The Meaning of Life and Other Vegetables

Hello everyone.

Today I want to tell you about a book that had a profound impact on me. I’m talking about Inverted World by Christopher Priest. It’s a SciFi book that was first published in 1974. I first read it some time in the 1980s, when I was a teenager.

I’m not sure why this particular book had stuck with me as it did. As far as I know, it’s not considered “a classic”, and even in the SciFi arena it’s quite an obscure book. But it did.

I hardly ever read books more than once. Many times after finishing a book I feel “I have to read this book again”. But I’m a slow reader, and I always think “there are so many books in the world, there is so much to read, and I’ll never get to everything that interests me; so better read something I haven’t read yet.” Only very few books invoke an urge in me to re-read, that is strong enough for me to actually do it. Inverted World is one of those few. The Silmarillion (J. R. R. Tolkien) and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (Robert Pirsig) are two others. I think I read Inverted World 3 or 4 times, over the decades. I like it THAT much.

In this post, I’d like to mention 3 themes from the book, that are very significant to me. Obviously, I’d like you to read that book too, and I want to spoil as little as possible. If you are intrigued enough by the official (e.g. online-available) blurb, and feel you’d like to read this book, perhaps it’s best you avoid the rest of this post, and hopefully come back here after you read the book, to read my commentary. However, if you’re unsure, or you are the type who doesn’t feel that strongly about your “virgin” reading experience, please read on. I’ll try to spoil as little as possible whilst still making some points. To that end, I’ll try to describe the plot settings in a way that gives away the bare minimum.

The first theme in the book that captured my imagination as a young person is the (collective) distorted perception of reality (Prof. Hoffman’s ideas come to mind here). If you’ve been reading this blog since its inception, this might not surprise you… I do wonder whether that topic already took hold in my mind before I first read Inverted World, which in turn resonated with my pre-conceived notions; or the book was actually an early (the first?) trigger of my fascination with the topic. That period in my life is a bit blurred in my memory by now, so I guess I’ll never know for sure.

Either way, that theme is arguably the main one in the book. The story is about a fairly-large group of people (the protagonist is a part of) that has a deeply-ingrained distorted perception of reality. Since the story is told from their perspective, it’s not immediately clear that this is the case. The book describes a “weird” reality (although it feels very similar to our natural one), but since this is a SciFi book, it doesn’t feel too outlandish. The only indicator of a possible distortion, which becomes quite clear from early on, is that that group of people perceives (or experiences) reality in a way substantially different from people in their immediate environment, who are not part of the group (the groups interact with one another “semi-normally”, however). A part of the book’s “magic” is that it’s initially unclear who is “in the wrong” in this case.

What makes the situation more charged is the totality of the group’s members’ belief that what they perceive is real and true. They might notice some “discrepancies”, but they accept the whole package as a given, without much question. They don’t perceive those “difficulties” as a good-enough reason to question the very validity of their perception.

The second theme of interest for me is the constant, insistent necessity to “move forward” (in a very physical sense). It is a matter of survival to that group of people. They can’t stand still for long, or even substantially slow down, as in that case they will soon start to “slip backwards”, and be annihilated unless they quickly and determinedly resume their efforts to move forward. I remember the almost-physical distress sensation that this situation triggered in me (and still does to date, to an extent). Almost like a shark, that must keep swimming forward in order not to die.

What do you do in a situation like that, if something stands in your way? Stopping is not an option, and even slowing down to think, plan, gear up and respond to the problem, is time-constricted. You HAVE TO continue moving forward, and soon. Otherwise you perish. Giving in to an obstacle in your way is not an option.

This leads me to the third, powerful, theme that stuck with me. What happens when you encounter an invincible obstacle? One that you can’t objectively overcome or circumvent, ever? How do you cope with this? How do you even know that this is the situation? After all, your entire experience had been one of encountering obstacles and overcoming them at all costs; and thus far it had worked, one way or another.

In the book, the group of people eventually hit such an obstacle. Initially they don’t realise that this is what it is. They perceive the obstacle as bigger, more formidable than anything they encountered earlier, but their knee-jerk reaction is to get to work with no delay, plan and implement a solution, even if that’s going to be more challenging than ever before. Then they fail, again and again, of course. And time is running out.

It’s interesting to observe the range of possible responses to that situation across the group members, during the failed attempts, and in the face of the final, inevitable failure. Some come to reflect on their distorted perception, and some don’t. Some keep working to find a solution until the last possible moment, and some just lose reason and resort to irrational responses.

To me, this is symbolic of our death. It is there, waiting for us, inevitable, invincible (contrast that with the alternative approach I presented here, in item 3). Bigger and more powerful than anything we dealt with before. How do we deal with it, each? An entire repertoire exists around us, not unlike the range of responses described in Inverted World.

That’s it. I hope you will get curious and read the book, and maybe share your own thoughts here.

Peace to all.