The World Inside
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- € 3,99
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The year is 2381. The place is Urban Monad 116 of the constellation Chippitts. The population of this one-thousand storey super-structure is 800,000+ and always growing. After two centuries of ruthless, selective breeding, the essence of life is to be blessworthy and to multiply; to afford one's neighbours any type of sexual fulfilment and, above all, to avoid the evil of frustration.
But, within this seemingly blissful vertical world there are individuals who feel such perverse desires as a longing for privacy, a wish to descend from the heights, to walk on earth and bask in the sunshine. These rebel throwbacks to an earlier Earth are dangerous, disruptive elements. And they must be destroyed - if they do not destroy themselves first . . .
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.
