After World

A Novel

By: Debbie Urbanski

Narrated by: Sura Siu, Emily Tremaine, Cindy Kay, Kevin R. Free

Length: 10 hrs and 32 mins

Publisher's summary

One of Los Angeles Times’s Best Tech Books of 2023
One of San Francisco Chronicle’s Favorite Books of 2023
“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 Sen was seventeen years old when the Digital Human Archive Project (DHAP) was initiated. 12,000,203,891 humans have been archived so far.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.

©2023 Debbie Urbanski (P)2023 Simon & Schuster Audio

I loved this book

This is so good and strange and interesting and thought provoking, I highly recommend it!

Great performances of AI, human characters

This novel has multiple narrators, some human and some AI (albeit written by a human), and many different types of writing, including computer code and lists. It must have posed a challenge to the narrators, but they have done an amazing job capturing the harrowing, apocalyptic atmosphere underlying the writing. Sura Siu sounds perfect as the AI narrator storyworker, flowing through computer code and mechanical descriptions in a way that becomes increasingly heartfelt. Emily Tremaine perfectly captures the rage and rebelliousness of Sen, the last human documented on earth. The tension between these two narrators, interspersed with Cindy Kay and Kevin Free's source materials, carries the audiobook along. Great writing and a virtuosic performance by the narrators.

Utterly original and beautifully written

After World is an absolutely brilliant piece of art that I thoroughly enjoyed listening to.This is a completely original twist on a familiar genre, at times funny, frighteningly eerie, poignant, self-aware, and profound with layers and layers of meaning, but always entertaining and thought provoking. I finished listening a few days ago and can't stop thinking about it, it's one of those rare works you read and know will linger in your thoughts for a long time.

The audiobook is a top-notch production with the varying voicings and inflections from the (4?) narrators making clear the unorthodox structure of the novel. It's very easy to listen to and follow along.

I hope the author's visions of environmental catastrophe and human extinction don't come true, but if AI can learn to write novels as beautifully as this? I'm all for it.

Amazing premise that has a quirk as an audiobook

I really liked the story but I couldn't finish it as an audio book . When the narrator has to read out strings of numbers and text, it was like nails on a chalkboard to me. That said I returned the audiobook and bought a physical copy.

Endless lists and strings of numbers and no plot

If critics love it, it's probably a red flag. On Goodreads, where EVERYTHING is 4 stars, this one was much more evenly distributed from 1 to 5 stars. That should have been this kiss of death. Boring bloodless story of a purposeful human extinction with a ridiculous AI thrown in who's writing the story--not that there was much of one. In the end, well, all the way through, I did not care about any of the people or AIs. Total drivel. And confusing--and I'm not usually confused by strange, non-linear structures. This actually had no structure that I could figure out. No wonder I was confused.

Hard to follow

The flow of the story didn’t make it easy to keep track of the timeline. It read like a random set of points in time crudely stitched together. I couldn’t relate to what was happening. I went back to the book a few times to see if I could pick up a thread. I didn’t finish it in the end. Not a pleasant read.

I like the general idea. execution fell short.

As an avid listener of audiobooks, my experience with "After World" was both intriguing and challenging, ultimately impacting my overall enjoyment.

The narrative structure, which frequently shifted between different time frames, posed a significant hurdle. While I value the complexity this technique can bring, its execution made following the storyline arduous. While the central premise became clear within the first three hours, the subsequent seven hours felt disjointed. Despite hoping for a cohesive resolution or fresh perspective, the conclusion left me unsatisfied.

Throughout the latter half of the audiobook, character identification proved to be another obstacle. Without a clear understanding of each character's significance, I struggled to connect with their experiences and journeys. This lack of clarity made it difficult to emotionally invest in the story, leaving me disconnected from the narrative progression.

In conclusion, "After World" offered promising themes and ideas, but fell short in execution, particularly in maintaining coherence and character development. While I initially engaged with the story, the challenges in following the narrative structure and identifying characters hindered my enjoyment and left me disappointed with the conclusion.

I would tentatively recommend "After World," with the caveat that potential listeners should be prepared for a challenging narrative structure and inconsistencies in character development. Additionally, readers might find the written format more suitable, as certain details, such as complex identifiers and overly precise timestamps, could be tedious to listen to in audio form.