crooow
7/5/2025
The sexual revolution of the 1960s, assisted by the birth control pill and the dramatic "baby boom" population growth after World War II inspired several SF novels. Stand on Zanzibar is arguably the best, with honorable mentions going to Make Room! Make Room! and Logan's Run. Mix in the above with the Brave New World society of hedonism gone mad and you have The World Inside.
Set in 2381, with the population of the Earth around 75 billion, "be fruitful and multiply" has been stretched beyond belief. Children are married off at puberty and expected to start families immediately. A minor character considers himself a failure because his wife became infertile after giving birth to their fourth child. Adultery is alien to these people and it is practically a capital offense to refuse the sexual advances of another.
To hold the massive quantities of people, "urbmons", 1000-story skyscrapers, have been built. People live their whole lives in these buildings, gleefully sleeping around and using narcotics. Anyone who doesn't conform is brainwashed if they're lucky. The unlucky ones are immediately executed.
The book is basically a slice-of-life about a few certain characters and how they manage in this chaotic environment. One studies the past to try to understand how society resulted in this situation. Another yearns to explore the world. Another is too ambitious for his own good.
Ultimately, the book fell short to this writer because of a few glaring issues. Several of the chapters have stream-of-consciousness rambling that becomes wearying. The society is very unnerving, with incest tolerated and privacy nonexistent. Sex has become intertwined with religion and everything revolves around making more babies. Reading the plot is creepy enough-getting into these characters' heads is disturbing.
While Robert Silverberg is considered one of the great SF writers, this effort is at best an interesting failure.