About this title: The city is winched along tracks through a devastated land full of hostile tribes. Rails must be freshly laid ahead of the city and carefully removed in its wake. Rivers and mountains present nearly insurmountable challenges to the ingenuity of the city's engineers. But if the city does not move, it will fall farther and farther behind the "optimum" into the crushing gravitational field that has transformed life on Earth. The only alternative to progress is death. The secret directorate that governs the city makes sure that its inhabitants know nothing of this. Raised in common in creches ...
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Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Binding: Mass-market paperback
Publisher: Popular Library, New York
Date Published: 1974
Description: Good. No dust jacket as issued. 1974 Popular Library paperback. NOT EX LIB! Clean, lightly tanned pages with a few bent page corners, creased spine, some edgewear with tanning, covers lightly scuffed, scratched & chipped. 256 p. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Harper & Row
Date Published: 1974
Description: Good in good dust jacket. Hardcover; Good condition; ex-library with usual stickers, stamps & markings; Printed Text VG; mylar covering; 310 p. (shelf CC33); "This book is one of the most creative conceptions to appear in science fiction"; "The Inverted World is a spellbinding and engrossing tale! "; read more
Edition: 1st
Binding: Paper
Publisher: Popular, New York
Date Published: 1974
Description: Cover Art. Very Good. No Jacket. Vintage Paperback. 12mo-over 6¾"-7¾" tall. Cover is slightly bent, a few pages are bent as well, a great book otherwise... read more
Edition: Book Club (BCE/BOMC)
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Harper & Row Publishers, New York
Date Published: 1974
Description: Stephenson, Andrew M. Good in Good jacket. Ex-Libris. 8vo-over 7¾"-9¾" tall. Jacket has light edgewear. Boards have minor shelfwear. Bookplate on fep. Pages are clean, text has no markings, binding is sound. read more
Edition: First Printing
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: New English Library, London, England
Date Published: 1975
ISBN-13:9780450023033ISBN:0450023036
Description: Good. Edgewear, creasing and light fading, else fine. read more
Edition: First Edition Thus, First Printing.
Binding: Trade Paperback
Publisher: NYRB Classics
Date Published: July 2008
ISBN-13:9781590172698ISBN:1590172698
Description: Near Fine. No Jacket as Issued. Used. Reading creases on the spine. No marks. read more
Edition: First Edition Thus, First Printing.
Binding: Trade Paperback
Publisher: NYRB Classics
Date Published: July 2008
ISBN-13:9781590172698ISBN:1590172698
Description: Near Fine. No Jacket as Issued. Used. Former owner's stamp on the first page. read more
Edition: 1st Thus
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: New English Library, London
Date Published: 1975
ISBN-13:9780450023033ISBN:0450023036
Description: Good. To view other titles by this author enter the keywords; XDCX, XJGX, Priest or Sc Fi. The book is in good condition with minor wear o/w tight clean and square. Cover art by Lucinda Cowell. read more
Description: BCE. 8vo., 240pp., grey cloth. Textblock upper and lower edges lightly foxed, otherwise fine in lightly edgeworn jacket with a small stain along spine. read more
"The reason I initially picked this novel is that its first sentence is now quite famous (I had reached the age of six hundred and fifty miles), for epitomising the SF process that consists in throwing an incongruous detail at the reader, and then send nim fishing for the explanation along the book. I was therefore going to play the game and started to imagine all sorts of explanations. I must say I was not disappointed: the key to the mystery was nowhere near to anything I figured. Naturally I am not going to reveal it...
The plot has an interesting structure, mirroring the movement in space and time that is central to the book: the five parts get shorter and shorter, and ultimately bring the reader to something that is not quite a climax, a detail that many readers seem to have found frustrating, but that I found rather appropriate myself. Ok, maybe that is not very clear... I only mean that perhaps some answers are best looked for, not in what is revealed, but in the structure itself of the book. Of course this will mean having to tie some loose ends for yourself...
Quite appropriately, the main character is rather, well, uncharacteristic. I did not think of it as a drawback. Instead, it maintains the focus an that strange plot structure; in the end, you feel that the notion of movement is the true protagonist of the book, not the character. I do not think that it is always absolutely necessary to have a very strong central character. Indeed, in a rather short novel, not having a really developped protagonist might instead indicate that the focus is elsewhere and that the author does not want to distract us. Of course I admit this may be a bit disturbing to some people with established reading habits, are we are used to focusing on the characters.
I cannot really think of a major drawback to this book. This is good SF, and if only the style had been just a bit more remarkable, I would easily give it a 5."
"This is a tricksy tricsky book. From the very first sentence after the prosaic seeming prologue, it is clear something is going on: "I had reached the age of six hundred and fifty miles."
I won't go into the mystery of the plot since that would ruin the fun, but suffice to say, wanting to know what was going was what kept me plowing through this in a few sittings. There are only one or two interesting characters and they are not the protagonist, though he has some moments near the end. That isn't to say the book is poorly written. The prose does the job and it seems restrained in a way that matches the setting.
Overall, I like the book a lot. It took an interesting science fiction premise and constructed a compelling story around it."
"I love books which take an incredible, mind-bending premise and make it plausible. Priest's Inverted World represents an impossible, yet imaginable because well-imagined, city in an impossibly tortured topology and tells a tale wherein the explication of the setting is more important than the plot."
"this is one of those books where the ideas are very interesting and quite brilliant, but the execution could perhaps use a little work.. however it was still highly enjoyable and thought-provoking, touching on ideas of conformity and social pressure, dissemination of knowledge, perception and the needs of the majority vs. the minority. there is also some future/time/calculus business thrown in there for good measure. this is definitely a book that i will revisit again in the future, and it's kept me thinking long after i finished it."
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