Inverted World, by Christopher Priest

Inverted World, by Christopher Priest.  New York Review Books, 1974.  322 pp.  978-1-59017-269-8.

... in which a city built on wheels is slowly pulled north on rails, in order to escape the crushing gravitational field behind it.

Probably one of the stranger science fiction books I have ever read, Inverted World requires a high tolerance for the genre of hard sci-fi.  Hard sci-fi, generally considered to be the branch of science fiction that most deals with actual science, tends to be a little less palatable to the general public because there is less talk of light-speed space ships and aliens, and more talk of the mathematical/physical limitations that the technology of modern man faces.  In keeping with the hard science background of hard sci-fi, Inverted World also keeps with the spirit of classical sci-fi in that it is, at its core, an analysis and discussion of the current human condition, albeit in a stranger setting.

The plot of Inverted World is set in the city of Earth, which is basically a large wooden building on wheels. Although the city itself is "civilized", the land it moves through has been ravaged by some sort of collapse of civilization, and most people outside are living on the edge of survival.  Most of the people in the city are unaware of the true nature of the city; the only ones who are "in the know" are the guildsmen.  The guilds are responsible for keeping the city ahead of the gravitational distortion that is constantly moving, and is currently to the south of the city.  The goal for the city is to reach a point known as the "optimum", where the appropriate balance exists between the gravitational distortions to the south and to the north.  However, since these distortions are always moving, the "optimum" is always moving, and the city is perpetually falling further and further south of it.  The main character, Helward Mann, is a young man who has recently joined the guilds.  Apparently the guilds enjoy teaching through experience, because the norm is to throw the young apprentices into their work with no explanation, and to let them find out the weird truth of reality for themselves.  Over time, as Helward begins to realize just how strange and dire the city's circumstances are, he begins to understand why the secrecy surrounding the guilds exists.  As he begins to subscribe to the guild secrecy and guild doctrine, his new wife, Victoria, starts pumping him for details on why the guilds exist and what it's like outside of the city.  As the city's situation becomes more and more desperate, the people of the city begin clamoring for change, and while outside of the city, Helward meets a young woman named Elizabeth who has an important revelation for Helward and the other inhabitants of the city of Earth.  Although Elizabeth's big revelation is deliberately obvious to the reader from the beginning, it is, of course, a complete paradigm shift for the people of the city.

It's very difficult to describe why the world is distorted, and in what ways the world is distorted, without adding significant spoilers to the review.  I will try to discuss the story without spoilers, but if you are curious, a more thorough discussion is included after the jump below.  Fantastical setting aside, this story could easily be read as a political allegory.  Helward starts out as a bright eyed young recruit, naive to the ways of the world and not quite prepared for the importance of his role in the guilds.  At first, the secrecy seems ridiculous to him, but over time, he falls into a pattern of acceptance of guild doctrine: this is how it was laid down for us, it's always worked, it will always continue to work.  Even as the city erupts into revolution, Helward clings tightly to his outdated doctrine, refusing to believe the news that Elizabeth brings.

The guilds themselves are pretty draconian in the way they deal with both the residents of the city, and the people who live in the lands outside of the city.  Because they need more physical labor than is available in the city, the guilds must employ men from outside the city.  They do this by offering the villages food from within the city, and because the villages are starving, they generally accept the poor offerings.  Even if they didn't accept, the city's militia would soon come through and wipe out any opposition.  Worse, the city's birthrate has become dangerously skewed in favor of male babies, with the estimate at 76 boys to 14 girls currently living in the city's nursery.  Because of the desperate need for females, and because this birthrate bias only exists with women born in the city, the city "borrows" women from the surrounding villages, for the purposes of reproduction.  If the woman gives birth to a girl, the girl stays in the city.  If the woman gives birth to a boy, then the woman can either take the child with her or leave him behind when she is returned to her home village.  The city's imperialistic attitude towards the people around them does eventually come back to haunt him, when the villages around them begin to revolt.  And because the city only moves at a rate of about one mile every ten days, they can't exactly outrun the rioting natives.

I really enjoyed the intricacies of the geometric anomalies that the people of this book encounter; clearly Priest put a great deal of effort into the physical setting.  It adds a great deal of urgency to the city's mission, and explains why the guilds are so dedicated to a system that seems to work, albeit imperfectly.  Like I said before, the majority of the truth that Elizabeth brings to the city is never hidden from the reader, so the ending is not a great twist for the reader.  Because the majority of the book is told from Helward's perspective, and he spends most of his time outside of the city, it's hard to get a continuous picture of the gradual increasing unrest with the city's population.  I would have liked to have seen more of that, because from Helward's perspective, the guilds went from ignoring the dissenters one day, and then pandering to them the next.  Helward's seemingly backwards character development is also frustrating, since he went from questioning the antiquated system to accepting it with zeal.  I suppose this was  a necessary plot element, for reasons that are hard to reveal without ruining the ending, and it served as a good plot device for demonstrating the power of culturally entrenched dogma.  The ending was a little bit of a let down, as it was really open.  We don't know what will happen to the city and its people, now that their world has been turned upside down.  If you're a fan of open endings, you'll probably like this.  I am not generally a fan of open endings, except in special circumstances, so this was a little unsatisfying for me.

In short, this is a really satisfying read for fans of hard sci-fi, and is only slightly diminished by the limited perspective of its main character.  Although it was written in 1974, the writing doesn't feel dated at all, and the subject matter remains as relevant today as it was in the 70s.  For readers who don't have at least a rudimentary understanding of physics, calculus, and geometry, however, this might prove to be a bit of a challenging read.

4/5 stars.  Continue reading for a lengthier discussion of the weird geometry of the city of Earth.  Spoilers!!

Irreligion by John Allen Paulos

Irreligion is purported to be a summary of "why the arguments for god just don't add up" according to its cover. This is a fairly accurate summary of what the book contains.I bought this book because I had read a few of John Allen Paulos' columns and was entertained by him. The topic of Irreligion seemed interesting to me, and the book wasn't very expensive, long or intimidating.


I need to stop buying and reading books about atheism. Once you have read one, you have read them all. (I recommend "The God Delusion" as the best of the bunch) Richard Dawkins approaches atheism and religion through biology, Sam Harris through brain science, and Hitchens through philosophy and literature, for example. Paulos does it through statistics. I thought this would be a unique approach, but it somehow was not.

Irreligion is rebuttals to several (not new) arguments for the existence of god. The majority of the book is stuff I have read elsewhere. It is a nice (short, easy) summary of this stuff for people who haven't read all about it previously, but fails to say much new stuff. Most of it isn't even based on statistics, as touted. More logicy, proofy stuff. Meh.

Paulos does have one other thing going for him, as an atheist writer. He has tact. His arguments are very friendly and approachable, not condescending or sarcastic. I have heard some people are put off my the causticity of Dawkins and Harris. If so, Paulos might be your guy!

I would recommend this book to either someone who just can't get enough pro-atheist books, or to someone who was slightly curious about it but didn't want to commit to a longer, more intense (or insulting) book. I am sure Irreligion has its place in the atheism book ecosystem, but I personally didn't get a ton from it. To most people I would recommend The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins over Irreligion.

Anathem, by Neal Stephenson

Anathem, by Neal Stephenson. Harper Collins, 2008. 937 pp. 978-0-06-147409-5

... in which a group of mathematician monks save the world from annihilation.

For my first review, I decided to write about a novel I finished several months ago, simply because it was one of the more unique, interesting reads I've had in awhile.

If you have never read anything by Neal Stephenson, the first thing you should know is that he is almost never a concise author. When it comes to detail, he likes to leave no stone unturned. In Anathem, the story follows a group of young adults (the "avout") in a monastic community on an Earth-like planet. These communities, called "concents" in the novel, are refuges for people who devote their entire lives to studying math, science and philosophy. They have very little in the way of worldly possessions, and they only leave the walls of their communities once every 1, 10, 100, or 1000 years, depending on the type of concent. The people who live in the rest of the world are referred to as Saeculars, and have largely abandoned the study of most higher mathematics, science and philosophy. As a result, the outside world is depicted as being less educated and more concerned with material possessions.

The main character is a young man named Erasmas. The story starts out following his day-to-day life, including his once-in-a-decade venture out of the concent's walls. His mentor is an eccentric older man named Orolo. Orolo spends his time searching for knowledge that for some reason is discouraged by the administrators of the concent, and as a result he is expelled from the concent. Following his expulsion, events in the wider world require leaders from the Saecular world to summon avout from the concents, in order to obtain advice or knowledge from these scholars. One by one, Erasmas and his friends are summoned from their home to play a part in the events that will change the course of life on their planet.

The story is fascinating. The monastic tradition that Erasmas follows is explained in great detail, though Stephenson has a fondness for invented vocabulary. These new words aren't always explained in the body of the novel, which forces the reader to flip frequently between the main text and the glossary at the back. That can get tedious, since many of the words appear often but their meanings are hard to remember. Because of the wealth of detail, it sometimes feel like the plot is going nowhere; the first couple hundred pages are devoted mostly to laying out what Erasmas' life in the concent is like. However, I think this detail was very necessary to make the rest of the plot seem logical. If we don't understand what concent life is like, it might otherwise be hard to understand what the motives of the characters are, or why they make the choices they do.

Towards the end of the novel, the high level of detail and the great complexity of the unfolding events actually make the whole climax and resolution very muddled and confusing. I am still not entirely certain whether a crucial scene in the climax was a dream sequence, a real-world sequence, or something somewhere in-between. Also, because the whole story is told from the perspective of the young avout being set loose in the largely unfamiliar saecular world, sometimes it's hard to determine what certain objects in the saecular world are. Also, towards the end of the book we meet some characters who are from cultures totally alien to the avout, so it took me awhile to suss out who these characters were supposed to be.

Despite the confusion towards the end, this was a very interesting read, I would strongly recommend this book to anyone with an interest in slightly unusual science fiction, math, or philosophy. If you're going to read it, I recommend that you read it carefully, for detail. Also, don't read it while reading something else; it's best if your attention is not split. I would also suggest that you have some familiarity with basic geometry and basic logic.