The City in the Middle of the Night

The City in the Middle of the Night, a 2019 climate-fiction novel by Charlie Jane Anders, takes place on the tidally locked planet January. Human civilization exists in the narrow twilight zone between a scorching day side and a frozen night side, concentrated in two contrasting cities: Xiosphant, a repressive authoritarian state, and Argelo, a lawless territory run by warring criminal factions. The narrative follows two main characters, Sophie and Mouth, as their journeys force them beyond these settlements.

Sophie, a student at an elite university in Xiosphant, is expelled and left to die in the freezing wilderness after taking the blame for a theft committed by her crush, Bianca. She is rescued by the "crocodiles," an intelligent native species that communicates telepathically and is not the dangerous predator humans assume. Sophie learns to communicate with them and secretly returns to Xiosphant, agreeing to visit them regularly. Mouth, a former member of the nomadic Citizens group, is disturbed by their violent ways and tries to start over as a trader. The two storylines converge when Bianca seeks help with her political plans, leading to dangerous travels across the planet, from the cities into the unknown wilderness.

Anders, a founder and editor of the science-fiction website io9, was inspired by research on tidally locked planets. She aimed to depict how humans might adapt to such a world, balancing scientific accuracy with dramatic needs. The novel explores themes of personal relationships alongside contemporary social and political issues through its alien setting.

Critics praised the book’s use of defamiliarization. Rebecca Evans, in the *Los Angeles Review of Books*, compared the two cities to those in Ursula K. Le Guin’s *The Dispossessed*, noting how the contrast probes philosophy and ethics, with the characters’ raw honesty and diversity making larger social and environmental issues feel convincing. Jason Sheehan of NPR called it a fable-like adventure about how grand social ideas break and who gets hurt, using intimate relationships to examine our current moment through a distorted lens. Adam Roberts of *The Guardian* described it as a millennial’s novel, where characters can be judgmental but also sophisticated and passionate, delivering a heartfelt tale.