 Science fiction critic John Clute said " City at the End of Time is an example of a novel in dialogue with past works of SF . " He said that Bear pays homage to William Hope Hodgson 's 1912 novel , The Night Land , with which City at the End of Time shares a number of plot elements . Both books include characters who dream of cities in the far future ( the Kalpa , and the Last Redoubt in The Night Land ) which are surrounded by encroaching chaos . The Kalpa also draws on Arthur C. Clarke 's future city , <unk> in his 1956 novel , The City and the Stars . Influences of other past works on City at the End of Time include H. P. Lovecraft 's novella The Shadow Out of Time ( 1936 ) , in which people exchange personalities in dreams across time , and Olaf Stapledon 's Last and First Men ( 1930 ) , in which the last of humanity in the deep future mentally contact people from the past . Lovecraft 's The Shadow Out of Time was in turn also influenced by The Night Land , which Lovecraft is said to have thought highly of . 
