The Inverted World

Inbunden, 239 sidor

På English

Publicerades 17 augusti 1974 av Harper & Row.

ISBN:
978-0-06-013421-1
Kopierade ISBN!
ASIN:
0060134216

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Inverted World (The Inverted World in some editions) is a 1974 science fiction novel by British writer Christopher Priest. The novel's basic premise was first used in the short story "The Inverted World" included in New Writings in SF 22 (1973), which had different characters and plot. In 2010, the novel was included in the SF Masterworks collection. In the novel, an entire city and its residents travel slowly across a supposedly alien planet on railway tracks (it is left unclear to the reader whether it truly is not planet Earth). The city's engineers lay track for the city, reusing old track the city has crossed over. Many people are unaware that the city is even moving. A crisis ensues as its population decreases, the people grow unruly, and an obstacle looms ahead.

12 utgåvor

None

Well, this novel slowly snuck up on me, slowly but unstoppably. The first 70 pages or so seem fairly straight-forward future dystopia - not with all questions answered, but still. And then we get into the meat of the plot and it becomes something else entirely. Sure, you can (and possibly should) find all sorts of common vibrations here; of how we don't all live in the same (perceived) world, of how the constant hunt for the future ravages the present, of how we're always prepared to do horrible things rather than reshape our reality. But honestly, the one thing that kind of bugs me about the book is that we get it spelled out in the end. (If you believe it. It's all relative.) It's in the sheer panicked movement forward that the novel lives. Like a shark. On land. Without fins. It's in the impossibility of knowing what …

Ämnen

  • Fiction
  • Science Fiction
  • Speculative Fiction
  • Post Apocalyptic
  • Dystopia