47-66 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

In Europe, there were only memories of great cultures. Spain, Portugal, Italy, France, England, Carbba, and Germany had all seized control of the world's course and the imagination of the human race at one time or another. But now these great powers of the past were drifting into a cynical old age, where decadence and momentary pleasures replaced the drive for dominance and national superiority. In Asia, the situation was even worse. The Russias struggled pettily among themselves, expending the last energies of a once-proud nation in puerile bickerings. China showed signs of total degeneration, having lost its immensely rich heritage of art and philosophy while clinging to a ruthless creed that crushed its hopeless people beneath a burden of mock-patriotism. Breulandy was the only vibrant force east of the Caucasus Mountains; still, no observer could tell what that guarded land might do. Perhaps a Breulen storm would spill out across the continent, at least instilling a new life force in the decaying states. But from Breulandy itself came no word, no hint, as though the country had bypassed its time of ascendancy to settle for a weary and bitter mediocrity.

Of the rest of the world there was nothing to be said. The Americas still rested as they had in the few centuries since their discovery: huge parklike land masses, populated by savages, too distant, too worthless, too impractical to bother about. None of the crumbling European governments could summon either the leadership or the financial support to exploit the New World. The Scandinavian lands were inhabited by skin-clad brutes scarcely more civilized than the American cannibals. Farther east, beyond the teeming Chinese shores, between Asia and the unexplored western reaches of the Americas, no one was quite certain just what existed and what was only myth. Perhaps the island continent of Lemarry waited with its untold riches and beautiful copper spires.

And then, lastly, there was Africa. One city sat alone on its fiery sands. One city, filled with refugees and a strange mongrel population, guarded that massive continent. Beyond that single city, built in some forgotten age by an unknown people for unimaginable purposes, beyond the high wooden gates that shut in the crazy heat and locked in the citizens, there was only death. Without water, the continent was death. Without shade, the parching sharaq winds were death. Without human habitation, the vast three thousand miles of whispering sands were death for anyone mad enough to venture across them. Only in the city was there a hollow travesty of life.