THE YEARS OF THE CITY

Five sequential, loosely linked stories (like Midas World, 1983), exploring, in thoughtful and entertaining style, the future of New York City. The first tale sparkles after a didactic start: think-tank whiz Shire Brandon urges a new approach to New York's intractable problems (strikes, collapsing mass transit, criminals running amok), primarily via the Universal Town Meeting, an elaborate mass TV/radio hookup designed to allow everyone free debate and bargaining; meanwhile, Brandon's disturbed daughter (his wife committed suicide) learns that she's not his child and runs off in a blizzard. Next, a labored, diffuse, meandering episode: wealthy idealist de Rintelen Feigerman advances plans for a new, sanitary, self-sufficient city (improbable complications ensue). But the third tale is fine--blending a plan for Manhattan's transparent-dome enclosure with power struggles (unions, the mob) and marital tensions. And the other two splendid, more playful yarns depict a utopian city with few laws--where criminals (such as illegal hang-gliders) pay restitution by undertaking hazardous community service. . . as a chatty, cheerfully amateur Supreme Court, uninterested in legalisms, wittily dispenses accurate and practical justice. With one exception, then, and despite some editorializing interludes: the most surefooted and involving Pohl in some time.