The Longest Way Home, by Robert Silverberg

Having just read Silverberg’s The World Inside, I must say I was expecting a different sort of book. The World Inside is almost a collection of short stories, each chapter with a different main character and each character with a different ‘voice’. I described this book previously on this blog.

The Longest Way Home is a first person narrative with the story related by a 15 year old boy on a colonised planet where the human race is divided into Masters and Folk. The boy is the eldest son of a powerful Master, sent to visit distant cousins. But, while he is away from home, the local Folk rise up in rebellion. In the ensuing mayhem, he flees for his life and attempts the long walk home to his father’s city.

The World Inside, by Robert Silverberg

This novel is set on a future Earth where most of human kind lives a highly artificial life in giant skyscrapers, freeing up the surrounding countryside for food production.

The constraint of living in an enclosed, structured and crowded society has resulted in social customs that include extreme politeness and the free sharing of sexual partners. Fertility is encouraged. Contraception is a sin.