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Monades urban (original title: The World inside ) is a science fiction novel (Science-fiction) written by Robert Silverberg (the United States) and published in 1971. The various news which composes the novel intialement is intialement appeared in the American review Galaxy as from July 1970.

The topic

The seven news forms a coherent account which describes the humanity of XXIVe century. Having abolished the taboos, this company seems paradisiac and allows 75 billion individuals of living without concern in great conurbations called monades . With the wire of the account, the reader discovers citizens less better integrated and deviating behaviors: the idyllic company is denounced little by little and the Utopia is moulted in Dystopie, following the example Meilleur of the worlds of Huxley. Finally, does the standard established in the monades constitute really an ideal of life? Wouldn't this civilization, with the relents of Totalitarianism, be dictatorial?

Characters

Artha , female member of an agricultural community which Micael Statler meets;
Dillon Chrimes , 17 years, is an artist who plays of the vibrastar in a cosmic group;
Kipling Freehouse , administrator of Monade 116;
Nicanor Gortman , Vénusien which is interested in the foreign cultures in visit in the monade 116.
Aurea and Memnon Holston , 14 and 15 years, not having a child, fear to be expatriates in a news monade ;
Lewis Holston , administrator of Monade 116;
Siegmund Kluver , 14 years, has to become the leading one of its monade .
Nipple Kluver , woman of Siegmund Kluver, great love of Jason Quevedo;
Charles Mattern is socio-computor ;
Jason Quevedo is historian and the study of the 20th century to make him discover the jealousy;
Micaela Quevedo , woman of Jason Quevedo, sister twins of Micael Statler;
Nissim Shawke , administrator of Monade 116;
Micael Statler , 23 years, brother of Micaela Quevedo, is electronics specialist and dream to visit outside;

Universe of the urban monades

The monades

In 2381, on a over-populated Ground, the Population is piled up in monades urban, turns of thousand stages, high 3.000 meters. Gigantic, they extend on hundreds from kilometers in agglomerations, such Berpar (Berlin-Paris) or Chipitts (Chicago-Pittsburgh), and each one of them shelters more than 800.000 inhabitants. The monades being vertical constructions, they occupy only 10% of geographical space, the remainder being dedicated to food agriculture.

The organization

The stages of a tower, called Quoted , adopt names of old cities: in the monade 116, the ground floor is called Reykjavik and the ultimate stage, Louisville. Each city has its own appropriate dress, its own myths, its own folklore and its own slang speech.

Thanks to the excrement and waste recycling which produces energy necessary, each turn lives in quasi-autarky. Only food comes from outside, produced by agricultural communities. The inhabitants know to only them monade and the population growth is set up in religious dogma. All the inhabitants of the monades live only with an aim of growing and of multiplying. The families count on average from five to ten children, according to their social status. The couples are formed as soon as young people are nubiles.

The hierarchy

The Hiérarchie of the company is accompanied by a vertical segregation of the monade . The monades are divided into 25 hierarchical cities: at the base of the tower are located the working, poor and over-populated districts, whereas the leading classes occupy the vast apartments of the upper floors. The intermediate classes (artists, frameworks, researchers, and other functions) live between these two extremes. The communication between the various social categories is limited.

Good mannerss

Promiscuity and sexual freedom are the rule and those which do not have many children are badly judged. In order to avoid frustrations and the jealousies, no one cannot refuse a sexual relation, under penalty of Mort: each one belongs to everyone. Hierarchy obliges, it is advised not to choose a partner in an upper floor; moreover, which would dare? However, those which are promised with a brilliant destiny are encouraged to rise. At the time of their night visits, the men randomly choose an apartment and the Master of the places is erased to let the visitor achieve his duty of Citoyen with his one night old wife.

The price of happiness

In spite of this sexual freedom and the protection which offers the “monadic” life, the tensions remain. Some are not satisfied an absence of private life and intimacy. Released from the constraints, the majority of people so happy that they do not hesitate to denounce these deviating, are called anomos . Those which do not accept the system are locked up in a psychological box of rehabilitation or are thrown in the recyclor, for the common wellbeing: “Happiness reigns on Earth. Who in doubt is sick. Who is sick is neat. Who is incurable is carried out. ”

Outside

The inhabitants seldom explore another stage that theirs; as much to say that it to them the idea has not just left their turn! Which interest introduce the peasants, these savages who work the ground to nourish the monades in exchange of technological products? One of the characters however will venture outside and to discover there that another Vie is possible.

Comments

Origin of Monades

The term of monade is a loan which Robert Silverberg with the German philosopher makes Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz. If an urban monade (a city complexes) has with the first access only little to do with the monade of the philosopher (a simple substance and without parts, an atom of nature), some essential characteristics however link the two concepts.

In its treaty of Monadologie of 1714, Leibniz writes with the § 7: “ Monades do not have windows by which something there can enter or leave. The accidents could not be detached nor to walk out of the substances as formerly made the significant species of the scholastics. Thus, neither substance nor accident can enter of outside Monade. ” Just like the atoms of the philosopher, the urban monades are entities which do not communicate humanly with outside. Only the food products produced by the agricultural communities enter the monades. The human beings do not have the right to leave and the members the agricultural communities step the right to enter. The urban monades are worlds humanly closed and folded up on themselves.

SF and overpopulation

The topic of overpopulation is one of the broad traditional topics of the Science-fiction of the Seventies. At the time where Robert Silverberg writes his novel, this topic was already treated on the scale of planet by John Brunner in 1968, with All with Zanzibar, and on the scale of the galaxy by Larry Niven in 1970, with the Ring-World.

If Robert Silverberg takes again this topic, it is to treat it in an original way. Overpopulation is not presented like a demographic or ecological problem which it is advisable to quickly regulate by eugenic laws, but like a true political will impressed of religiosity. In the universe of the urban monades, overpopulation is encouraged and presented like the result necessary of the crowned respect of the life.

Thought 68

Robert Silverberg presents in his novel the concrete realization of some typical claims of thought 68: a new design of “Ego” which is expressed for example in a music psychedelic (Dillon Chrimes and its cosmic concert of anthology), the access legalized to psychotropic and with drugs (with “distributers of extase” to each corner of street and “to multiplex it”) and finally the total release of sexual manners.

But these symbols of freedom and emancipation, asserted by the generation of the Seventies, appear in the novel like completely perverted. At Robert Silverberg, they are found instrumentalized by a totalitarian and very preserving ideology. The psychedelic music played by Dillon Chrimes in the various cities of Monade 116 is tolerated only as défouloir for the working masses, the ingestion of drugs is recommended to evacuate the stress induced by the promiscuity which reigns in the monades and the sexual freedom, deprived of all the related affects like the seduction, the love, passion, the jealousy, is reduced to a form ritualized hygiene and is not accompanied by faculty to have its body freely (because of the diktat of procreation).

Traditional of the science fiction

This novel is regarded as a great classic of the Science-fiction in the following reference books:

Annick Beguin, 100 principal titles of the science fiction , Cosmos 2000,1981;
Jacques Goimard and Claude Aziza, Encyclopedia of pocket of the science fiction. Guide reading , Presses Pocket, coll “Science fiction”, n°5237, 1986;
Denis Guiot, the Science fiction , Massin, coll “the world of… ”, 1987;
Investigation of Fanzine Carnage society man near his readers, 1989;
Lorris Murail, the Masters of the science fiction , Bordered, coll “Compact”, 1993;
Stan Barets, science-fictionnaire , Denoël, coll “Presence of the future”, 1994;
ideal Library of the webzine cosmic Cockroach.

Criticisms specialized

In its History of the modern science fiction , Jacques Sadoul declares in connection with this novel: A text undoubtedly which will remain in the history of the SF. .

French editions

This novel, translated from American by Michel Rivelin, knew several editions:

Robert Laffont, coll “Elsewhere and tomorrow”, 1974 (republication in 1978);
I have Lu, coll “Science fiction”, n°997, 1977 (republications in 1979,1986,1987);
French General Bookstore, coll “the Book of pocket Science fiction”, n°7116, 1989;
French General Bookstore, coll “the Book of pocket Science fiction”, n°7225, 2000.

Quotations

The numbers of page of the following quotations refer to the edition indicated in bibliography:

“ the conflicts sterilizes. ”, chap. 1, p. 18;

“ the refusal of any frustration is the basic rule in a company such as ours, where the tiniest frictions can lead to unverifiable unmatched oscillations. ”, chap. 1, p. 19;

“ We like the life. To create a new life is highest of the destinies. To prevent the blossoming of the life is worst sins. We always like our world expanding. ”, chap. 1, pp. 20-21;

“ the duty of each one towards God is to reproduce. ”, chap. 1, p. 27;

“ the full availability of all with all is the essential rule thanks to which a civilization as this one can survive. ”, chap. 2, p. 35;

“ old philosophy expansionist-individualist was abandoned like his consequences (namely the territorial ambition, mentality conquistador , push towards always further) with the profit of a kind of collective conscience centered on the ordered and unlimited growth of the human race. ”, chap 4, p. 95;

“ But if they did not have any more their work, what these poor people would make of their life? Do you believe that we could make poets of them? Or of the professors of urban history? We jobs deliberately to them, didn't you create include/understand? ”, chap. 7, p. 220.

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