THE WORLD INSIDE by Robert Silverberg(Orb 2010)Reviewed by L. J. Hurst |
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. The World Inside is one of Robert Silverberg’s arcology novels. Urbmons are 999 floor high-rise blocks, constructed to hold enormous populations, with new buildings being erected on a continuous basis. There is no stopping the need for new accommodation because the religion of the residents worships reproduction, and the social standards of the society mean that couples start reproducing in their early teens, with women in particular suffering stigmatism if they are barren. In addition, social mores encourage men to go “nightwalking”, in which they wander into anybody else’s apartment and sleep with the woman resident. No one seems to worry that this means nearly every family must be raising some other man’s children. The seven chapters, which were originally seven short stories – this is a fix-up, introduce us to a small number of characters who know or are related to each other. More detail of the world comes in the first chapter as Charles Mattern introduces a visitor from Venus to this part of Earth in 2381. Within the Urbmon life is organised in collections of floors known as cities; people have or want very little, but tend not to travel far, and even have no wish to explore, nor to relocate to one of the new Urbmons. There has been, using Mark Adlard’s term in his similar British “Tcity” arcology novels, a “denaissance” and not only is the theology of the Urbmonians shallow, so is everything else in their thinking apart from their engineering ability to construct Urbmons. There are only two ways of escape from such a claustrophobic atmosphere: madness, which is quickly ended, as victims are hurled down the garbage shutes, or escape. There is a world outside, where the food for the residents is grown, as Michael Statler finds out in chapter six. The world has been flattened for fields, and the farmers have developed a completely different outlook on life, personified in unattractive rituals made to keep their population low, which Statler finds make relations between men and women so very different to the Urbmon that he is driven back inside. First published in 1971, The World Inside only appeared in Britain five years later, after the success of Tower of Glass. Despite the fascinating new introduction written for this edition, explaining the origins of the novel, Silverberg never seems to have smoothed the inconsistencies of his original stories – why are the extra-terrestrial developments which feature in chapter one (which was also the first story, “A Happy Day in 2381”, published in 1969) not explored further, for instance, by taking men such as Michael Statler? How did the farmers and insiders become so separate? On the other hand within the last forty years not dissimilar religious developments have encouraged reproduction, which has meant populations have doubled in significant parts of the world, and migrated to the USA in the Quiverfull movement. Never a pure prophecy, The World Inside remains a frightful what-if.
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© L J Hurst 2010