Books - The World Inside

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	Books - The World Inside

The World Inside is a science fiction novel, written by Robert Silverberg and published in 1971. The novel is set on Earth in the far future. The world has been badly overpopulated due to religious beliefs similar to fundamentalist Christianity, and most of the action occurs in a massive 1000-floor enclosed city-tower called an Urban Monad. (Similar to the design of the Sky City 1000 project proposed in 1989 by Takenaka Corporation.)

In Robet Silverberg's novel "The World Inside" humanity attains utopia in the year 2381 when the population of the planet has grown to 75 billion people. War, starvation, crime and also birth control have been eliminated. Life is now totally fulfilled and sustained within Urbmons, mammoth skyscrapers a thousand stories high. This is also a world of total sexual freedom where men and women are expected to engage in "night walking"; refusing an invitation for sex makes you a rude host. In this world it is a blessing to have children: most people are married at 12 and parents at 14. In fact, just thinking of controlling families is deemed heretical and something for which people can be put to death. Because the need to be outdoors and to travel has been eliminated, thoughts of wanderlust are considered perverse, and speaking of them is another heresy.

The dwellers of the Urban Monad share scant resources and believe that the non-proprietary sharing of everything is required in order for people to peacefully co-exist in close quarters. The sharing extends to wives and husbands, a sentiment no doubt springing from the free love movement of the mid to late Twentieth Century. Although great effort is spent to maintain a stable society, the people of the Urban Monad often suffer from mental illness, and in fact this fate befalls the book's two main characters.

Given the extemes of life in the Urban Monads, law enforcement and the concept of justice are harsh. There are no trials, and punishment swift -- any infraction of the rules receives summary execution by designated agents.

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