Customer Reviews

The World Inside

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

"The World Inside"--a title whose meaning has both a literal and figurative meaning as you read the book--is less a straightforward novel than a series of loosely-connected short stories, following several characters as they try to adapt to the Urbmon environment.

Others have already brought up Huxley, and indeed it's impossible not to think of him as you go through this novel. However, Silverberg brilliantly insinuates a sense of claustrophobia into his ersatz utopia; the sizes of rooms and corridors are always described, as are the presence (or absence) of teeming hordes of people inside and outside rooms, until you want to escape from this hell no less than some of the main characters.

There is a deep current of irony running through every page of this novel: absolute freedom that is in fact enforced (refusing sex can be punishable by death), hordes of people stratified into useless jobs (an up-and-comer finds out that the upper echelons do absolutely nothing), a complete disjunct between the world of the Urbmons and that of the surrounding agricultural communes (mutually unintelligible languages and cultures). This is brilliant stuff, and the prose fairly gallops along. Highly recommended.

In Robet Silverberg's novel "The World Inside" humanity attains utopia in the year 2381 when the population of the planet has grown to 75 billion people. War, starvation, crime and also birth control have been eliminated. Life is now totally fulfilled and sustained within Urbmons, mammoth skyscrapers a thousand stories high. This is also a world of total sexual freedom where men and women are expected to engage in "night walking"; refusing an invention for sex makes you a rude host. In this world it is a blessing to have children: most people are married at 12 and parents at 14. In fact, just thinking of controlling families is deemed heretical and something for which people can be put to death. Because the need to be outdoors and to travel has been eliminated thoughts of wanderlust are considered sick as well and speaking of them is another heresy. After all, these citizens live in a utopia.

The assumption of the system is that only those who are insane would have thoughts about things like privacy, faithfulness, and trust. But in Urbmon 116 there are those who want to have some individuality in their lives. Charles Mattern is a minor functionary who is disappointed that he and his wife, Principessa, had to stop at only four children. Siegmund Kluver sees the perfectly patterned existence of the Urbmons as being flawed even though he is destined to one of the omnipotent leaders of the Urbmon. So he searches throughout the vast complex of Urbmon 116 trying to find some answer to the doubts and fears that drive him, knowing that his entire future is being put in jeopardy by his actions.

"The World Inside" started out as a series of short stories about a grossly overpopulated Earth. There is Aureau Holston, a childless woman who is afraid her lowly status will force her family to emigrate to a newly constructed building, away from the only home they have ever known. The other two key characters in the novel are Jason Quevedo, a historian whose study of the ancient past is changing his views about the Utopia in which he lives, and Michael Statler, who actually escapes to the world outside Urbmon 116 only to learn that such freedom is problematic as well. Through these characters Silverberg addresses some of the world's most important issues and takes them to the sort of logical but extreme conclusion that tales of science fiction are so capable of creating. The question is whether the gift of life is more precious that the quality of the individual.

As is the tradition in utopian and dystopian novels, we are introduced to this brave new world through the eyes of a visitor from a colony on Venus, who is being guided by Mattern. This is a minor flaw in the novel, because why this gives us the requisite neophyte to be educated, it points to colonies off world where things might not only be different, but better. However, Silverberg does manage to do all of this in a more concise novel than is often the case with dystopian stories. You can also tell that this is a novel written around the time of the Sixties since one character achieves their true understanding of the Ubrmon's hivelike existence by taking a drug, although that same key moment of insight is achieved by a key character without such artificial inducement. Reading this today the great irony is that the population of the Earth has increased alarmingly, yet overpopulation is not the pressing concern it was when Silverberg wrote this book and Frank Brunner did "Stand on Zanzibar."

I loved this book. Everything by Silverberg I've read since this one has been a let down because of how good this book was. Not quite a novel, this is actually just a collection of short stories focused on specific characters living in a huge apartment building set in an overpopulated future. The characters lives sometimes interconnect and the whole thing works as a complete unit but you could easily just read one random chapter out of the book and enjoy it as a story in and of itself. Beautifully developed characters. Silverberg has a very emotional style that can really grab you. The last chapter was incredibly painful to read because it seemed so real. If you read only one Silverberg novel read this one!

Here begins a happy day in 2381. The morning sun is high enough to touch the uppermost fifty stories of Urban Monade 116. "Good morning!" says the screen heartily. "The external temperature, if anyone's interested, is 28 degrees. Today's population figure at Urbmon 116 is 881,115, which is +102 since yesterday and +14,187 since the first of the year. God bless, but we're slowing down!"

Every person of the 75,000,000,000 Earth Urbmon population lives with his/her parents until early puberty, at which point he/she is sent to the consummation halls with a pre-assigned life partner of approximately equal age. When they have their first child, the young couple moves to a sere flat on the floor the number of which reflects their social status. Here they will live out the rest of their perfectly happy lives, begetting a happy average of nine children, working at their dead-end careers (after all, if things were solved, what would there be left to do!?), and nightwalking into strangers' flats for more habitual intercourse. When they die, they will be sent for recycling down the tubes. On Earth of 2381, sex is as casual as shaking someone else's hand, and is encouraged by the muted social standards.

The book takes the format of interlinked chapter-like stories portraying various family units that can't quite live by the norm. Like the Quevedo family, who secretly feel like resurrecting the antediluvian concepts of vice and violence. Or Michael Statler, who breaks the supreme law of the Urbmon by escaping into the outside world, with which he is profoundly alienated. Or Siegmund Kluver, who, having risen to the very top at the tender age of fifteen, discovers the profound emptyness of it all.

Although very sexually explicit (after all, this is a future where intercourse is a perfectly acceptable aspect of society!), "The World Inside" provokes thought. Certainly, this work of science fiction is not to be missed.

As more and more of Silverberg's books from his "classic" period in the seventies start coming back into print, we can only hope that some intelligent publisher brings this one back. While still a concern to some people (depending on where you live) overpopulation was on everyone's mind in the seventies, as scientists started plotting the rate of human population grow and what it would all lead to. Running with that, several noted SF authors took that thought to its logical conclusion and have given us a handful of brilliant books looking at an overcrowded, full to bursting world. For the record, the other notables are John Brunner's Stand on Zanzibar, Harry Harrison's Make Room Make Room, and Thomas Disch's 334, all of which are highly recommended. The one thing that tends to bind all of them is that the world is typically falling apart and close to breaking. In Silverberg's novel, the problem has been basically solved and he goes for a different tactic, seeing what effects these changes have wrought. In his future, overcrowding has been solved by building gigantic "urbmons" (urban modules, I think) that climb way into the sky, like six hundred floors jammed with apartments and people, repeating across the landscape over and over. In the meantime, society has evolved to the point where more people are desired, where couples are encouraged to have children often and early. Perhaps the most daring concept Silverberg shows is the practice of "nightwalking" where each night people would leave their room, go into another room and essentially sleep with someone else. Floors are organized into loose cities and life just seems grand. Instead of following one character across the entire novel, Silverberg picks a loose group of characters who are somewhat linked and bounces to each person from chapter to chapter. Each character shows us a different aspect of this new world from the new traditions, to what people do to relax, and to how the authorities keep people in line. In the process he raises chilling questions about people and choices and instead of judging this world he's created, he lays it out for the reader, basically saying "Judge for yourself, it seems to work, but is it worth it?" His sharp, subtle prose reflects a quiet intensity that few SF books of the day could match, a hallmark of his classic novels and he says more and shows more in this brief novel than lesser authors could do with an entire epic. One of the more insightful and gripping novels to come out of SF and dealing with the solution to overpopulation, it deserves to be widely read (and if they bring it back, might I recommend restoring the cool cover with the abstract blocky urbmon type shape on it). If the others have made it, this has to be next.

I've never read silverberg, but after this novel, it's clear that he's master of the quill. The writing style and choice of words is phenomenal. An extravaganza and collage at the same time. He paints a vivid utopia where humankind chose to entangle themselves into the box of boxes to conquer overpopulation. Go vertical. Build urbmons, the higher the better with 800 000+ people living in a Aldous Huxley's happy New Brave World: "We eat out past and excrete urbmons! Theory of verticality in urban thrust!".

It's clear that in this utopia things are different. Dense population requires different social conventions. Sex is like a handshake. These nighwalks and somewhat deplorable daywalks to "top" any women are necessity to keep the cohesion of angst sublimed. As the scholar in the book puts it: "This psychological conditioning and centuries long selective breeding ... I suspect is matter of stripping the race of certain genes".

The book is highly philosophical and psychological and centers around glimpses of social economy that are portrayed through chapters of lives of people living in those urbmons where "... uncontrollable breeding is nightmarishly encouraged to serve some incredible concept of deity eternally demanding for more worshippers, in which dissent is ruthlessly stifled and dissenters are peremptorily destroyed (p. 75) ... the vertical society had to evolve out of the horizontal one"

The depletion of soul is carved to the skyscraper in Siegmund Cluver's, one of the to-be-administrators of the urbmon at the age of the 15, by his words when he seeks councilling for his slavery of absolute freedom: " 'God bless', the blessman says, 'What is your pain?' Sigmund answers: 'I have begun not to belong. How can I learn to cope with it? Blessman: 'You can't I'm going to turn you over the moral engineers. You can use a reality adjustment.' "

Five (5) stars. This book is full of ideas, analogues, methaphorical throws and satire analysis of humankind that it takes a well deserved place on the bookshelf. Embrace the ecstasy of verticality!

This book captivated me. Maybe the plot structure is not award winning. But I think that was the intent. To present several bound characters, all with some degree of discontent with their own society. I found the characters to be extremely interesting. The premise is indeed scary, and in the end, an absolute tragedy. I first read this book in high school (1984). I actually kept a copy from my library, as they were giving it away. I have read it a few times since, and just today finished it again. It is hard to put down and can be read in just a couple of days (it's only about 175 pages long). Bravo to Robert Silverberg for a book so engrossing.