The World Inside

One of the best books I've read for a while.

I found this vision of a future world for humanity to be intriguing, if not entirely believable. I just don't think that many people would be satisfied with a life of so few choices. Yes, I understand his theory that "artificial selection" by years of living in Urbmons would weed out people who dream of something more to life than reproduction, who question the status quo, who long to explore the outside world. I just think he underestimates how MANY people would be dissatisfied with this superficial society, and that they would get together and conspire to cause a revolution. Still, it was very well written and entertaining, and made me think long and hard, which any good book will do.

Good condition, can't really complain, except that I hate it when I'm sent a library book without any warning. I look for collectible copies and this one is not.

This will not be for everyone: the frankness and frequency of the portrayals of sex in this book make it the sort that one finds difficult to lend or recommend to friends. You, however, I don't know, so I can recommend it to you.The Urban Monad is a strange and rather scary dystopia: Sexual promiscuity is not so much encouraged as enforced; procreation is the ultimate aim of a high-rise society that embraces the challenges of sustaining incredible population growth, entirely for its own sake! It sounds like (and to a certain extent it is) a rather grubby and adolescent exercise in sexual fantasy by an author who, apart from being a hugely prolific writer of thoughtful Sci-Fi, was also the pseudonymous peddler of vast quantities of erotic pulp. But, when the reader is acclimatised enough to the story to see past the smut, a transformation occurs. This book is somewhat of a stylistic departure for Silverberg as a novelist, but the multiple-short-story form doesn't stop him weaving in his usual themes of the struggle of the individual against outside control or their own destiny. We observe this bizarre society through the eyes of various citizens of the vertical city, and see that Silverberg is actually satirising human social mores, sexual politics and the behaviour of a species whose enduring economics is one of sex, food, shelter and status. That said, there is still a great deal here which is aimed purely at titillating Sci-fi's core audience of spotty hetero (or virginal, theoretically hetero) males, but hey, what's wrong with a little of that now and again?

This guy writes wonderfully. This story is very interesting and detailed. There is a delightful, transcendent chapter that really transported me to a very deep place. Many of the ideas presented are things we are grappling with now so Silverberg was quite prophetic. This is one of my favorite books of his. I don't want to say anymore but it was gift to read this novel which was full of new ideas and existential truth told in a fast paced and satisfying way.