the inverted world by christopher priest

(The cover of an omnibus edition of Priest novels published by Earthlight presents an interesting image of what the city looks like.) Such an imperiled world.

While various guilds concentrate on moving the city, its populace is shielded from the truth and focuses on raising and educating children and creating synthetic foods.

Prior to that, some vague apocalyptic event called “The Crash” changed life on the planet. We follow Helward’s training in the guilds, in sections of first and third person point-of-view, and gradually learn that “the city of Earth,” as it is called, has been crossing rivers, chasms and broad expanses for 200 years. Mann’s proud declaration about his maturity is a jarring revelation - time in this world is measured best by distances. There are guilds for laying track that recruit laborers from the areas the city passes through to survey the land ahead (which makes the menacing gravity field puzzling: Why don’t the locals try to escape it?). The narrator, Helward Mann, is an apprentice in a guild system that keeps this city moving. “I had reached the age of six hundred and fifty miles.”

The inverted world by christopher priest