For a novel about a world that runs off into infinity, The Inverted World is a surprisingly short book. But I still wish it had ended earlier, while the idea it was spinning out was weird and exciting, and before Priest felt the need to end the novel on a more "realistic" note.

Helwood Mann, the protagonist, lives in the City, a giant structure built of wood and concrete that is slowly winched along on a set of tracks toward an unknown destination. In the hands of another writer, this premise would easily be absurdist: because the City only has a fixed line of track, they have to keep pulling their old track out and laying the new track in front of them in order to progress, day after day, month after month. The pulling of the City has been going on long before Helwood was born--and although he is puzzled by the need to keep the City moving (it's to reach "the optimum," he is told, whatever that means) he nevertheless joins more or less enthusiastically in the effort.

The Inverted World is a cold, cold book. The sterile environment of the City is reflected in the chilly natures of the characters and of their relationships with one another: for instance, the relationship between Helwood and his wife Victoria, and the relationship between Helwood and his father. The stiff and unemotional characters are prone to equally stilted dialogue that barely pretends to achieve more than information exchange. And as a result, it is difficult to become involved in the characters' lives, or to care about their feelings.

A science-fiction story with these faults had better have a good idea to compensate: and, if nothing else, The Inverted World has a single, overriding, mind-boggling idea that is the very heart of the novel. Do not read reviews of this book (other than this one) or the summary on Amazon.com if you haven't read it once already: for the unwitting reader, the gradual revelation of the inverted world is a delicious and spine-tingling experience. And trust me, it's worth the wait; nobody has ever come up with a premise like this.

The only problem is that Priest suddenly decides to abandon his premise three-quarters of the way through the book. My guess is that he simply couldn't find a way to make his idea "realistic": that is, he couldn't find a way to make his idea consistent with our own world, as we know it today. (And I don't blame him: it would take quite some doing to explain how we moved from this world to the inverted world.) But, to make up for this, Priest introduces perhaps the most hastily crafted, deeply unsatisfying explanations I have experienced recently. Fortunately (unlike in the similarly ill-ended Darwinia) Priest moves over his explanation hastily and then closes the book on one of his traditionally ambiguous notes. Unfortunately, the explanation leaves a lot to be desired: although the original idea itself had some inconsistencies, Priest's ending leaves a huge number of questions unanswered, and it makes suddenly inexplicable again all of the bizarre phenomena he had raised earlier in the novel (for instance, about what happens to the inhabitants of the land when the City moves by, or what happens to the Guildsmen when they go to and from the City).

In the end, however, The Inverted World is well worth your time simply for its basic concept. Priest writes in a clear and understandable style that, though never flashy, communicates his ideas eaisly. The Inverted World is one of his earliest novels: if he improves his ability to end a story without losing his originality, his later novels will be must-reads.

Copyright © 2002 Steven Wu