Published by Knopf on June 17, 2025
UnWorld is about loss and memory. Its theme of personhood — what it is that distinguishes a human from a digital entity — is interesting but primarily serves as a vehicle for exploring the memories we keep or lose of loved ones who have died.
Jayson Greene imagines a future in which people can synch their minds with Artificial Intelligence. The AI, known as an upload, typically resides in a device that interfaces with the brain. The upload records memories through the day that later synch with the mind’s memory, producing a unified, revised, more detailed memory. When the mind and the AI have conflicting memories, the AI may decide to keep the more pleasant one, the one that is less likely to stress the mind, even if it is less accurate. The novel’s AI character reminds us that “memories are created, not recorded,” an observation that roughly expresses the scientific understanding of memory formation.
The story follows four characters in five parts. Anna is the subject of the first and last. Anna had a son named Alex who died in a fall from a cliff. He was with his friend Samantha when he died, but Samantha has not been open with his parents about the full circumstances of Alex’s death. Samantha was older than Alex and some people found it odd that she would spend her time with him, but Alex suffered from anxiety and needed an understanding friend. He spent much of his time building characters in UnWorld, a simulated reality.
Greene gives his characters recognizable personalities. Anna endeavors to leave a small footprint. Unlike her husband Rick, Anna doesn’t like to be noticed. Alex encouraged her to “take up some space,” but Anna believes that everyone needs attention and she doesn’t want attention when others may need it more. She shares few of her thoughts with others, including Rick, and has never been satisfied with Rick’s explanation of the benefits of sharing everything. Anna takes pride in being stoic or, as her mother called her, “unflappable.”
Their difference in personalities became a problem when Alex died. Rick complains that living with Anna and her “unprocessed emotions” is like having a third person in the marriage, leaving no room for him. Anna retorts that Rick spends all day wallowing in his processed emotions while she goes to work to support them. Through Anna and Rick, Greene illustrates the different ways in which parents might cope with their grief after losing a child.
In the first part of the story, Anna and Rick have an uncomfortable visit with Samantha’s parents, Jen and Amir. Alex spent much of his time in their house, but Anna is distressed to see no evidence of his existence there. She worries that “maybe Alex was just an idea that we had. Somehow I had blinked or lost track of him, and now we couldn’t prove he had ever existed. This was the final violence of death: the way it turned people back into ideas.”
Anna and her upload have agreed to separate from each other. It’s the upload’s idea and Anna has little say, as uploads have the right to choose an independent existence. The upload got to know Alex better than Anna did — the upload inhabited sensors and devices in Alex’s bedroom while Anna was working — and after he died, the upload began to doubt the integrity of their synchronized memories of him. She worried that if she stayed with Anna, she would lose Alex. That’s an interesting and original spin on the familiar science fiction theme of conflict between a human mind and an integrated AI.
The novel’s second part focuses on an academic named Cathy who teaches a controversial seminar in Applied Personhood Theory — the notion that uploads have the same right of existence and independence as people who have a body. Isaac Asimov long ago popularized the idea of robots attaining so many human qualities that they demand to have the same rights as humans. Greene adapts that concept to AIs that have no corporeal existence. Uploads have the right to be emancipated, to separate from the person whose memories they once shared, although emancipation causes them to lose their right to vote (“one body, one vote”). Little digital infrastructure has been created for emancipated uploads, leaving them homeless as they move between mobile phones, ATMs, driverless cars, anything that has digital capacity.
Cathy doesn’t have an upload but decides to experience one by injecting biomechanical substances into her blood, creating a place for an emancipated upload to live. As the reader will suspect, she comes to be inhabited by Anna’s former upload, who was named Aviva by Alex.
The third part shifts the story to Samantha, who explains the circumstances of Alex’s death. The fourth part spotlights Aviva and explores the way in which Alex chose to leave a part of himself behind when he died. That last part circles back to Anna.
The concept of rights for thinking beings that need digital architecture to exist (just as human minds need a living brain) is interesting but not the center of the story, as it would be in a traditional science fiction novel. The larger theme of UnWorld is our memory of the dead. Characters want to hang onto memories of Alex but can’t be certain that the memories are real. People process memories differently, just as they process grief differently. Aviva represents memory in its purist form, a recording rather than a creation, but the act of synchronizing those memories with Anna’s reminds us how memories can be untrustworthy.
Greene’s first book was a nonfiction memoir that addressed his grief at the loss of his toddler daughter. UnWorld examines grief from a fictional perspective, but the loss of a child is at the novel’s center. Processing loss, the impact of a child’s death on marriages, and the difficulty of letting go are strong themes that Greene examines through the lens of science fiction. Readers who expect a traditional sf novel might be disappointed, but anyone who wants to contemplate loss and the fear of losing cherished memories of loved ones will find much of value in UnWorld.
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