The World Inside [Paperback]

Robert Silverberg (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 28, 2004

Welcome to Urban Monad 116. Reaching nearly two miles into the sky, the one thousand stories of this building are home to over eight hundred thousand people living in peace and harmony. In the year 2381 with a world population of over seventy-five billion souls, the massive Urbmon system is humanity’s salvation.

Life in Urbmon 116 is highly regulated, life is cherished, and the culture of procreation is seen as the highest pinnacle of god’s plan. Conflict is abhorred, and any who disturb the peace face harsh punishment—even being sent “down the chute” to be recycled as fertilizer.

Jason Quevedo, a historian, searches records of the twentieth century hoping to find the root of his discontent with the perfection of Urbmon life.

Siegmund Kluver, a young and ambitious administrator, strives to reach the top levels of the Urbmon’s government and discovers the civilization’s dark truths.

Michael Statler, a computer engineer, harbors a forbidden desire. He dreams of leaving the building—of walking in the open air and visiting the far-off sea. This is a dream he must keep secret. If anyone were to find out, he’d face the worst punishment imaginable.

The World Inside is a fascinating exploration of society and what makes us human, told by a master of speculative fiction.

The World Inside is a 1971 Hugo Award Nominee for Best Novella.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In the 1960s, professional population alarmist Paul Ehrlich made hilariously inaccurate prognostications of imminent Malthusian doom. While these predictions inspired some SF authors to depict crowded future worlds, Silverberg's 1971 quasi-utopian tale—less a novel than a collection of closely linked vignettes—presents a 24th-century Earth populated by 75 billion fanatically pro-natalist conformists. The product of centuries of artificial selection and social pressures, rewarded with (or forced to endure) frequent, meaningless sex, the citizens of the three–kilometer–high Urbmons are for the most part incapable of imagining other ways of life. Those few deviants who rebel are either forcibly cured or summarily executed. By modern standards this is a lean book, but Silverberg can bring a world to life with a few carefully chosen words, and a recent HBO option suggests it will appeal to present-day audiences. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Review

"A major work of contemporary sf. Convincing... tight and thought-provoking." --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: I Books (September 28, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743487230
• ISBN-13: 978-0743487238
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,562,985 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Silverberg's Dystopia Reaches for the Sky, July 15, 2001

By 

Dave Deubler (Pennsylvania) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The World Inside (Paperback)

Imagine the Earth in the year 2381. Imagine a society in which sexual frustration and jealousy and psychological hang-ups have all been eliminated by happiness drugs and universal sexual availability. Imagine that everyone sees all life as God's blessing and success is judged by how many children you've produced. Welcome to Robert Silverberg's Urban Monolith, a thousand-story building that houses 800,000 of Earth's 75 billion people.

Silverberg presents his ostensibly utopian future through the Faulknerian technique of dramatizing just a few seemingly random episodes in the lives of a small, but representative grouping of loosely interwoven characters. The story opens as a social scientist revels in the joy of a perfectly ordinary morning. The young man who slept with his wife is still there, an immediate indication of the sexual freedom that compensates residents for the total lack of privacy they must accept as part of the overcrowding. The young man is Siegmund Klumer, an up and coming 14 year old, who seems destined to become one of the Urbmon's leaders, and the novel is essentially his story, told indirectly by people who know, or respect, or at least share sexual partners, with him. But the real star of this show is the society itself, and the insidious way it provides for the needs of thousands of people, even while robbing them of their essential humanity.

As the story moves from one character to another, we are introduced to such marvels as automated child-care, futuristic rock concerts, and pleasure-giving drugs, but we also gradually begin to see the cracks in the façade of utopian perfection, and the terrible price the residents sometimes pay. Universal sexual availability helps drain off frustrations and aggression, but sex quickly becomes monotonous, meaningless, and emotionally unfulfilling. The drug-induced highs lead to inevitable comedowns, marital fidelity is socially unacceptable, and personal freedom has more limits than at first appears. People mature early, in their early teens, and begin working, having sex, and producing children as soon as possible. Of course such a close-knit society must have order, and since no one is ever alone, it follows that someone is always watching. Variation from accepted behavior is viewed by the authorities as threatening, and the punishment is always either re-education or death. And as with any controlled society, all social institutions are geared toward convincing people that they are happy, even though there are many more unhappy people than is commonly admitted.

This is a finely crafted book, with its subtle characterization, carefully integrated social milieu, and bold yet understated technique. The late 60's influence of hedonistic sexuality and drug taking makes this book unsuitable for younger readers, but it is not so shocking as to be offensive to most adults. Most of all, Silverberg sends a potent warning that over-population, short sighted thinking, and rampant pleasure seeking all make a populace vulnerable to authoritarianism - a warning that looms just as tall today as it did 30 years ago.

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The World Inside -- 30 years later we are becoming this, December 21, 2004

By 

Mr. Roger H. Geyer "outcast_searcher" (Lexington, KY USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The World Inside (Paperback)

As the "spotlight reviews" state, this is one of Silverberg's best, and handled in an unusual and engaging plot style.

Silverberg has invented a future "utopian" society where the earth supports 75 billion people "comfortably" in terms of physical resources -- and the society sees expanding that population rapidly as its main reason for existing. A clever balance of technology, energy efficiency, and agricultural balance all makes this seem possible.

What is so great about this to me is how Silverberg gradually brings to light the true horror of living in this society, by having us share the thoughts and experiences of a series of its members as the novel progresses.

In each case you see that on the surface, all seems well, yet ALL of these people are terribly unhappy and have no true sense of purpose or connectedness.

Why? Well, handling the population has required huge sacrifices. Absolute conformation to the norms is an absolute requirement. Failure to adhere to such norms is met with brainwashing, or for more aggregious cases (or where the brainwashing fails) summary execution by being dumped into the nearest matter-to-energy converter -- where your atoms "serve" society without causing any pollution. There is still a heavy class structure to society, with all the ill emotional effects that holds today, and the lucky few chosen for the top reap all the benefits -- NOT for the good of themselves more than for "the people".

The results, which Silverberg gradually makes us realize is a society which: allows no personal property, pays virtually no attention to the emotional needs of its children, demands total conformity and obedience upon pain of death or being stripped of all personality, gives no choice over where or how one lives, gives no choice over career, interests, mates, and has most of its members taking hallucinogens as a socially accepted psychological crutch. Also, religion is a pre-packaged standardized psychological crutch, thrust on anyone feeling unhappy with essentially the "you have to have faith" mantra. Finally, nearly everyone feels like a failure for not LIKING their role in the SHAM that society is full of happy members.

Now, about 30 years after this novel was written when we look around at the first world -- the parallels are eerie. As the global population continues to mount rapidly and our technologies allow us to live more and more in isolated boxes and consume prepackaged "goods" in ever more standardized forms by our leaders, our media, our corporations, our religions, and our own wants -- one has to wonder if Silverberg was forecasting the inevitable psychological state of man, or if he just got lucky.

Either way, the result was brilliantly insightful. This book is easily a peer to such classics as "Brave New World", "1984", and "Animal Farm" in terms of the clarity of its vision.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Top quality Science Fiction!, July 16, 2001

By 

David Rasquinha (Arlington, VA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The World Inside (Hardcover)

The World Inside is one of Silverberg's best works, where he extrapolates into the future and then looks at human behavior. Picture Earth in the year 2381, specifically present day USA. The inexorable growth of population, driven by a quasi-religious fertility ethic has so pressured the available surface area, that new urban units have developed. Instead of cities, there are huge apartment complexes, many towers (grouped in a "constellation"), with each tower rising miles into the air, accommodating as many as 1000 levels, each with hundreds of apartments. In effect, each such "urban monad" or "urbmon" is a mini-city in itself and like any city has its own schools, medical facilities, waste management, technicians, office professionals and administrators. With this background, Silverberg writes a series of short stories that explore social interaction. With so many people in close proximity, conflict management becomes critical so the urbmon "eliminates" causes of conflict. Sexual attraction for instance is kept free of jealousy by making sexual relationships independent of marital links. Men and women can "nightwalk" into other's apartments for sex as casually as borrowing a cup of sugar. Families of 2 parents and 6-10 children occupy one apartment which is just one large room so children are taught from an early age to share toys and possessions. Privacy is unheard of and consequently nudity is free of taboo. The individual is socialized into subordinating his or her behavior and aspirations to the good of the urbmon society. And yet, since the urbmon inevitably requires maintenance, police and janitorial services, a clear stratification of society develops, with the lowly seeking to rise to the ranks of the Administrators on the top levels. Each story explores one facet of life in the urbmon and in doing so unfolds the big picture. With all needs met, what happens to striving for something better? How is the occasional rebel to be dealt with? With all material needs taken care of, why go out of the urbmon into a frightening open space at all? This is a book that in turns shakes up the reader, makes one think of the power of society and even scares! Science fiction at its best: the focus is less on pseudo-technological bells and whistles and more on how humans behave in a vision of the future that is both attractive and frightening at the same time. Highly recommended.