After World: A Novel

Debbie Urbanski is a writer, nature lover, and human whose stories and essays have been published widely in such places as The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, The Best American Experimental Writing, The Sun, Granta, Orion, and Junior Great Books. A recipient of a Rona Jaffe Writer’s Award, she can often be found hiking with her family in the hills south of Syracuse, New York. Her debut novel, After World, was published in 2023.

ISBN: 9781668023457
Format: Hardback
Pages: 368
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: December 05, 2023

One of the San Francisco Chronicle's Favorite Books of 2023
One of the Los Angeles Times's Best Tech Books of 2023

“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

“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