The novel's basic premise was first used in the short story "The Inverted World" included in New Writings in SF 22 (1973), which had different characters and plot.

Upon reaching adulthood at the age of "six hundred and fifty miles", Helward leaves the crèche in which he has been raised and becomes an apprentice Future Surveyor.

The Barter Guild recruits labourers ("tooks") from the primitive, poverty-stricken nearby villages they pass, as well as women brought temporarily into the city to help combat the puzzling shortfall of female babies.

The Militia provides protection, armed with crossbows, against tooks resentful of the city's hard bargaining and the taking of their women.

The purpose and organisation of the city is laid out in a document written by the founder: Destaine's Directive, with entries dating from 1987 to 2023.

When Helward is assigned to escort three women back south to their village, he is astonished by what he learns about the alien nature of the world.

His invention has serious permanent and hereditary side effects, distorting people's perceptions (for example the shape of the sun) and damaging their DNA so that fewer females are born.

"[1] James Timarco says similarly, Nick Owchar, in the Los Angeles Times, writes that a "reason for the story's appeal is the way in which Priest, with the novel's very first sentence, immerses us within a strange new reality ... Mann's proud declaration about his maturity is a jarring revelation – time in this world is measured best by distances.

[4] Timarco's review discusses the psychology of the characters and the impact on the reader: What makes Inverted World shine like no other book is that it illustrates so perfectly how human beings create the context for their own suffering, yet this explanation never dulls the agony of Helward's predicament.

[2]Owchar, comparing the setting with other bizarre creations by authors such as Alan Campbell and China Miéville, wonders, Why do these fragile worlds captivate us so?

Long before these philosophical considerations arise, Priest's story is fascinating for a basic, practical reason: How, indeed, does one move a city?

Much of the first half of the book is devoted to describing this extraordinary process, something suggestive of the building of the Pyramids or the laying of the Transcontinental Railroad.

[3]Kirkus Reviews wrote, In 1974 The Inverted World was the winner of the British Science Fiction Association (BSFA),[6] and in 1975 it was nominated for the Hugo Award.

[7] The Making of The Lesbian Horse is a short chapbook (1979) written by Priest as a parody continuation of the book.