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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.914
EAN num: 9781590172698
ISBN number: 1590172698
Label: NYRB Classics
Manufacturer: NYRB Classics
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 336
Printing Date: July 22, 2008
Publishing house: NYRB Classics
Release Date: July 22, 2008
Sale Popularity Level: 179995
Studio: NYRB Classics
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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 crèches, nurtured on synthetic food, prevented above all from venturing outside the closed circuit of the city, they are carefully sheltered from the dire necessities that have come to define human existence. And yet the city is in crisis. The people are growing restive, the population is dwindling, and the rulers know that, for all their efforts, slowly but surely the city is slipping ever farther behind the optimum.
Helward Mann is a member of the city’s elite. Better than anyone, he knows how tenuous is the city’s continued existence. But the world—he is about to discover—is infinitely stranger than the strange world he believes he knows so well.
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Rated by buyers -
Sparse language in a surreal world. This book will make you ponder about what is real, what is perceived and what is in-between.
Rated by buyers -
I discovered this book in the library. I read the very first few pages and was captivated. Christopher Priest will introduce you to an impossible world - and make you believe it.
Years later, the book was out of print. I searched the internet to find a copy. When I got it, the book did not let me down, though I already knew its secrets.
Probably the finest sci-fi book I have ever read.
Rated by buyers -
Imagine an encapsulated city trying to survive in a strange world where mysterious "optimum" is moving and the city has to keep moving on it's tracks trying to reach it. Every natural obstacle in this unfriendly environment has to be solved and the city has to keep moving or else... People in the city refer to the landscapes ahead as "the future" and to the landscapes behind as "the past." Everybody is working hard, for the optimum must be followed at any price... Is the ending of the book (which is one of the best endings in SF) going to reveal the real truth? What is the real truth anyway? The one you perceive? Or the other one, the one you can't see...
Rated by buyers -
I was looking for The Glamour and noticed unfortunately that most of Priest's books are out of print...how sad, as most are truly original. I then noted that The Inverted World had only been reviewed 4 times and wanted to add my thoughts. READ IT. YOU WON'T BE DISAPPOINTED!
Rated by buyers 
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Hey you guys that loved Ringworld, Dragon's Egg or A Mission of Gravity, you will be HOOKED by this one! A REALLY original alternative world, VERY nicely hidden under a bulk of myth and a secretive guild system. Sociology - B+; Mathematics - A; Physics - B. The ending is the only minor flaw, but after all the real thinking starts after reading...
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