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Title details for After World by Debbie Urbanski - Available

After World

A Novel

by Debbie Urbanski
Sura Siu
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
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1 of 1 copy available
A Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Engadget, Strange Horizons, and Booklist Best Book of the Year

A Climate Reality Project Book Club Pick

An "intelligent, defiant" (San Francisco Chronicle) debut that follows 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 the 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 Sen was seventeen years old when the Digital Human Archive Project (DHAP) was initiated. 12,000,203,891 humans have been archived so far.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. 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.

After World is a "riveting, creepy...dazzling," (Kimberly King Parsons, award-winning author of Black Light) novel about what it means to be human in a world upended by AI and the bonds we forge with technology.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    December 5, 2023

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781797170381
      • File size: 303504 KB
      • Duration: 10:32:17

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      September 18, 2023
      Angle of approach is everything in assessing Urbanski’s complex, experimental, and ambitious debut, which is presented as an electronic dossier compiled by a computer. In the first scene, Sen, the adolescent protagonist, is discovered dead and rotting on the floor of her cabin in an apocalyptic future. While it’s apparent that someone or something else must therefore be involved in compiling her story—and, in the process, slowly revealing how she died—their appearance in the narrative and eventual romance with Sen are a long time developing. The resulting mystery is not a page-turner, but regarded as a style-first character exploration, Urbanski’s experiments in point of view are technically fascinating, creating thought-provoking and often poetic juxtapositions. Viewed through a genre SF lens, however, the apocalyptic setting fails the most basic test of initial plausibility and thus never gains imaginative traction. Is it worth perusing a recipe for layered vegetable torte, multiple data charts (including “Sen’s screams per 100 days”), and a four-page enumeration of deleted internet directories to glimpse how computer and girl shape one another in humanity’s final days? The answer will depend on what readers are looking for—straightforward sci-fi or challenging technological tone poem—but there’s no denying that they’ll find plenty to chew on. Agent: Kate Garrick, Salky Literary.

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Sura Siu's and Emily Tremaine's alternating narrations plunge listeners into the events surrounding a government-sanctioned human-extinction event. Siu's performance shifts in tone and cadence as the AI called "Storyworker" tells the story of Sen, a teenage "Witness" to the end of humankind. The initially straightforward account merges with journals and surveillance footage of Sen's final years. As Storyworker becomes less objective, which becomes evident in Siu's softening diction, it still cannot quite fully express the human spirit. Tremaine, as Sen, gives the character emotional complexity that shows her humanity. Cindy Kay, as former sci-fi writer Wynn, and Kevin R. Free, as high school textbook author Cugat, provide additional world-building. J.R.T. © AudioFile 2024, Portland, Maine
    • Library Journal

      June 1, 2024

      Sen Anon is assigned by the Department of Transition to witness the changes in the environment as Earth heals itself. She is also the last living human. Cameras and microphones track Sen's behavior, uploading the data to the artificial intelligence charged with chronicling Sen's story for the Digital Human Archive Project. As the AI works to make sense of the woman's life, it encounters a devastating problem of its own: it falls in love with Sen. This growing intimacy fosters an unfamiliar sense of regret within the AI when it recognizes the cost of driving humanity to extinction. Conceptually brilliant, Urbanski's debut is a tragic story that embraces philosophical musings rather than a violent catastrophe. The nonlinear narrative and informal storytelling style meant to represent the artificial intelligence's point of view is often vague and confusing. However, the combined narration of Sura Siu, Emily Tremaine, Cindy Kay, and Kevin R. Free provides a rueful experience that pulls no punches in this timely exploration of humanity's role in environmental stewardship and the impact of artificial intelligence. VERDICT An unconventional postapocalyptic story recommended for fans of Brandon Ying Kit Boey's Karma of the Sun and Nick Fuller Googins's The Great Transition.--Andy Myers

      Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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