The City Inside

[psocoptera]

The City Inside, Samit Basu, 2022 reprint of a novel published in 2020 in India. Cyberpunk! Like, definitely the most hardcore cyberpunk thing I have read in ages, and to be honest I struggled with it - really high conceptual density, a lot of India-specific references and context that I wasn't getting, frequently depressing, a somewhat meandering throughline. But also really interesting stuff, to get this entirely Indian perspective, what trends and concerns Basu wanted to talk about in his near-future Delhi. Recommended if you like Charles Stross or Neal Stephenson and would like to read something from outside the... well, "Anglosphere" isn't right, since I'm pretty sure Basu wrote it in English in the first place. The whiteosphere. The US-UK axis of sff domination.