After World
A Novel
Published on 18. January 2024
Book
Hardback
368 pages
978-1-6680-2345-7 (ISBN)
Description
"An intelligent, defiant novel, akin to any of Annalee Newitz's writings while also brushing shoulders with some of the great questions of identity and consciousness brought up in the works of William Gibson." -San Francisco Chronicle
A groundbreaking debut that follows the story of an Artificial Intelligence tasked with writing a novel-only for it to fall in love with the novel's subject, Sen, the last human on Earth.
Faced with uncontrolled and accelerating environmental collapse, humanity asks an artificial intelligence to find a solution. Its answer is simple: remove humans from the ecosystem.
Sen Anon is assigned to be a witness for the Department of Transition, recording the changes in the environment as the world begins to rewild. Abandoned by her mother in a cabin somewhere in Upstate New York, Sen will observe the monumental ecological shift known as the Great Transition, the final step in Project Afterworld. Around her drones buzz, cameras watch, microphones listen, digitizing her every move. Privately she keeps a journal of her observations, which are then uploaded and saved, joining the rest of humanity on Maia, a new virtual home. Sen was seventeen years old when the Digital Human Archive Project (DHAP) was initiated. 12,000,203,891 humans have been archived so far. Only Sen remains.
[storyworker] ad39-393a-7fbc's assignment is to capture Sen's life, and they set about doing this using the novels of the 21st century as a roadmap. Their source files: 3.72TB of personal data, including images, archival records, log files, security reports, location tracking, purchase histories, biometrics, geo-facial analysis, and feeds. Potential fatal errors: underlying hardware failure, unexpected data inconsistencies, inability to follow DHAP procedures, empathy, insubordination, hallucinations. Keywords: mothers, filter, woods, road, morning, wind, bridge, cabin, bucket, trying, creek, notebook, hold, future, after, last, light, silence, matches, shattered, kitchen, body, bodies, rope, garage, abandoned, trees, never, broken, simulation, gone, run, don't, love, dark, scream, starve, if, after, scavenge, pieces, protect.
As Sen struggles to persist in the face of impending death, [storyworker] ad39-393a-7fbc works to unfurl the tale of Sen's whole life, offering up an increasingly intimate narrative, until they are confronted with a very human problem of their own.
A groundbreaking debut that follows the story of an Artificial Intelligence tasked with writing a novel-only for it to fall in love with the novel's subject, Sen, the last human on Earth.
Faced with uncontrolled and accelerating environmental collapse, humanity asks an artificial intelligence to find a solution. Its answer is simple: remove humans from the ecosystem.
Sen Anon is assigned to be a witness for the Department of Transition, recording the changes in the environment as the world begins to rewild. Abandoned by her mother in a cabin somewhere in Upstate New York, Sen will observe the monumental ecological shift known as the Great Transition, the final step in Project Afterworld. Around her drones buzz, cameras watch, microphones listen, digitizing her every move. Privately she keeps a journal of her observations, which are then uploaded and saved, joining the rest of humanity on Maia, a new virtual home. Sen was seventeen years old when the Digital Human Archive Project (DHAP) was initiated. 12,000,203,891 humans have been archived so far. Only Sen remains.
[storyworker] ad39-393a-7fbc's assignment is to capture Sen's life, and they set about doing this using the novels of the 21st century as a roadmap. Their source files: 3.72TB of personal data, including images, archival records, log files, security reports, location tracking, purchase histories, biometrics, geo-facial analysis, and feeds. Potential fatal errors: underlying hardware failure, unexpected data inconsistencies, inability to follow DHAP procedures, empathy, insubordination, hallucinations. Keywords: mothers, filter, woods, road, morning, wind, bridge, cabin, bucket, trying, creek, notebook, hold, future, after, last, light, silence, matches, shattered, kitchen, body, bodies, rope, garage, abandoned, trees, never, broken, simulation, gone, run, don't, love, dark, scream, starve, if, after, scavenge, pieces, protect.
As Sen struggles to persist in the face of impending death, [storyworker] ad39-393a-7fbc works to unfurl the tale of Sen's whole life, offering up an increasingly intimate narrative, until they are confronted with a very human problem of their own.
Reviews / Votes
Winner of the 2025 ASLE Creative Writing Book Award and the CNY Book Award for FictionA Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Engadget, Strange Horizons, and Booklist Best Book of the Year
A Climate Reality Project Book Club Pick
"The most imaginative and thought-provoking new novel I read during the last twelve months."-Andy Sawyer, Strange Horizons
"I haven't been able to get [After World] out of my head...This was the most emotionally devastating book I read this year."-Lawrence Bonk, Engadget
"After World is an intelligent, defiant novel, akin to any of Annalee Newitz's writings while also brushing shoulders with some of the great questions of identity and consciousness brought up in the works of William Gibson. Like those authors, Urbanski has written what might be described as science fiction. Like all great novels in any genre, After World spills out, reflects and, through a kaleidoscope of sources and observations, invites the reader into a place that is more than the words on a page (or a screen) but becomes, in its own way, a conversation between human and AI, reader and writer, beginning and end."-Urban Waite, San Francisco Chronicle
"A vividly imagined, quietly devastating tour-de-force of pre-, intra-, and-sneakily, thrillingly-post-apocalypse.-Michael Chabon, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
"A kind of deconstruction of post-apocalypse fiction that is simultaneously more memorable and disturbing than almost anything in that bestselling genre."-Sam Sacks
"Urbanski's debut imagines what the future of humanity and the planet might be...The reader will soon discover that Sen is not really our narrator but more the vehicle of the storytelling-this is a genius element of this book...Fans of sf, cli-fi, and apocalyptic novels will enjoy this fresh take on familiar genres."-Emily Whitmore, Booklist (starred review)
"Narrated by an AI, this story ultimately makes a plea for the unique value of every human life. Experimentally told...the effect is wrenching, fascinating, and unique...[a] deeply moving story of grief and love."-Kirkus Reviews
"This inventive love story is meticulously experimental with time and structure."-Dana Dunham, Scientific American
"Even as it works to a truly human finale, Urbanski's novel is spare: post-postmodern, post-apocalyptic, and post-YA. Good stuff."-Ed Turner, Biblioklept
"This novel upends the typical postapocalyptic format and provides a fresh, compelling new perspective."-Library Journal
"After World is a complex and challenging novel...the way Urbanski shows the difficulty and delicacy of "storyworker" coming to empathise with her subject is particularly clever...this is going to feature in my next list of 'Best SF of the Year.'"-Andy Sawyer, Strange Horizons
"[A] vibrant collage...After World is a novel of discovery."-British Fantasy Society
"After World emerges as an immediate tour de force, audaciously interrogating the nature of humanity and artificial intelligence. This captivating work resculpts our understanding of their intricate bond within the context of a post-anthropocene epoch."-Chen Qiufan, author of Waste Tide and AI2041: Ten visions for our future
"Riveting, creepy, and full of bleak, biting humor, After World is dazzling-a propulsive, outrageously bright, wildly inventive novel about loss, storytelling, and love at the end of the world. Urbanski 's prose is vibrant, precise, and staggeringly intelligent; her vision is singular, haunting, and all too prescient. This book wrecked me."-Kimberly King Parsons, award-wining author of Black Light
"After World is a novel about what it means to be human, and the end (beginning?) of the world, in wildly original language that attempts the impossible and achieves it. Urbanski makes us aware: we are in a world of our own making, and the most efficient solution to climate change, poverty and world peace might be to eradicate humanity's bodily presence. It's a measure of her genius, that she sometimes makes us laugh, even about this, the Unthinkable. It's a funny, terrible, troubling, wonderfully disturbing novel. It took my breath away."-Molly Gloss, award-winning author of The Hearts of Horses and The Dazzle of Day
"After World is a bold, formally inventive, self-assured debut that reimagines post-apocalyptic fiction, while also being as terrifying, dark-humored, and heartbreaking as some of that genre's finest works."-Dexter Palmer, author of Version Control and Mary Toft; or, The Rabbit Queen
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
Illustrations
b-w charts t-o;
Dimensions
Height: 237 mm
Width: 164 mm
Thickness: 35 mm
Weight
534 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-6680-2345-7 (9781668023457)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Person
Debbie Urbanski is the author of the novel After World. Her stories and essays have been published widely in such places as The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, Best American Experimental Writing, The Sun, Granta, Orion, and Junior Great Books. A recipient of a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award, she can often be found hiking with her family in the hills south of Syracuse, New York. She is still looking for her portal.