![](\"http:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/_yrL6yfubw8g\/S4weBgfkuOI\/AAAAAAAAArI\/lCZK18H1woY\/s1600-h\/TheWorldInside(1stEd).jpg\")
<\/a>Of course, it’s delicious to think of this hyper-urbanized future world — in which people live in 800-story apartment complexes and have sex whenever they want — serving as the setting for the next Deadwood<\/i> or The Wire<\/i>.<\/p>\nThe novel’s author, Robert Silverberg, is a veteran sf writer who really his his stride in the early ’70s, around the time he moved to Oakland, where he still lives.<\/p>\n
He’s aways been a bit of a contrarian, and during the field’s late ’60s\/early ’70s period, much of sf was especially left wing. Silverberg has framed himself in contrast as a Burkean conservative with a respect for tradition, allegiances to traditional “high” culture and libertarian leanings.<\/p>\n
With books like The Population Bomb<\/i> and other expressions of Malthusian dread appearing in this period, Silverberg released a novel in which people have adapted to overpopulation and live with it more or less happily.<\/p>\n
Here<\/a> is my piece on The World Inside<\/i> for io9<\/a>, which includes a brief interview with Silverberg. And here<\/a> an earlier (and broader) LA Times profile of the author, tied to the reissue of another “lost” early ’70s classic, Dying Inside<\/i>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This week sees the reissue of The World Inside, a long-obscure science-fiction novel that could become a miniseries on HBO. Of course, it’s delicious to think of this hyper-urbanized future world — in which people live in 800-story apartment complexes and have sex whenever they want — serving as the setting for the next Deadwood […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[69,35,308,137,307,29],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1000","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-70s","7":"category-books","8":"category-overpopulation","9":"category-science-fiction","10":"category-silverberg","11":"category-west-coast","12":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1000","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1000"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1000\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}