The World Inside

In The World Inside, Robert Silverberg creates a very interesting Earth civilization that copes with a World population of 75 billion people in the year 2381. The book was first published in 1971 at a time when many people were concerned about the sustainability the Earth’s population growth.

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Authors such as Paul Ehrlich warned about starvation and devastating societal problems due to over population in the future. At the time limiting births was probably the most recommended strategy for averting the devastating prognostications. However, Silverberg takes a different approach in The World Inside. The people of 2381 live in huge skyscrapers (called urbmons) that are 1000 floors in height. Each Urbmon consists of 25 cities of about 40 floors each, and over 800,000 people live within each urbmon. They live their entire lives in very small one-room apartments which afford almost no privacy. This vertical world frees much space for agricultural purposes, and of course there are farming communes where relatively primitive communities of people grow and transport food and raw materials to the urbmons. Within the urbmons cities, are arranged hierarchically with lower-class cities (and people) at the bottom and higher-class cities (and people) at the top. Citizens never leave their urbmon and many never leave their cities. People do not go outside. They live, play, learn, work, and build careers, all within the urbmon where they were born, unless they are selected to populate a newly constructed urbmon. An interesting feature of this future civilization is that population control is thought of as extremely immoral and is absolutely banned. Instead, it is strongly encouraged that all couples have as many children “littles” as possible and those who have only a few children are severely criticized and thought to be immoral. In addition, women are required to submit to any man’s sexual demands, not only their husband’s. The custom of “night walking” allows any man to enter any apartment (usually within their own city, but even in other cities) and have sex with any woman, even if the woman’s husband is home at the time. Women may “night walk” also, but they usually wait for a man to come to them instead. This custom of open sex is deemed one of the necessary privileges that helps keep the populous under control in this very structured, controlled, and invasive civilization. In fact, any deviation from expected behavior is dealt with very severely through psychological/emotional therapy and/or almost instant execution by throwing the perpetrators “flippos” down the nearest waste recycling shut. Silverberg’s story follows the lives of a small group of people. Not surprisingly, it focuses on the difficulties that some people endure due to the extremely proscribed and unnatural lifestyle. In my opinion, the vertical society that Silverberg created is the most interesting aspect of this book and the story is secondary and almost superfluous. The book is worth reading but not one of Silverberg’s best.

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So...still looking for a particular book from my childhood (and with few clues)and I asked the Goodreads forum "What's the Name of that Book?" for help. Silverberg was suggested and while I'd already checked him, decided to check again. And this time I see this on the list, thinking, "Hey! I used

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to have that one." Quick check on Open Library, finding it there, I decide to reread it for my Year of Nostalgic Rereads. At first, I could remember nothing about it, which is quite surprising, because it should have been unforgettable. Imagine a teen in the 1970s reading this... It was salacious, and crude, and traipsed as science fiction! Forty years later, it's still salacious, yet now rather vulgar in many spots. And not particularly good science fiction. Yes, I know, Hugo nominee...but we know what those mean, and Farmer's book was far better, and...this curiously isn't listed on the Hugo website.

Others have said it's dated (drugs, free love, and overpopulation fears from the 1960s). Of course it is, which severely undermines any case for the timelessness of this particular science fiction. I think it was Silverberg's chance to mainstream sex writing. I was annoyed (as I usually am with such attempts) at Silverberg's use of odd terms to convey a distant future - sort of like tall, skinny square glasses on Star Trek. But I was more surprised as some of the incongruities in his short story. Without spoiling, one character refers to some as "priests" when the entire context Silverberg set up uses a term "blessmen". There are other instances that likely came from piecemealing this from other short stories and whipping it out at breakneck spped. Add in a religious imperative to procreate? He never answers the question as to why, relying, I guess, on a surreal "just because" alternative to the future as backbone. Nor does he examine why religion is the controlling factor in this bizarre future, given that they can manipulate minds and emotions into compliance - though he's probably right in that religion can be the maintenance drug to sustain the imperative.

And now to forget it again for another forty years...

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Surprisingly much of the novel deals with sexual tensions and norms. Some fascinating concepts and projections of how overpopulation could limit human freedom. Recommended!

In the world of 2381, society has discovered a way to deal with overpopulation. Instead of sprawling out, society has sprawled up, creating giant 1000 storey megatowers (“monads”) that house 800,000-900,000 citizens. There are thousand of these towers. They can house endless billions and still

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leave most of the land free for agriculture to support the mouths of these billions. The towers themselves are rather self contained, largely recycling and creating what the denizens need to live with superefficient energy systems. Every tower is divided into “cities” of 20-40 stories or so. The cities are arranged in a caste like system, with the more lucrative (higher up) apartments going to those with “higher” jobs (monad - administrators and bureaucrats at the top, followed by white collar, and then blue collar jobs/castes).

Birth control is illegal, and everyone hopes for as many “littles” as possible. To encourage more breeding (and less frustration, since we’ve eliminated jealousy and strife) men go on “nightwalks” going into apartments and having sex with the women they find there. Refusal is not totally illegal, but society shames on it, and if you don’t play nice, they may decide to throw you down the chute.

Most of the current societal mores are gone. Universal sex (with anyone, of any sex) is not a problem and drug use is not prohibited or limited. Just fit in and do your part with society, staying in your tower (especially city) and don’t question society. There is no privacy, there is no faithfulness, and no reason to trust.

This book focuses on a few characters in Urbmon 116, going through the daily lives of some of the men living in the Shanghai area of the Urbmon. This book is almost like a series of short stories regarding each of these men and are closely linked to each other. We have an artist, a sociocomputator, an urbmon administrator (or future administrator), a technician, and an historian. They each delve into the part of themselves and/or the system that is imperfect.

I believe this book is just as interesting in 2012 as it was in 1971. In this utopian dystopia, the world is a very crowded and free, yet restricted place. In the 60s-70s there was quite a bit of overpopulation dystopia due to extreme Malthusian projections by a number of scientists and economists, which clearly heavily influence the book. Now in 2012, women’s health care and the right to access birth control has become a major issue. Here, birth control isn’t just illegal, it’s anathema. People are encouraged to have as many littles as possible and one main character is actually embarrassed of his wife’s sterility (they only had four children). People are maturing, getting married, and having families at earlier ages (11 and 12) and are determined to increase the population as fast as possible, because there is nothing worse than not giving as many babies the chance at life as possible. It’s a GOP/Tea Party wet dream with regards to women’s rights.

Women have no bodily autonomy at all. Sex is compulsory, they can’t say no to the men that “nightwalk” into their apartments (and you only see one instance where a woman may have nightwalked, and it is mentioned that women rarely go; while not precisely forbidden, it is an unusual, frowned upon behavior)

If you don’t like this life or question it? Well, it’s either reprogramming or into the chute you go.

Anthropological questions are raised as well - Are the denizens of the society conditioned to accept things as they are, or are they actually selectively breeding a population made to live in these high density structures? I like the way the question was brought up by one of the characters, a historian that was studying the sexual mores of the past, and also carried as a thread through the book. You see some of the conditioning in action (the fears of a citizen who thinks they may have been spotting behaving aberrantly), but you also know that those who act against expected norms are either sent to some serious reprogramming facilities or just put into the chute (which does remove the ability to continue to poison the genetic pool).

At first, I was extremely annoyed with the rampant Patriarchy until I got further into the novel to see what the author was doing with it.. Women seem to exist solely to create plot and have babies. All of the jobholders are male. Every man works, and with the exception of one woman, who is an artist, we are shown women do nothing in this society. The only reason we ever seem to talk to women is to further some dramatic plot ahead, they hold no job (other than breeder), they are rarely the sexual aggressors, they don’t nightwalk, they don’t hold any positions.

And then a character escapes to the world outside. The agricultural commune that farms the areas around the monads, where birth control is strictly practiced so that the commune does not produce more mouths than they can feed, and the women are free to actually hold positions and pursue careers. I wish the dichotomy of the two cultures could have been delved into more, but Silverberg does such a thorough job describing the world inside the towers, that it’s easy to imagine what the world outside is not.

I do think the the attitudes toward sex and the scenes with regard to sex date the book as being from the free-love acid-tripping hippy times. It’s just really dated when it comes to the sex, maybe it’s the language, I’m not sure, but it’s the only place where I feel the book is really dated.

I really loved that the book is a dystopia that’s taking on an issue. It’s done the awesome way it used to be done, with an author setting up a “utopia” that is very dysfunctional about something, to take whatever issue to its extreme end. Nowadays, dystopia seems to be “and the zombies/monsters are at us, rawr, and we made this totally dysfunctional society to live with/fight them”... I like the dysfunctional utopia calling out some social issue so much better.

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Not so much a novel, more interconnected short stories. They take place way in the future and focus on one building that has 1000 stories. 30-40 stories make up a city...

Life is much different. These people don't go outside. EVER. Apparently some may travel, but only if their jobs require it, and

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even then, they aren't vacationing on the beach. It's building to building. Space colonization is very lightly touched upon. Sexuality is very fluid and open (but still misogynistic in my opinion). Just an amazing piece of speculative fiction.

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Completed reading of The World Inside. Interesting. Premise is the opposite of the "population explosion theory" of the 1960s and 1970s when people feared the planet would become over populated, and there would be mass starvation. This book postulates that if you create high density centers, and

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make them vertical, the majority of the earth's land could be dedicated to agriculture, and therefore everyone could eat.

One description of how wonderful such a world could be uses a description of the past as a contrast, "He understands the awful chaos of the past. The terrifying freedoms; the hideous necessity of making choices. The insecurity. The confusion. The lack of plan. The formlessness of contexts."

Of course, the author has the story peppered with a few rebels who die in pursuit of this awful freedom of the past.

The book is dated, for sure; but still the world building is moderately interesting and I found a couple of characters who I could care about. Some of the values being touted in the 1960s and 1970s certainly do show up in this author's depiction of a future "utopia"; the sexual life is quite "free". And the description of a music concert was funny as a parody of a rock concert.

I would only recommend this book to people who love Science Fiction and who wouldn't mind some of the more dated elements.

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Interesting novel with an alternate take on overpopulation. I really enjoyed it.

An interesting vision of the future 300 years from now, set in a world somewhat like last year's film DREDD, except here the enormous apartment buildings are models of self-sustainable efficiency, not slums that are riddled with drugs and gangs. Even the way justice is meted out is quite similar to

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that film, actually.
Although THE WORLD INSIDE story didn't have much in the way of tension or narrative arc, it was a very enjoyable travelogue into a somewhat possible future. The story dipped in and out of the lives of various people, and deftly showed the linkages between the lives of the characters. All in all an enjoyable read, I skimmed through the parts that didn't interest me, dug in when it struck my fancy, and the ending was appropriate and satisfying. Recommended for fans of speculative fiction.

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Breaking out is problematic, but if you do, you will see some things you've never seen before. One of my favorite by Sliverberg. Atomospheric and prophetic.

Excellent dystopian SF story of a world where the population has truly exploded and everyone lives in huge sky scrapers. He has a way of making the remarkable seem matter-of-fact.

Pros: fascinating world, fascinating characters

Cons: if you’re prudish you won’t like this book

Centuries in the future the human population has increased dramatically. Most humans live in 1000 story towers separated into cities with their own schools, hospitals, etc. Fed by communes outside the

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towers that urban dwellers will never see as they live their lives fully contained within their buildings.

This book starts with the premise that humans have moved into towers, foregoing privacy for a sexually liberal society and then shows what life is like for a handful of those inhabitants. It’s a fascinating look at a certain kind of utopian society - and how unhappy many of its inhabitants are under their veneer of acceptance.

The stories vary in terms of interest, though each shows a different aspect of life. The first involves a lot of exposition as a urbmon dweller explains the tower lifestyle to a visiter from Venus, where the lifestyle is quite different. Another story shows a young woman’s terror over the prospect of being forced to move to a new tower. Most of the stories are from the point of view of the higher middle class, though there are glimpses of how the lower, physical workers, and higher, government workers live.

Like many utopian/dystopian books there’s a huge emphasis on population and sex in this book. There’s a brief contrast in one of the stories between how the people in the towers encourage having children while those of the communes must keep their populations in check. While the free sexual mores are meant to reduce conflict, jealousies still arise, though not the way you might expect. There’s a LOT of sex going on in this book. It’s not graphic and is there to make several points, but consider yourself warned.

I’d expected the book to end with the departure of the Venusian visitor so I was a little surprised when a different character got a second story. The story did wrap things up well though, touching - however briefly - on the other viewpoint characters.

This is a pretty interesting book. There’s no plot but the world and characters are quite interesting and will keep you turning pages. I did find one story, about a musician, a little boring, but the others were quite fascinating. I’d put it with Ira Levin’s This Perfect Day in terms of dystopian worlds that might not be so bad to live in.

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This is about sexual Licence in a Settlement composed of a single skyscraper, Urban Monad 116. It seems an example of the Gated community concept until we are told there are 75 billion people on the planet. This start to go wrong and large scale violence breaks out. Eventually the protagonists

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escape, and we leave them wandering, ill equipped to confront the world they are really in.

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Robert Silverberg joins J.G.Ballard, John Brunner (The Sheep Look Up, Quicksand) and others in the 1960-70s describing social dystopia where the only escape is death. This is certainly an intriguing story that was shocking for its time in the constant invocation of sex as the universal palliative

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for boredom---guaranteed to focus the attention of any teen reader. What's sad is that these authors couldn't find an encouraging ending or any potential way out of their visions. At least the characters are fairly well-rounded humans, rather than stereotype-caricatures, and they maintain sympathy in all of their internal struggles.

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(Original Review, 1980-10-27)

Gee, Danny, I don't recall saying you don't enjoy sex, but, "please don't squeeze the Charmin!" More to the point, I found you missed the point of the "boring sexual encounters." [2018 EDIT: Daniel L. Weinreb, Danny for his friends, my American friend died on the 7th of

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September of 2012; so many talks through the wires, he in the US and me in Portugal, that would fill many posts if one day I’m willing to put them on "paper"…the first time I started doing stuff in Lisp in college he was there to help me out; RIP My Friend.]

To Wit:

"His sexual encounters are SO boring and SO devoid of any semblance of warmth or caring that I find them not just a waste of time but positively DISTURBING."

You see, that is precisely the point! "The Tower of Glass," and "The World Inside," both describe a FUTURE devoid of any really personal caring, and, consequently, sexual encounters are simply for the sake of sexual satisfaction - between consenting adults – and given the empty existence of the characters in the environment in which Bob portrays, "boring sex" just might not be so boring for THEM. It goes without saying, that one might find this POSSIBLE future very disturbing, and, if so, the "boring sexual" episodes have indeed succeeded doing exactly what they were intended to do.

And, of course, if Greg prefers to use as TP pages covered with detailed descriptions of boring sexual encounters, and apparently, shredded in flaming rage from the innards of a COVERLESS paperback no less, well, who am I to deny him such delights...shred on!

The careless sexual encounters in "The World Inside" (I have not read "The Tower of Glass" yet) would make a valid point about that society, if that were what Silverberg had in mind. But consider "The Stochastic Man". We are told how much the main character loves and treasures his wife, and so on, but the encounters are STILL the same. You might say this is to tell us something about the main character; could be, but as far as I can tell, Silverberg is ALWAYS like that. So it is my suspicion that he isn't doing it to make points; he just always writes them that way. I could be wrong, of course.

[2018 EDIT: This review was written at the time as I was running my own personal BBS server. Much of the language of this and other reviews written in 1980 reflect a very particular kind of language: what I call now in retrospect a “BBS language”.]

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Really enjoyed this one, my first Robert Silverberg book. A wildly different response to The Population Bomb, which also inspired Make Room! Make Room! and Stand on Zanzibar and many others I'm forgetting, I'm sure. I thought it was a novel, but really it's a collection of seven short stories he

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wrote in the same setting: Urbmon 116, one of several thousand-story towers in the Chipitts sector of future earth.

Rather than strictly limiting population, the Urbmon's take 'be fruitful and multiply' seriously. Couples marry at very early ages and are encouraged to have many, many children. When the building is full, they build another.

I think Silverberg did a good job of remaining neutral on the world he was describing. So many of the other overpopulation sci-fi novels present a dystopian hellhole. It's logical and easy to do. But Silverberg shows life in the tower as quite pleasurable. The ugly side of life there (no privacy, rebellious people are unceremoniously dumped down the chute to be recycled, people are expected to provide sex on demand to anyone who asks) are shown, but not belabored. The reader is left to draw their own conclusions.

I want to point out: I had no idea my fellow sci-fi fans are so prudish. Reading other reviews of this book, you'd think it's going to be one of those old pornographic Greenleaf Classics. That is not at all the case. Sex is a big part of Urbmon life. They practice something called Nightwalking where men roam from floor-to-floor, apartment to apartment to sleep with others (men or women). This is a part of the world presented, but if you are expecting pages and pages of explicitly described intercourse, you are going to be disappointed. I didn't feel it detracted from the story.

Though Silverberg shows some latent sexism as it's the men who wander and the women who stay home. And though homo and hetero sex are equally accepted, only hetero is ever shown. It's a product of its' time.

There isn't really a plot. As mentioned, each chapter was originally a stand alone story, though all together they present a richly detailed future world. Characters mentioned in one story may star in another story, giving some continuity.

So a very good book. I'm glad I read it. My only real complaint is that I wish when compiling these, they had kept the original story titles attached.

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