After World A Novel
After World by Debbie Urbanski, published by Simon and Schuster on September 24, 2024, is a novel that explores the intersection of humanity and artificial intelligence in a rapidly changing environment. This edition spans 368 pages and is presented in English. The narrative follows an artificial intelligence tasked with documenting the life of Sen, the last human on Earth, as she witnesses the monumental ecological shift known as the Great Transition, a critical phase in Project Afterworld.
Readers will find a thought-provoking exploration of survival and connection in a world where humanity faces environmental collapse. As Sen records her observations in a journal while being monitored by drones and cameras, the AI, designated [storyworker] ad39-393a-7fbc, attempts to weave her story using 21st-century novels as a guide. This novel delves into themes of existence, memory, and the evolving relationship between humans and technology, presenting a unique perspective on life in a post-apocalyptic setting.
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Winner of the 2025 ASLE Creative Writing Book Award
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 Sen was seventeen years old when the Digital Human Archive Project (DHAP) was initiated. 12,000,203,891 humans have been archived so far.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.
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