The inverted world
by Christopher Priest · first published 1974
67% recommend33% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Strange, puzzling science fiction set in a city that moves along a rail on a world with non-Euclidean geometry. It has a weird premise and is a short, memorable read in the style of 1970s SF.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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, nur
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…Patrick Rothfuss - 4/5 A great fantasy story. It's a big book, there is a lot of details, but very well written. "Stranger in a Strange Land" - Robert A. Heinlein - 3/5 Awesome concept, but very slow "The Inverted World" - Christopher Priest - 4/5 Great short book
on “Ask HN: Books you read in 2015?” ↗…there wasn't nearly enough detail for me to wrap my head around the premise. Gonna take another look at it now. For anyone who finds this interesting, you might want to check out Christopher Priest's Inverted World, which is based on a vaguely similar premise. (Although much more closely tied to the "real world", and not nearly as mathematically rigorous.)
on “Dichronauts” ↗Priest, like Aldiss, is a favourite writer of mine. I especially enjoyed reading Inverted World as a teenager.
on “Brian Aldiss has died” ↗To add to the vein of sci-fi novels using this idea: Inverted World by Christopher Priest. Well, similar concept but weirdified in the 1970’s fashion.
on “NASA plans to launch a spacecraft to Titan” ↗“The Inverted World” by Christopher Priest involves a world that appears to be based on hyperbolic geometry I believe.
on “Ask HN: Is there any fiction that's based on a world with different physics?” ↗…novels are very mathematical. I remember stories about a toric universe, or playing football on a relativistic field (with a pseudo-Riemannian geometry)… A big miss in this list is Christopher Priest's "Inverted world", about living in a non-Euclidean world. I've other SF books with a of focus on math, from the "The stochastic man" to "Ninefox gambit", but they were either not enjoyable or with ridiculous mathematical…
on “Best Mathematical Science Fiction Books” ↗…Poul Anderson I've read, like the excellent High Crusade: he likes going wild and doesn't care much for the scientific pretense. For another take on non-Euclidian geometries, I have good memories of Inverted World by Christopher Priest.
on “Non-Euclidean Doom: what happens to a game when pi is not 3.14159 (2022) [video]” ↗Another recommendation, not a first contact story, but a very weird world and you wonder why things are how they are: Inverted World by Christopher Priest
on “Rendezvous with Rama” ↗Inverted World by Christopher Priest. An oldie, but a weirdie.
on “Ask HN: What are less known hard Sci-Fi books to read?” ↗"I had reached the age of six hundred and fifty miles." The opening sentence of the novel Inverted World, the relationship of which to this story is better off read than googled.
on “How Sweden's arctic 'millipede town' Kiruna is slowly moving” ↗…Road" and "Magic Inc" but those were the exception for Heinlein and closer to the rule for Anderson because Anderson was just as important as a fantasy writer as a sci-fi writer. I do have a copy of The Inverted World that I ought to read.
on “Non-Euclidean Doom: what happens to a game when pi is not 3.14159 (2022) [video]” ↗It's perhaps fitting that Christopher Priest, one of the biographers, is the author of Inverted World, that might well fit in the "inner space" genre.
on “The Illuminated Man: an unconventional portrait of JG Ballard” ↗…Picnic) Barry N. Malzberg - Beyond Apollo (1972) Brian Aldiss - Barefoot in the Head (1969) Brian Aldiss - Greybeard (1964). Chester Anderson - The Butterfly Kid (1967) Christopher Priest - Inverted World (1974) Cordwainer Smith - Norstrilia (1975, in complete form). David Bowie - The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (1972) Frank Herbert - Dune (1965) Frank Miller - graphic…
on “New Wave Sci-Fi: 75 Best Novels of 1964–1983” ↗