An inverted world. Christopher Priest.
Review: Santiago G ª Solans.
The Ideas Factory. fiction Solaris Col. # 145. Madrid, 2010. Original title: Inverted World. Translation: David Luque Cantos. 315 pages.
The original publication An inverted world Dating 1974 and it should be noted that, particularly in the external environment it and the message "background", is a novel, as wisely warns us very child of its time. Does that mean that is outdated or involves some loss in quality? Absolutely. It remains an extraordinary work, with many eigenvalues \u200b\u200breadings without searching "outside" the actual content, which certainly does, but the political situation the world has changed a lot and maybe we find the moral that a reader could pick out the 70's of last century is very different from that of one of the second decade of the twenty-first century.
Young Helward Mann , after spending his childhood in an orphanage in the city of Earth has met the thousand forty miles and much has come of age. The time has come for his ancestry, being apprenticed to one of the unions, the ruling elite, and thus penetrate the secrets of them, forbidden to mere citizens who are restricted to outside view, constrained between high walls and walls that have only windows inside the city itself. Earth is a gigantic and somewhat chaotic structure that blends into its construction either wood, metal or concrete, and moves on rails that foreign crews are removing and stretching back to never stop their advance through a hostile and impoverished world, which, however, depend to survive and maintain its population. It is a predatory society, which takes more than it gives, which is justified in "higher" principles and requirements to maintain their dismissive and unfair on the people they encounter in their path of those who abuse their work in exchange for certain bits of little value, advantage of poverty and extreme conditions of the world in which they live.
The rigid insulation company has created, produced in turn also rigid characters, with little interaction between them, with a chill proficient in all relationships, and with detachment and distance can not open a chink in its armor invisible until they install on them the doubt. Its sole function in life, each with a different task, is to keep the city moving towards achieving the mysterious "optimal" always moving before them, being sometimes almost reach out and away from him on other occasions with a terrible threat hanging over them all then. There is something tragic in the pursuit of an unattainable goal, always away, always before them. The road to the North, always trying to get away from an ominous threat, it is imperative that makes the tension and suspense of the story.
can not say much of the argument, true strength of the book, without gutting the surprises it holds the reader. Must accompany the protagonist in their travel at the same time discovering the wonders he holds his world. Through his eyes the world is unwound, showing a strange and fascinating environment. Priest game offers an interesting balance between the objective and the subjective and the alternate use of the first and the third person narrative voice, from first-hand witness to the outside observer, however, also involved in the action, changing the way we see and understand the facts under a different light. The author immerses the reader in a thought experiment, almost psychedelic at times, questioned through an adventure story, the true nature of reality and the subjective perception of time, the distortion of the physical existence and established, as taking the lives according to the parameters that are accepted to live by ...
While overseas travel can not be stopped in the city extends a wave of despondency, the population decreases, the dissatisfaction grows, and secrecy of the unions and efforts to keep the rest of citizens in the dark and locked up in the city threatens to turn the situation into a real pressure cooker. The discontent of those who dwell within, not outside contact for an alleged common good unstoppable increases, while ending the excuses of unions to keep their secrets under cover of the supposed good of the community-that which you do not know can not hurt.
Totally devoted to his task, Helward will find its counterpart in the figure Victoria , among whom is going to symbolize the enormous gap between citizens and members of the guilds. In your relationship is represented in both groups, showing the apparently inseparable separation of each other despite their proximity. In a society so focused in their objectives, sooo cool, love has little room and is more a business than a feeling, something that is not designed to overcome adversity, and learn about the harsh the protagonist. An inverted world is surrounded by an incredible journey of adventure and intriguing scientific theories questions fill the mind of the reader. Earth is a wonderful and monumental work of engineering, a huge mole on rails washed with winches, winches and cables, which faces the river crossing or mountains that pose almost insurmountable obstacles in their obligation not to stop their movement never or resign themselves to the harmful consequences for some reasons that the reader will discover at the same time as the protagonist. A construction that depends on outside in a Reaver, abusive, this is where readers want to see a reading old British colonial- so the machine does not stop, entering new territories unstoppable the most technologically backward that will not hesitate to take advantage in a unbalanced relationship, receiving far more than it delivers.
Priest , as it has shown in his later works, always keep a card up its sleeve, a last twist that changes the meaning of everything narrated, and this was beginning to experiment with it. Starting with a fascinating concept, a physical distorted of doubt about what is and where it is actually Earth, the author manages to grab the reader with a very fluid writing, if somewhat dry at times, to that end, a somewhat hasty, yes it must be said, tragic and rather encouraging. A classic necessary.
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