Tuesday, December 28, 2010

The World Inside by Robert Silverberg

It's the year 2381 and 75 billion people live on earth. In order to sustain this enormous population, (the growth of which is actively encouraged), humanity has moved into massive buildings called urbmons, which climb 3 kilometers in the sky. This vertical existence allows the human race to pack itself one on top of each other, while being able to use most of the arable land on planet Earth for food production. Inside the urbmons, humans have learned to coexist peacefully, and on paper everything seems idyllic. But in this highly regimented world where you are not allowed to leave your own urbmon, and where those who think differently -- or "flippers" -- are eliminated, some people dare to dream about what exists outside their giant vertical homes. Overall, I found this novel fascinating. My only complaint is that it is obsessed with sex, with its vision of a sexually liberated culture being a thin disguise for a teenage male sex fantasy. This being said, parts of this book are brilliant, and the reader is left with this interesting question, “what if human population growth did not slow down, but was actually encouraged to increase unabated?

3 1/2 out of 5 stars