Science Fiction That Isn't Science Fiction (12)

The wind that blew in their faces was cold, yet somehow stale. They were looking from a high terrace and there was a great landscape spread out below them.
Low down and near the horizon hung a great red sun, far bigger than our sun. Digory felt at once that it was also older than ours: a sun near the end of its life, weary of looking down upon that world. To the left of the sun, and higher up, there was a single star, big and bright. Those were the only two things to be seen in the dark sky; they made a dismal group. And on the earth in every direction, as far as the eye could reach, there spread a vast city in which there was no living thing to be seen.
C.S. Lewis The Magician's Nephew