New York 2140 - Kim Stanley Robinson

In his previous novel Aurora (2015) Robinson tackled a well known science fiction trope, that of a sub-lightspeed generational space ship, designed to hold enough people and supplies to survive a voyage of centuries and establish a colony on a new planet. His conclusion is sobering. Taking a human out of the environment they evolved in, Robinson claims, will almost certainly lead to extinction. Our bodies are so attuned to our environment and the organisms we share it with that survival, even elsewhere in the solar system, will be an almost insurmountable challenge. His message to humanity is clear. There is no Earth 2, try not to break the one we do have. Given this message, it is not surprising Robinson returns to Earth for his next novel. New York 2140 is set, as the title suggests, in the Big Apple a dozen decades from now. In that time a lot has changed, but in some respects, the city remains much the same.

In two separate cataclysmic events the sea level rose fifty feet. Coastlines around the world were flooded and many people have been displaced. New York is partially under water but this is not enough for people to abandon the city. The city has adapted to life in a partially submerged city. Many of the skyscrapers are still inhabited and innovative ways to connect them have been developed. One such building with its feet in the water is the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower. Once the tallest building in the city, it is now into its third century and run as a cooperation of the inhabitants. The disappearance of two men living in the building is the first of a series of events that will challenge the inhabitants of the building and the city greatly.

It is clear from the start the same ingenuity and imagination that brought the red planet to life in stunning detail in the Mars trilogy is at work here. Robinson has done his homework on the city and it shows in many details. From the geography of the region to the layout of the city, all of it is worked into this semi-submerged future New York. Quite a bit of attention went into what the new conditions would do to infrastructure as well. The tidal zone in particular is hard on steel and concrete. Robinson's research into the city didn't stop there. He pays attention to the legal status of the coastline as well, which has very interesting implications for the story, and he takes an interest in the history of the city. Many obscure, sometimes funny, little details about the city precede each shift in point of view. I'm not sure what a native would make of it, but for an outsider the setting works very well.

Given the description on the inside flat and the striking cover, you would be forgiven for thinking this book is about climate change. You would also be wrong. Climate change is a given in the novel. The city has for the most part adapted. The mechanism Robinson uses to explain this rapid sea level rise is considered not terribly likely, but it does fit the requirements for the story. What he really wants to discuss in this novel is global finance. New York is the self-proclaimed capital of capital, and even fifty feet of water is not enough to wash that away. The characters are very much aware of it and discuss the state of global finance, neoliberal economic theory and the economy of the US in detail. Robinson has never shied away from using the social sciences in his books, but to my knowledge this is the first time he goes into economics this extensively.

The way he goes about it is very interesting. While the characters debate the economy as a whole, how global finance works and how wealth is distributed, the story itself focusses of the effects on a much smaller scale. Capital has fled the city when it flooded. Much of the real estate was wrecked and deemed a total loss. Years of human ingenuity and advances in material science has shown investors how there might still be money to be made. Soon, the cooperation finds itself under pressure to sell to an unknown bidder. When money is not enough, other means are employed. Through the characters we get the rationale of why capital behaves this way, while showing us the effect in intimate detail.

Robinson uses quite a large cast to tell his story, no fewer than eight different points of view. One of them is simply named 'a citizen'. Robinson uses this citizen to speak to the reader directly. His writing is often criticised for containing large sections of scientific theory, usually related as an interior monologue (or as some would have it, a plain infodump). In this novel he concentrates that for a large part in the citizen point of view. The citizen is an observer, as far as we can tell he or she does not play a role in the story. You might even go so far as to say Robinson inserted himself in the novel. The citizen informs us about the state of the city, the economy, the geology and natural history of the region and of course the mechanisms of sea level rise. Saves the characters quite a bit of thinking. I very much doubt it is going to convince the people who don't like Robinson's style, but it is certainly an interesting experiment.

The question of how we should shape our world and society often comes up in Robinson's work. It goes all the way back to the Orange County triptych. In these novels there is almost always a sense of optimism. There are ideas to make the world better, technology is there or can be developed, there are people willing to throw themselves into it, and there is enough common sense not to turn away from a problem. If, for instance, climate change cannot be prevented, we can at least mitigate it and adapt to the new circumstances. In this novel, the sense that humanity is willingly doing something dreadfully stupid prevails. There is a sense of disbelief and irritation at the continuous cycle of bubbles and busts that does so much damage to society.

Over the course of the book the citizen gets angrier and angrier. His main argument is that the global economic system heavily favours those possessing extreme wealth while making life unnecessarily  hard on everybody else. The book illustrates this by a look into the world of finance. He details how capital tends to accumulate with those that already have a lot and how, at some point, money is not invested back into the real economy but rather funnelled into what its detractors call the casino economy. Speculating on indexes, derivatives and the like. In this way, capital becomes detached from the physical reality of the world, yet the bubbles it creates (and busts) still have a significant impact on society. The citizen can't help but wonder why the vast majority of people put up with this blatant bit of tyranny. With another bubble popped, even for the people in the capital of capital, enough is enough. The minute chance of becoming filthy rich is not worth the misery it imposes on others. Revolution is brewing.

What is most striking about the economics in the novel, is the way one of the characters thinks about investment and how it is a sin to sink money into a specific project rather than 'keeping it liquid' and moving it around to where the most profit is to be made. As many other reviewers point out there is a parallel between the way water behaves in the novel and how capital flows. Throughout the novel various economists appear to be looking over the shoulder of the characters. Not surprisingly, Keynes is the most prominent among them. The novel frequently refers back to the great depression. Robinson criticises Ben Bernanke, and implicitly the European Central Bank for the quantitative easing and bailing out of banks going down in a self-inflicted bust. The capital pumped into the system does not trickle down, so he argues, but only serves to fuel the next bubble. It is, he feels, not worth the austerity policies necessary to service the public debt. To break the cycle of bubble and bust, one of the characters suggest Piketty-ing the tax system, a form of progressive tax making it virtually impossible to live on capital gains alone. Given the way global politics are developing, it may well be another century before that happens.

Robinson may have shifted his attention a bit compared to other books, New York 2140 is nevertheless a fine example of his writing. Socially engaged, well researched and infused with a great sense of location. Whatever you may think of his view on the world, he manages to get it across in a fascinating way. It is another way of looking at a set of challenges humanity faces. Although he revisits themes he has covered before, you can't say Robinson is repeating himself. It is always building on what has gone before, adding a new angle or refinement to his world view. I greatly enjoyed reading it. In a way it is as controversial as Aurora, knocking around the idea of the American Dream a bit. As such, it will divide readers. When reading Kim Stanley Robinson, this is as it should be.

Book Details
Title: New York 2140
Author: Kim Stanley Robinson
Publisher: Orbit
Pages: 613
Year: 2017
Language: English
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 978-0-356-50875-7
First published: 2017

Short Fiction Month: The Blind Geometer - Kim Stanley Robinson

This novella has a complicated publication history. It originally appeared as a limited edition chapbook in 1986. An abridged version appeared in August 1987 in Asimov's.  The story was later revised and expanded from the original edition for publication in Tor Double #13. The collections the novella was published in afterwards contain the third version. Ironically, the magazine version, which Robinson thinks is the least of the three, won the Nebula in 1987.

A blind mathematician is asked to study some geometric drawings by a colleague who regularly takes on jobs at the Pentagon. The drawings mean little to him but the colleague arouses his suspicion. The woman who has made the drawings intrigues him however. He decided to continue with the investigation and is soon drawn into a game of lies and suspicion from which it proves nearly impossible to extricate himself.

As with many of Robinson's stories, the main character of The Blind Geometer is a scientist. It shows in the way he thinks. Much of his thoughts are given over to geometry, a theorem by Desargues in particular. This is apparently the bit that the Asimov edition trimmed. A decision I can understand at some level but also makes the story less... Robinson I suppose. His writing is just not the same if he can't elaborate on some bit of science. Math, I will admit, has never been my strong suit but that doesn't stop me from following this story.

The most striking feature of this story is how Robinson deals with the character's blindness though. The story is written from a first person perspective so Robinson can't describe what the main character sees. He relies much more on auditory and sensory input to convey what the character experiences. Robinson uses lots of music in his tale for instance. Including a reference to Keith Jarret's The Köln Concert which I happened to have listened to last week. He likens voices to instruments in an orchestra, is acutely aware of timbre and tension, and of course the mathematics behind acoustics. It enables him to detect a lie from the way words are spoken. There is an explanation of how not being able to see can be an advantage in higher dimension geometry. Try to picture a shape in four or more dimensions and you'll soon tie your brain in knots.

There is one particular scene in the book where this way of processing information from the senses is portrayed in a very dramatic fashion. I have no idea if this is anywhere close to how a person blind from birth would experience the world, but it certainly works to convey his mood at that point in the story. He seems very aware of the difference between a person with vision and himself. I couldn't entirely escape the impression that the writer trying to wrap his head around how a blind person would approach a certain situation seeps through here and there.

If you enjoy Robinson's novels, you will most likely like this novella. It contains many of the elements that crop up in his novels. I quite liked this particular story but I do think his writing works  better in the long form. While I liked The Blind Geometer for the science and how the character goes about his business, I was less impressed with the spy element of the story. It feels a bit under developed. The motivation to involve him is made clear, but who exactly wanted information from him is not. I suppose that is not really what the story is about, but it could have used a bit more attention. It is still well worth the read though, I would even say it is not a bad introduction to Robinson's writing either. If his work piques your curiosity this would be a good place to start.

Story Details
Title: The Blind Geometer
Author: Kim Stanley Robinson
Language: English
Originally published: The Blind Geometer (1986)
Read in: The Best of Kim Stanley Robinson (2010)
Story length: Novella
Awards: Nebula Award winner, Hugo Award nominated
Available online: Not that I am aware of.

Aurora - Kim Stanley Robinson

After his venture into prehistory in Shaman, Kim Stanley Robinson turns around and takes us to the twenty-eighth century. His output has been very varied over the past two decades and in this novel he again explores territory he hasn't covered before. Generational starships have come up once or twice. There is one in Icehenge, and another in Blue Mars, but they are always at the periphery of the story. In this novel, the concept takes centre stage. It makes Aurora an unusual book in some ways and a return to familiar themes in others. It is full of ideas on space exploration and terraforming, but there is also a notable shift in his thinking on these subjects. One that will surprise more than a few of his readers. Nevertheless,  I think Robinson wrote one of the best science fiction novels in 2015 with Aurora. I fully expect him to show up on a couple of awards shortlists next year.

The generational starship Aurora is set to arrive at the Tau Ceti systems, one of our closest neighbours, 170 years after its launch. They have been sent to found a colony and spread the human race across the galaxy. The ship is huge, carrying miniatures of the most important of Earth's ecosystems. The variety of life on board is impressive but the ship can carry only so much. After a more than a century and a half, a strain on the ship's ecosystem is starting to be felt. The restrictions imposed on the population, trying to maintain the precarious ecological balance is starting to wear on the population. As they approach their new home, a kind of cabin fever spreads through the ship. Some people can't wait to be out and about. Others are not so sure.

Kim Stanley Robinson has a can do approach to science fiction. In a field that is inundated with natural disasters, alien invasions, ecological catastrophe and all manner of post-apocalyptic tales, his stories tend to be more upbeat. We can act meaningfully to mitigate the effects of climate change, we can reform the capitalist economic system to create a more even distribution of wealth and a more sustainable economy, we can go out and colonize other planets, we can build spacecraft that can reach the stars. The challenges are formidable but solutions can be found. This novel, in a way, is not quite as optimistic. Yes, we can reach the stars, but what happens when we get there, that is another story.

Robinson has some pretty scary things to say about ecosystems in this novel. He reaches back to island biogeography, a branch of biology founded by Wilson and MacArthur that is very influential among conservationists. What Robinson is describing is a system spiralling into collapse. The ship simply isn't large enough to sustain the variety of life on board it and there is a constant pressure to revert to less complex, but in the long run more stable, systems. The people on board, ironically the factor that contributes most to this pressure, try to prevent that from happening but the realization that no ecosystem is fully closed is starting to sink in. Now take a step back and think about what this means for the situation on Earth, where natural ecosystems are being forced into ever smaller areas to clear land for human uses.

There seems to be a limit to how long a spaceship can sustain a human population and that leads to the next problem the colonists face. They are sent to Tau Ceti because it is conveniently close, not necessarily because it has the most hospitable planets. When the moon they had pinned their hopes on turns out to be a killer, the colonists face a dreadful decision. Try another, less hospitable location, or refuel, turn around and head back to the solar system. Neither of which has a good chance of success. Colonizing the stars is harder than science fiction makes it out to be.

In essence, Robinson is saying the stars are too far away, and life is too well adapted to the solar system to make relocation a viable option. It is an idea that is quite popular in a sense. Where the Russian scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky in the early 20th century supposed that humanity would one day leave its cradle, in recent years it becomes apparent that it may not be that easy to permanently live elsewhere. Even the terraforming process on Mars, mentioned briefly in this novel, has run into problems Robinson did not yet know about when writing his Mars trilogy. When reading it I got the sense that Robinson is telling us we need to take better care of spaceship Earth, because abandoning it, does not appear to be an option.

Robinson chooses an unusual point of view for large stretches of the novel. The ship's main computer is given the task to create a narrative of the expedition by the main engineer of the ship. While a quantum computer can do a great many things (simultaneously), it is not very well equipped for this task. Early on in the novel, the computer digresses, expresses problems in trying to select what to include and what to leave out and is given to long rambles about the details of running the ship and its observations about the humans he is transporting. Gradually it evolves into a somewhat understated drama with the computer as omniscient narrator (which, on the ship at least, is more or less correct). It is so well done that some readers may wonder if the final part of the novel, which is not narrated by the computer, is necessary. That's not really an issue I can discuss here without giving away the end of the novel so you'll have to find that out for yourself.

Some readers will inevitably have issues with Robinson's approach. The ship's issues with the command to tell the story makes for a fairly slow start of the novel. At one point the engineer interferes and tells the ship what it is doing wrong (too much detail, too much backstory). Robinson will have lost more than a few readers at that point. I guess it also depends on the willingness of the reader to accept the computer as a character as well as the narrator. In terms of character development, the computer shows the most growth by far.

This review can't even begin to do justice to all the ideas Robinson puts into this novel. Besides ideas on ecology and human evolution, he also includes thoughts on Alan Turing and artificial intelligence, the ethics of generational space ships and how subsequent generations would see the choice their ancestors made for them, philosophies on consciousness and self-awareness show up in the text, as well as thoughts on language and communication. If science fiction is the literature of ideas for you, I very much doubt you could do much better than this novel.

Aurora is a novel that provides an awful lot of food for thought. It has taken me a few days before I could make myself pick up a new book just to digest it all. Robinson has produced come wonderful books in the past and Aurora definitely ranks with the best of them. The narrative structure is perhaps not everybody's cup of tea. Robinson's choice of narrator influences the characterization and pacing of the novel to a large extent. Personally, I am more than willing to put up with a slow start to see where Robinson takes the story, but it is a novel that requires a bit of patience. I feel it pays off though. It is without a doubt one of the notable releases in science fiction of 2015.

Book Details
Title: Aurora
Author: Kim Stanley Robinson
Publisher: Orbit
Pages: 466
Year: 2015
Language: English
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 978-0-316-09810-6
First published: 2015

Sixty Days and Counting - Kim Stanley Robinson

Sixty Days and Counting is the final novel in Kim Stanley Robinson's Science in the Capital trilogy, a work that focuses on the impact of rapid climate change on a near future (when he wrote it, the novel is set right about now) earth. It is one of Robinson's most political books, not so much because of the ideas in it, he's discussed quite a few alternative economies in the Mars trilogy for instance, but because of how close to home it is. This novel is so left leaning by American standards that it will have many a conservative frothing at the mouth within a few chapters. For me it is not as radical as it may seem to others but I have a hard time seeing anything like this happening in the current US political climate.

Democrat Phil Chase, Charlie's boss, has been elected US president and a global response to climate change is high on his agenda. To show how urgent he thinks change is, he launches a slew of initiatives in the first sixty days of his presidency and keeps pushing on long after they have passed. Charlie, Frank and Anna are swept up in various parts of this campaign. The environmental crisis is not waiting for the world to get its act together however, evidence of irreversible changes and imminent system collapsed keep surfacing. A global approach is needed to keep the planet inhabitable in the long run.

Robinson is certainly not afraid to include some very controversial ideas in this novel. In the opening chapters Frank in particular is looking at alternative energy to replace the carbon based systems that currently power the US. The debate focuses on whether alternative sources like wind, time or solar energy are ready to take over, or whether additional nuclear plants will have to be built to cover the transition. He even points out the good (public) record of the US military when it comes to nuclear power. Personally I'm not convinced by this argument. There simply is no good solution for nuclear waste and the idea that we can keep it safe and controlled for the tens of thousands of years some of it needs to degrade doesn't strike me as very convincing. The events in Fukushima has recently made a lot of people jittery about nuclear power plants again but Robinson could no have known that. Interestingly enough, Frank does reach the conclusion that somehow harnessing the power of the sun is the only source that could possibly meet demand and still be sustainable.

Another interesting idea that some will fight tooth and nail, is the connection Chase makes between social justice and environmental degradation. Women's rights in particular, he points out, are linked to birth rate. With women in control over reproduction, the birthrate drops to about the replacement rate. Something that needs to happen to keep humanity from further overshooting the planet's carrying capacity. And this is but many of the social feedback loops that are related to environmental issues. Thus, Chase pursues a policy of technological and social change. In fact, he uses one as leverage to achieve the other. It is at the same time good to see the realization that a technical fix is not enough to solve the problem (Fifty Degrees Below is more focuses on technological fixes than this book) and vexing to see how Chase goes about it.

There is a sense in the novel that once the US has identified something as a problem that needs immediate action, things will get done. In fact they go so far as to strongarm various parties into compliance. It is an unbelievably arrogant position when you take into account that more progressive parties tried to make a start with the reduction of greenhouse gas emission in the early 1990s through the Kyoto protocol. Their targets were of course laughably modest but it was a beginning. The US never had the intention of actually ratifying it. It wasn't alone in this position but to suddenly put yourself forward as environmental champion is not very likely to be taken seriously by the rest of the world. In fact, without the string of natural disasters that Robinson puts in the book, I very much doubt even the strongarm tactics of the US would have been successful. It is probably an accurate portrayal of the attitude in the US political system but annoying nonetheless.

A third interesting aspect of the situation Robinson describes is the fact that permanent change is considered inevitable. The situation at the South Pole in particular is considered to have passed the point of no return. Interestingly enough, reports have recently started appearing that saome scientists consider a collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet inevitable. Robinson portrays this event in a bit more dramatic way but some of it may come to pass in the not too distant future.

Chase has developed a strategy of adaptation and mitigation to deal with it and to he does not shy away from huge projects to weather the crisis. The restarting for the oceanic conveyor belt described in the previous book is small compared to what is proposed in this novel. The uncontrolled release of genetically modified lichen (a Russian project out of Chase's control), filling up desert basins to create huge salt water lakes and pumping water from the ocean back up the Antarctic plateau are the most eye-catching ones. It's terraforming on the scale described in the Mars novels only this time applied to earth. The sheer magnitude of the changes and the impossibility of predicting their effect with any kind of accuracy made me even more sympathetic to Ann Clayborne's Red position in those novels. Of course, on Earth we may not have the luxury of a choice. It makes you wonder what a world in which decisive action was taken earlier would look like.

Change is obvious in the lives of the main characters too. Frank reaches the conclusion that a blow to the head in the previous book has impaired the workings of his brain and he decides to have an operation to have it fixed. In the mean time he also has to deal with the relationship he started with Caroline and his desire to go back to California. He has quite a bit on his plate in this novel, it is a miracle he has time left for work. His alternative lifestyle has moved to the background a bit in favour of the spy storyline. Robinson seems to get the timing right for this one. The absurd tangle of US intelligence agencies is starting to unravel in this novel, when the president realizes how much of a mess it is. Where Chase's election has a lot in common with the election of Obama in 2008, the latter seems much more reluctant to do something about the gross abuse of power and lack of democratic control over these agencies.

Charlie in the mean time, is faced with another tough decision. With his boss in the White House, he is forced to choose between giving up his job or going back into the office and put his son Joe in daycare. He would rather wrok from home until Joe is old enough to go to school but when the president insists, he agrees to try. He can't stop worrying about Joe though. His wife Anna is faced with another dilemma. She is offered a position in the advisory team of the president. She prefers to stay at NSF however, taking pure science over a mix of science and politics. With a stay at home dad and a mother with a head for numbers and math, Joe's parents make a statement about the traditional role pattern between men and women. It is in fact the same one that returns over and over again in the novel. We can change things if we want to.

Sixty Days and Counting is the most optimistic of the three in a way, but reading it didn't make me share Robinson's optimism. In the book things get done. Despite my annoyance with the way the American political system believing the universe revolves around them (really, in that respect they can teach Wall Street a lesson) you get the sense that the characters in this novel will not let the world cook itself. We have now arrived more or less at the point in time where this novel is set, and if I look around, I still see an outrageous level of denial about the state of the planet and how much trouble we are really in. Robinson is right, we can change things if we want to. But apparently we don't. There is a good chance we'll see another El Niño event this year and some predictions indicate it will be a strong one. Let's hope it won't be the hyperniño described in Forty Signs of Rain. I'm beginning to wonder if in the end, that is what it will take to wake people up. I'd much prefer it if people read these books, thought about it, and not let it come to that.

Book Details
Title: Sixty Days and Counting
Author: Kim Stanley Robinson
Publisher: Bantam Books
Pages: 388
Year: 2007
Language: English
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 0-553-80313-6
First published: 2007

Fifty Degrees Below - Kim Stanley Robinson

Fifty Degrees Below is the second book in Kim Stanley Robinson's Science in the Capital trilogy. It's a near future science fiction novel tackling rapid climate change, a topic that has always greatly interested me. I read it for the first time in 2006, when my classes in things like atmospheric chemistry, environmental systems analysis and ecology were still more or less fresh in my mind. Back then, I thought it a bit better than Forty Signs of Rain, which was a bit of a disappointment to me. After this reread I still feel it's an improvement but for slightly different reasons. I guess my expectations played an important role in my initial read.

The National Science Foundation is starting to put its plans to become the global coordinator of the human response to rapid climate change in action. Scientist Frank Vanderwal has agreed to stay on a year longer and help with the project. He has had to move out of his apartment however and with the flood wrecking many homes in the DC area, fining an affordable living space proves to be difficult. While the NSF projects grind on, defying a hostile White House, Frank tries out life as an urban nomad. With the harshest winter in living memory about to descend on North America, things are going to get very challenging both personally and professionally for Frank.

In my previous review I wrote that I had some reason to believe that the novel was set in the 2040s but that it didn't really seem to match with other elements in the novel. In Fifty Degrees Below, more and more hits showed up that would make it more likely that the novel is set right about now. Phil Chase for instance, is mention as having been a reporter in Saigon. Even if he started his career early and got there late in the Vietnam war, it would still mean he is pushing a hundred in the 2040s. A group of Vietnam veterans show up in the novel as well, one mentioning being involved in the Tet-offensive. I'm going to have to look into the Antarctic treaty some time to see where I went wrong. Of course setting it 2014  doesn't match with the presidential campaign described in this book.

In Forty Sings of Rain the novel focused on three major characters, Frank Vanderwall and Anna and Charlie Quibler. Fifty Degrees Below is almost entirely Frank's territory. If you don't like this character, and I have seen plenty of comments out on the web from people who don't, then this novel is going to be dreadful. Personally, I like Frank just fine. He is intelligent, resourceful, impulsive and still obsessed with the prisoner's dilemma and sociobiology. He's also very lonely and throughout the novel shows increasing signs of paranoia, a development that will carry over to Sixty Days and Counting.

In this novel Frank is trying out some of his scientific theories. Although he makes a token attempt to find another place, he convinces himself rather quickly that he can do without a permanent home. It's a fairly common theme in Robinson's work. A lot of his characters are constantly on the move. Frank finds his live with a minimum of material possessions liberating. Although he has a semi-permanent shelter in one of city's parks, closed after the flood, his activities are spread out over the city. This roving lifestyle is perhaps not as extreme as Nirgal's run with the ferals in Blue Mars but the hunter-gatherer Frank so often thinks about is very present in this book. It makes me wonder what Frank, or Robinson himself for that matter, would make of Bruce Chatwin's The Songlines.

His explorations in the park and his experiences as a homeless man often lead Frank to think about how hopelessly ill prepared most people are to live without modern conveniences. He tries to convince people to stop wearing cotton during the coldest parts of winter for instance, and does a lot to help a group of homeless people he's been in contact with. On the other hand, he also feels that if you know how, survival even in this cold winter is quite possible. He thinks about how his basic survival gear, Frank is an experienced mountaineer, has not survived since the time of Ötzi the Iceman. Robinson's interest in Ötzi is one of the things that would eventually inspire him to write Shaman. Frank's new lifestyle will get him in trouble eventually and in a way contributes to his loneliness but he displays a kind of happiness in parts of the novel that clearly wasn't there when he at the end of his first term as NSF.

Frank is full of contradictions in this novel, primitive living conditions if a highly developed urban environment, lonely but surrounded by millions, some of whom he could consider his friends, cynical of politics yet involved in a project to get science some political leverage, a self confessed rationalist deeply moved by Buddhist principles. When you think about it, it's no wonder he looses his mind. But even that is not straightforward, Frank suffers a trauma to the head that clearly influences his behaviour too. Some readers may not like him much, I think he is a fascinating character.

One drawback of this almost entirely single point of view approach is that it gives a very one sided view of events. Frank rationalizes his choice to become homeless by ignoring the drawbacks of his new lifestyle for instance. All this primate on the plain stuff works very nicely when you are strong and healthy and experienced. Mistakes can be very costly. For all his talk of happiness, there must have been a reason why the hunter-gatherer lifestyle was ultimately abandoned. Another obvious issue is Frank's growing paranoia. How much of the spy stuff is actually real? The reader has no way to judge. One has to constantly keep in mind Frank is unreliable and for some readers that gets tiring.

Fifty Degrees Below is frighteningly relevant in two aspects. The fist is obviously the harsh winter it describes. The title of the book refers to a particularly cold night when the temperature in Washington DC drops to -50 °F (or about -46 °C for those of us used to a more sensible temperature scale). It was cold in parts of the US this winter but fortunately for the people living there, DC didn't get that cold. The mechanism appears to be a little different, as far as I know the termohaline circulation hasn't stalled (yet), but the link with the disappearance of the polar ice cap is certainly there. Unfortunately, this winter in the Eastern US doesn't seem to have inspired the sense of urgency when dealing with the problem of climate change Robinson describes in the novel. I guess we need a few more signs to get us moving.

In the novel the NSF does get things going however. It focuses extensively on the political side of getting things done. Frank is quite cynical about the whole process. The mudslinging and corruption of pure science to fit a political ideology disgusts him. Fortunately his boss Diane better at politics. Like the previous novel, there is not much actual science in this novel. Where Forty Signs of Rain focused on the process of science, here we get to see the political side of things. One thing that does get described is an attempt to restart the sinking of saline water in the northern Atlantic and thus restart the thermohaline circulation. Between the lines, Robinson does explain the science of this and notes that there are tipping points in all sorts of physical and biological processes that offer opportunities for mitigation strategies. When dealing with climate, relationships are rarely linear.

I must admit I have my doubts about the feasibility of the technological fix Robinson describes but it does make for a very dramatic scene in the final part of the novel. It is a very visible attempt to do something, and therefore from a political point of view useful, but much more structural changes need to be considered to really bring the situation under control. Climatic terrorism, as the incumbent republican president keeps referring to the situation, cannot be dealt a finishing blow that easily. The simplicity of political reasoning is dominant in this novel but Robinson makes sure the reader understands the problems with it. In a way, the Chase campaign reminded me of the Obama campaign in 2008. There's a huge sense of optimism but in the background also the nagging question whether or not he can actually deliver.

The second aspect I found strangely relevant is the surveillance theme in the novel. In Forty Sings of Rain Frank met a woman working for a nebulous secret service. As their relationship evolves, he gets to know more about her work and the inner workings of the organisation she is working for. Frank is amazed that he would be interesting enough to keep an eye on and that it would be so easy. After Edward Snowden's recent leaks, we know that what Robinson describes is positively tame to what is going on in reality. Where the science Robinson describes, still works pretty well, I'm afraid reality has overtaken him on this point. One particular weakness is the low-key role of information technology (and the possibilities to monitor the communication it enables) seems odd. It's one area where technological development almost seems to outpace the capacity of society to adapt to it.

The trilogy is often being described as eco-thrillers and quite a few very dramatic events take place in this novel. Whole islands disappear into the sea, blizzards rage, elections are being manipulated. There is plenty of material for a real thriller here. Robinson didn't write a thriller though. He uses these event to make a point but they are not what the novel focuses on. As such, I think the thriller label is a bit misleading. If you go into these books expecting some Michael Crichton or Robin Cook you're in for a disappointment. Treat is as a near future science fiction novel works a lot better.

I think Fifty Degrees Below is a better novel than Forty Signs of Rain. It's his most political novel up to that point and probably also the one that is most likely to polarize readers. The tighter focus on a single character will not be appreciated by all readers but does give us the most detailed look into the mind of a type character that Robinson portrays in a number of his novels: the scientist engaged with society, working not just to expand the sum of human knowledge but to put this knowledge in practice too. Through Frank's eyes we see science reaching out to society and politics in a way that clashes with the traditional view of science as the pursuit knowledge only. Will science be able to overcome the shortcomings of the current political process? Will science help us deal with the current crisis better than the current policy of denial?

Fifty Degrees Below poses some very fundamental questions about the way we run the world at the moment. Not everybody will agree with Robinson's views but it makes for fascinating reading. At it's core, this novel is not a thriller but a political statement and the message is 'we need to do something now!' Read it as such and there is plenty of material to think about. It hits a lot closer to home than the Mars trilogy or other novels set in various places in the solar system. Earth is old, full and complicated and changing the direction we're headed is hard. The details of a story tackling such a complex subject and the details of science underpinning will always be debatable  but Robinson captures that sense of complexity and inertia in society very well. All things considered I think I got a lot more out of this novel than during my first read.

Book Details
Title: Fifty Degrees Below
Author: Kim Stanley Robinson
Publisher: Bantam Spectra
Pages: 405
Year: 2005
Language: English
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 0-553-80312-3
First published: 2005

Forty Signs of Rain - Kim Stanley Robinson

Forty Signs of Rain is the first volume in Kim Stanley Robinson's Science in the Capital series. I got my first copy of this book, a mass market paperback, in a book store in Gothenburg, Sweden in June 2005. Unfortunately it turned out to be a misprint, the order of the pages was very mixed up so that the first pages in the book dealt with the storm that was supposed to be the climax of the novel. Of course I was back in the Netherlands by the time I found out and you don't exactly hop on a plane to Sweden to get your money back. I read it anyway but trying to figure out what goes where in the story was a bit of a challenge. A few years later I replaced it with a hardcover, which made for a lot easier reading.

The novel centers on the National Science Foundation, a US government agency that funds all sorts of fundamental research. Thee main characters, all with a connection to the NSF, try to tackle the problem of rapid climate change in their own way. Signs of climate change appear everywhere in the novel and the world has gotten to the point where not acting on it is a luxury that it can no longer afford. While Charlie Quibler tries to get legislation sponsored by Senator Phil Chase to pass, his wife Anna and her colleague Frank Vanderwal realize that science will be pivotal in dealing with the crisis and that the NSF cannot afford to maintain its passive attitude.

Robinson sets the tone early in this novel, indicating that it opens shortly after the Arctic polar ice starts breaking up in summer, one of the many warning signs that the world's climate is about to change drastically. There are no firm indicators as to when this novel is set, although the presence of Phil Chase is a firm link to Robinson's 1997 novel Antarctica, in which he is a minor character. That novel is set two years after the expiration of the Antarctic Treaty which was renewed for 50 years in 1991. That would mean Antarctica is set in 2043. Forty Signs of Rain doesn't have that much of a futuristic feel to it, although cars seem to have come a long way. If it is indeed meant to have been set in the 2040s, it looks like Robinson underestimated the speed with which the Arctic ice cover is breaking up. Since the turn of the century new record lows for the Arctic ice cover had been recorded with depressing frequency. Somehow, setting it sometime in this decade seems more fitting.

What Robinson describes in this trilogy are so called trigger events. Occurrences that suddenly and drastically change the climate in a matter of years rather than the long time frames we are used to when dealing with climate. A lot of possibilities are mentioned in the book but there are two that stand out. The first is what Robinson calls a Hyperniño, an extended El Niño event that in the novel sends big storms barrelling into the coast of California. The most important one is the stalling of the oceanic conveyor belt. A system of currents in the worlds ocean driven by differences in water temperature and salinity. Without the Arctic ice cover to provide a sinking of cold and saline water, the system stalls, severely distorting the heat distribution in many places on Earth. This last threat is noticed at the end of the first novel and will be an important element in the following books.

Climate is a notoriously complex scientific issue and changes to it are surrounded by uncertainties. Just about all available evidence points in the direction that the world is warming up however, and the world is currently ignoring the problem at its peril. Without a decent education in the natural sciences it is very easy to fall for misinformation being spread about the issue. One persistent and to scientists intensely annoying error is to mistake weather for climate. I think this XKCD comic illustrates it perfectly.  The point Robinson makes in this book is that policy surrounding this issue should be based on scientific observation and evidence rather than be dictated by the short term interests of capitalism. It is quite a bold statement given the current political climate. One that probably would sent more than one US senator into a rage.

One could say the attitudes of both Frank and Charlie border on being undemocratic at times. There is a sense of frustration in these characters at the political process and what they perceive as the sheer stupidity of people refusing to re-examine their convictions in the light of scientific evidence. Robinson's characters are great believers in the scientific method, something that returns time and again in his entire body of work. Where the scientists in Red Mars have a blank slate (or at least that is how Sax would see it) to work with and politics are months of space travel away, scientists in the capital run into the political realities of Washington on a daily basis. Although the thoughts of the characters can be quite vehement in opinion of the way politics deals with climate change, the novel as a whole advocates a different role for science in a more diplomatic way.

Robinson also includes different fields of science. Frank's sections in particular focus on them. He is very much into game theory and a sociobiology, often seeing real world situations in terms of either discipline. On the one hand it is enlightening at times, but he also tends overlook the limitations of game theory in particular. The novel also includes brief descriptions of scientific knowledge, usually related to climate at the front of each part that help the reader understand the issue at hand. With those he manages to avoid having to include too much information in the issue into the thoughts or discussions of his characters. Interior monologues are still very common in this book but they don't tend to contain as much information as the ones in the Mars trilogy do.

That doesn't mean this book is all ratio. Robinson introduces a group of Tibetan monks, living in exile on the fictional  island of Kembalung into the story. They are both the window on the rest of the world in a city that is very focused on the US and American interests, as well as the spiritual part of the novel. Robinson has included Tibetan Buddhism in his work before. Most notably in his alternative history The Years of Rice and Salt (2002), which is based on the Buddhist concept of reincarnation. The plight of the Tibetans, whose new home is threatened by sea level rise, runs parallel to that of the inhabitants of Washington, getting their first taste of the radical changes climate change in the closing pages of this novel. Their response is one of the many ways in which people adapt in this novel. Despite the grimness of the situation no book of Robinson would be complete with a healthy dose of optimism.

Like the Mars trilogy, the Science in the Capital series is more of a long novel than a trilogy in the classical sense. Robinson is building in this novel and some readers my find the story arc in this novel somewhat unsatisfying. Robinson is outlining the threat, building his characters, setting the stage. Personally I enjoyed reading it but that is partly because for me, this was a reread and I know where he is taking it. I very much enjoyed reading Frank's sections for instance because I can already see some of this paranoid traits starting to appear that wil become important in the next novel. Charlie's part on the other hand became less enjoyable as I think the eventual resolution of his storyline is unrealistically optimistic. An opinion that has been shaped in part by the Obama presidency, which of course Robinson didn't know about in 2004.

After my first read of this trilogy I didn't think this was Robinson's best work. After this reread of Forty Signs of Rain I'm still of that opinion. The novel deals with a challenge humanity is facing and at the moment refusing to address in any meaningful way. In that sense I appreciate this work. On the other hand I can't really share Robinson's optimism that the various parts of government in Washington can be made to disengage from the financial interests of those who wish to downplay the problem. I do not doubt that humanity can tackle the problem through science, I just don't see it happening any time soon. The world is not made up of Robinson's highly intelligent characters, resistance to the radical change in thinking he advocates is fierce. Somehow it is easier to see Robinson's optimism and social ideas put into practice in space than in the world of dirty politics we're familiar with. That doesn't mean we should stop trying though, and it most certainly doesn't mean you shouldn't read this book. The ideas it contains are fascinating. Despite my reservations, I am looking forward to my reread of Fifty Degrees Below.

Book Details
Title: Forty Signs of Rain
Author: Kim Stanley Robinson
Publisher: Bantam Spectra
Pages: 358
Year: 2004
Language: English
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 0-553-80311-5
First published: 2004

Shaman - Kim Stanley Robinson

I didn't read Robinson's previous novel, 2312, until a year after it was fist published. I guess I felt the story Robinson was writing had too many things in common with what he had done before that I couldn't get really excited about it. It turned out to be a good read but not one that ranks among my favourites. Shaman on the other hand, is one of those books I wanted to read as soon as it came out. In fact, I even tried (and failed) to get a review copy. Robinson's work is much more varied than the epic science fictions he is best known for and this book is a good example of that. Shaman takes us back in time instead of forward. That in itself is something Robinson has done before in The Years of Rice and Salt and Galileo's Dream, but certainly not this far. Shaman is a novel set during the ice age, some thirty-two thousand years ago.

Loon is the apprentice of the moody shaman Thorn. He didn't ask for the job, it just happened to him. After the death of his father, Thorn's real apprentice as Loon thinks of him, and his mother, the shaman and the herb woman Heather take care of him. He is not particularly interested in most of what Thorn is trying to teach him except for the art of making cave paintings. Loon is determined to find his own path in the unforgiving world. The fist step on that path is the wander, an initiation into manhood. That is far from his last challenge though.

Throughout his career Robinson has mixed in the evolution of humanity into his novels. One particularly clear example is Frank Vanderwal, a character in the Science in the Capital trilogy. He is constantly explaining modern human behaviour in the light of patterns we picked up while still being 'primates on the plain.' He even lives as something of an urban hunter-gatherer for a while in Fifty Degrees Below. Another example that comes to mind in Nirgal's run with the primitives in Blue Mars. More primitive modes of living in modern times are thoroughly discussed in Robinson's novels. Shaman itself, appears to be in part inspired by the Chauvet Cave, a site with extensive cave paintings, discovered in the Ardèche department of France. I recommenced you have a look at some of the art in that cave after finishing the book.

While many of Robinson's characters can opt for a (temporarily) more primitive lifestyle, Loon doesn't have a choice. He simply know any better. What keeps him busy are the most primal concerns of all: food, shelter and sex. What struck me about this novel was the sharp contrast with what is probably the most famous series of novels set in prehistory; Jean Auel's Earth Children series. Where she presents life during the ice age as utopia, where a human being can make a decent living with a bit of planning and a good set of survival skills, and where paradise is lost after the discovery of the link between sex and procreation, Robinson's reality is much harsher and probably closer to the truth. Loon suffers periods of starvation followed by a summer of plenty. His weight fluctuates considerably over the course of the seasons and he is always aware of the upcoming lean season. All things considered it is a miracle he still has time for his more spiritual pursuits.

In essence Shaman is a coming of age story. When we meet Loon he is very much a boy, unsure what to do with his life. Throughout the book he grows and builds the confidence he'll need to eventually step out of the shadow of the previous generation. It is quite a transformation to see him change from a moody boy to a confident man. Loon has a few brushes with death over the course of the book. Perhaps the most dramatic section of the novel and a turning point in Loon's life is his track back to his people after months of captivity with a northern tribe. It shows him the world is larger than he imagined. It's a journey that will push him to physical and mental extremes. Such treks show up in several of Robinson's other novels as well. Valerie's journey across Antarctica with her clients in toe comes to mind, as well as the evacuation of Burroughs in Green Mars. All of them are life threatening but none are quite are harrowing as Loon's journey though. The question of whether or not Thorn has a hand in Click's death will stay with the reader long after the last page has been turned.

Robinson spends relatively little time on the landscape and ecology of the land. Where in other books he is known for long passages of scientific and philosophical theories and speculations. Shaman is much more direct. Loon tackles the challenges that are right before him. He is at home in his environment. He accepts it as it is for the most part without considering his place in it or asking why the world looks the way it does. What keeps Loon wondering is people; the passage of time, the cycles of life and changing of generations, the cultures and survival strategies of other tribes are what occupies his mind. He may not realize it himself but he does posses the kind of curiosity and mindset that would suit a shaman.Something he starts to accept over the course of the novel.

I had high expectations of this book and Robinson's met them. How often does that happen? In a way Shaman is very different from the books that Robinson has written until now. It lacks his passion for the process of science for instance. On the other hand, there are lots of thematic links to his other works. It may not be the solar system spanning science fiction of his more popular books, I still thinks that even fans of his work that don't usually venture outside the genre will appreciate this. Loon's journey is fascinating, harrowing and at times heartbreaking. The only minor flaw in the novel is that after a dramatic opening section it takes Robinson a while to get the story going. It is hardly worth mentioning really. Shaman is an absorbing read. For me, it is one of the novels of 2013 you have to have read.

Book Details
Title: Shaman
Author: Kim Stanley Robinson
Publisher: Orbit
Pages: 456
Year: 2013
Language: English
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 978-1-84149-999-4
First published: 2013

Kim Stanley Robinson Interviewed by Adam Ford

As the regular visitors of this site have probably noticed I've been a fan of Robinson's work ever since picking up Blue Mars in the late 1990s. I have reviewed twelve of his novels for the blog so far. There have been a number of interviews floating around the internet to coincide with the release of his latest novel Shaman. I've unfortunately been unable to obtain an advance copy but it is on its way here now and I expect to read it later this month. This morning I took the time to watch an interview with Robinson conducted by Adam Ford over at h+. It is not about his new book especially but touches upon numerous topics that show up in Robinson's writing, in effect discussing his entire oeuvre. The whole thing lasts some 45 minutes and it is well worth watching to. I've embedded the first of five parts. You can find the rest here.

2312 - Kim Stanley Robinson

I'm terribly late reading this book. Usually when Robinson has a new novel out I read it as soon as I can get my hands on it. For some reason I didn't get around to it until now. 2312 has been doing fine on its own though. It has been nominated for a truckload of awards and recently won the Nebula. It has also been nominated for a Hugo but I'm not sure it if has quite the appeal to take that one home too. I haven't read any of the other nominated novels though, maybe it does stand out in that crowd. Whether or not it will win more awards, the novel does take a special place in Robinson's oeuvre. I think that to fully appreciate this work, having read some of Robinson's other books is required.

Three centuries in the future, humanity has spread across the solar system. They are increasingly long lived, dual gendered and come in all shapes and sized. Out in space they enjoy a historically unprecedented prosperity but for all that progress, humanity's destiny is still tied to old Earth. The planet is an overpopulated, exhausted, polluted, ecological wasteland, struggling to support the vast masses of people still living there. Earth's instability is a threat to the entire solar system as sculptor and ecologist Swan Er Hong finds out after the death of her grandmother Alex. It seems Alex was the center of a group of people spread across the solar system who are working on the problem. Now it is up to her to keep the project going. A project that experiences resistance from an unlikely source as it turns out.

Robinson is often accused of using infodumps in his novels. Some of his most interesting scenes are in those supposed infodumps in my opinion but people who disagree will be glad to know he has changed his approach to conveying information ot the reader a bit. In 2312 he  alternates chapters, mostly form the point of view of three main characters, with list of related concepts and extracts of various sources giving the reader an overview of the time line. They partly serve as epigraphs, although strictly speaking they are separate from the chapters. Many of the most interesting tidbits in this novel can be found in the extracts and they give the reader enough background to understand the actions and motivations of the main characters. It's an interesting way of structuring the novel. Some of the more plot oriented readers may feel is slows things down but the lists and extracts do contain vital information. Personally I feel Robinson wouldn't be such an interesting author without that density of information, real scientific concepts and theories and the tremendous sense of place that radiates from his writing. Putting some of that in the extracts changes the dynamics of the chapters some. Whether you will like it is a matter of taste but it does make 2312  a faster read than some of his other novels.

It is not uncommon for Robinson to add lengthy descriptions of places and large sections of interior monologue to his novels but 2312 does have a plot of sorts. I guess you could say it is a mix of a love story and a mystery. The author has stated that he set out to write about a romance between a mercurial and a saturnine character. Swan is from mercury and certainly fits the description. She is quite unpredictable and prone to mood swings, as the saturnine character, Fitz Wahram experiences form up close. I'm not entirely sure that I would describe Wahram, who hails from the Saturn league, a collection of inhabited moons and asteroids around the gas giant, as saturnine though. He is very even tempered, to the point of being boring even, but I wouldn't really use any of the more negative traits associated with that particular term to him. Maybe Wahram grew on Robinson while writing. He didn't grow on me though, Swan is by far the more interesting of the pair.

Opinions are divided over this work and I can see why. It reaches back to some of Robinson's most popular works, the Mars trilogy in particular. It's not a sequel in the traditional sense of the word however. There are thematic links and even one passage where Robinson appears to refer to Peter Clayborne's adventure in orbit in Red Mars, but history obviously unfolded quite differently in the 2312 time line. Martian terraforming in 2312 was influenced by Lowell's depictions of the supposed Martian canals for instance. The situation on Mars is not discussed in detail in this work though, the main characters don't spend much time there.

Mercury and Venus feature much more prominently in the novel. Robinson revives Terminator, a city on rails forever being pushed forward by the tracks expanding in Mercury's sunrise. It showed up in The Memory of Whiteness as well as Blue Mars, although the details are a bit different if I remember correctly. Mercury is too close to the sun ever to be fully terraformed but there is a twilight zone on the planet where the light and heat are such people will not be cooked instantly but merely perish from the lack of an atmosphere without proper suits. The city as seen though the eyes of Swan is a piece of art as well as a shelter from the unforgiving conditions outside. Its a marvelous concept and a sharp contrast with the situation on Earth Robinson describes later on in the novel.

Venus is more of a political battleground and one of the places where events relating to the mystery part of the novel are taking place. There is a deep running disagreement on how to terraform the planet, which with it soaring temperatures, thick carbon dioxide atmosphere and sulphuric acid rains, is just as inhospitable as Mercury. Humanity's inability to think in solutions that will take more than a lifetime to achieve has lead to the installation of a sunshield which makes the planet vulnerable. Robinson turns Venus into a dark place, full of muddy politics and shady deals. I think in the end, the story of the character who spends most time there, a man by the name of Kiran, is a bit underexposed. I can't shake the feeling that his story has been inserted into the novel at a later stage.

What did strike me about the novel  is the radically different approach to terraforming the novel takes compared to the Mars trilogy. Where in those books a great philosophical debate raged about whether or not to terraform and to what extent, in 2312 no holds barred attempts at rapid terraforming are described. Moons are dismantled, or have their surface changed into graffiti art, meteors are crashed into the surface to speed up rotation, countless asteroids are hollowed out and turned into terraria, sunshieds and mirrors are installed to deflect or transfer light and atmospheres are stripped or created. It brutal and seemingly unguided. In fact one of the characters mentions that they might have been in too much of a hurry to terraform the various planets and moons of the solar system. Very small groups of people feel entitled to take decisions on a planetary scale that are very had to undo. It is a somewhat unsettling way of thinking really. Robinson uses it to great effect when the main characters find out that you can't tear down a garden shed on Earth without pissing at least a dozen people off.

Another thing I noticed about the descriptions of the various places the main characters visit - and where Robinson departs from most of his other big science fiction stories -  is that the solar system looks huge and small at the same time. Robinson firmly declares the stars out of reach in any meaningful span of time (not that that stops them from trying anyway) and that puts a limit on human development. With the many terraforming projects in full swing or more or less completed, humanity appears to be once again out of places to expand. Maybe in that light it is not surprising that by 2312 attention is drawn back to the cradle of humanity.

Earth and the rest of the solar system seem to be at odds over many things. Parts of the still not fully unified planet are firmly in the clutches of capitalist economies, while others are moving to different systems. Is space, the Mondragon system is more popular. It's a large scale version of the cooperatives in the Mondragon region of Spain, a system that has been mention in earlier novels by Robinson. Environmentally, things are little better. A huge number of species are only surviving because of the asteroid terraria that house them. Complete collapse of Earth's ecosystem appears to be a matter of time. The interesting thing about these passages is that despite the disasters that struck the planet, Robinson still describes it as a beautiful place as seen through the eyes of the space dwelling characters.

There is a great deal of awareness in this novel of the effect humanity has on the environment. It's one thing that make Robinson's novels so fascinating to me. In space the effect is obvious. Humanity has to make the environment there to survive. On Earth, many people take it for granted but just about everywhere on the planet you can see the effect we're having if you know where to look. Robinson knows and it shows in his writing. His characters know it too, which makes the almost casual decision to take on large and very invasive terraforming projects even more interesting. Ann Clayborne would probably faint. One of the most interesting questions the novel raises in this regard is whether terraforming Earth can be done. Think about it for a while, the concept is daunting.

The novel contains lots of familiar concepts and ideas but there is one element that I don't think Robinson has covered in any kind of detail in his previous work, it is the matter of artificial intelligence. By the end of the novel it is still not quite clear if the quantum computers such as Swan's Pauline (a reference to the device owned by John Boone in Red Mars) have reached self awareness or consciousness but the story line is certainly food for thought. I wouldn't have minded if Robinson had dug into this a bit further, something that might have improved the mystery part of the novel too.

In the end I enjoyed reading 2312 a lot but I do feel that Robinson uses a lot of ideas in this novel that he has covered in detail in other books. It's not that he does it poorly, it is just that for someone who has read most of his other work, the novel offers relatively few unexpected elements. On the other hand, it was written in such a way that I feel you can't possibly get the most out of the novel without having read at least some of his previous books. That, in my mind, is not a good combination. Structurally and conceptually 2312 is an interesting novel but as a tale of a major turning point in human history is fails to pull together like some of his other novels do. I guess I feel the novel doesn't achieve all it might have. That being said, it is ambitious, packed with fascinating ideas and concepts and contains some jaw-dropping descriptions of various places in the solar system might look like. Which is a lot more than many other science fiction novels achieve these days. Maybe Robinson does have a shot at that Hugo after all.

Book Details
Title: 2312
Author: Kim Stanley Robinson
Publisher: Orbit
Pages: 561
Year: 2012
Language: English
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 978-0-316-09812-0
First published: 2012

Blue Mars - Kim Stanley Robinson

In my attempt to read and review all of Kim Stanley Robinson's novels I  have progressed to the third book in his Mars trilogy. Blue Mars (1996) was nominated for a whole bunch of awards won Robinson a Hugo and the Locus Award in 1997. It is  special to me, partly because it is the first novel by Robinson I've read. The book captivated me so much that I didn't even realize it was  the third book until I was halfway through. I bought it in the late 1990s  when I was studying environmental science in Etten-Leur. The town had one bookstore worthy of the name with only a very small English language section. Nevertheless, it fed my emerging speculative fiction addiction  admirably. Robinson's book just looked at me right across the store. The novel hits on so many aspects of what I was trying to learn at that  time that it is no real surprise I liked it so much. Soon after, I  picked up the other two novels and I have been reading anything by  Robinson I can get my hands on since. This is the fourth time (I think) that I have read Blue Mars and the novel still impresses me. As the  final part in the Mars trilogy it probably won't be considered his  greatest work but it was certainly convincing enough to hook me. I am  already looking forward to reading his latest novel 2321, which was released in May and is said  to have certain thematic links with the Mars trilogy.

The  revolution has succeeded, Mars is now de facto independent of Earth. That certainly doesn't mean their troubles are over. Earth vastness,  resources and enormous population loom over the fragile environment of  the red planet. Internally Martian society faces challenges as well. The  population is fractured into a large number for radically different  groups, all with their own values, philosophies and goals, some of which  clash violently. A new way to govern such a diverse group of people will  have to be devised. The great social and scientific experiment that the  colonization of Mars has become continues and the First Hundred, now  diminished to a much smaller number, are at the centre of these  development. In a solar system here longevity and population growth  threaten to overtake technological development and the carrying capacity  of Earth, Mars aims to be an example of what humanity can do to overcome  these challenges.

I guess Blue Mars is not as spectacular as the early exploration of the planet in Red Mars (1992) or the revolution and  war that take place in Green Mars (1993). The novel opens with the last  skirmishes of the revolution but soon we are drawn into the process of  developing a political structure that can handle both the unique physical environment as well as the varied values and philosophies of the population. Not all readers will appreciate this section but for me it showcases Robinson's view very well. There is a sense of optimism in these negotiations, a frantic energy and a will to succeed, that defies the huge problems humanity is faced with. Climate change, overpopulation and generations of people who live well into their third century all contribute to a picture that could easily overwhelm even the most optimistic individual. As the Martians coble together a new constitution out of radical but tried Earth methods and new Martian ideas. One that is designed to leave people as much freedom as possibly while at the same time strictly regulating societies environmental impact and guarding against economic oppression. No easy task and the result is obviously not flawless, as we'll find out later in the book. Still, Robinson beliefs it can be done and in this sections, his optimism, mostly relayed by Art, just leaps off the pages. Although Nadia would no doubt tell us it is a tyranny of a different sort.

Although the Red-Green debate seems to have come out in favour of the Green side, the planet is being irrevocably changed especially at the lower altitudes, the tension between these two visions is still present. Both Ann and Sax get a point of view section and I remember Ann's in particular hitting me hard the first time I read it. One of the downsides of studying environmental science is that you start seeing signs of humanity's influence of the landscape everywhere. In the Netherlands there is no escape from this anywhere. Even landscapes that are protected for their ecological diversity or rare environmental conditions are usually brought about some kind of carefully managed use of the land. The ideal that environmental policy strives for around here is to return to the state of the land in the 1850s, when ecological diversity was at a peak. It was also a time when just about every scrap of land, no matter how marginal, was being used for something. In other words, there is no natural landscape left around here. Humanity's influence is inescapable. Which is something like how Ann experiences Mars. Change and human influence can be found everywhere on the planet if one knows what to look for. Ann's cause is hopeless but it still hit a chord with me.

It seems Sax is beginning to see this as well. While he is still in favour of terraforming, and sees the beauty of this emerging, liveable environment everywhere, he feels the need for a synthesis of these two views as well as a reconciliation between these two iconic characters personally. There is an awful lot going on in these novels, but when you get right down to it, the Green-Red debate forms the backbone of the story. Not everybody is going to agree with this vision and the utopian society that emerges in Robinson's book. In fact, the novels prompted Brian W. Aldiss in collaboration with physicist Sir Roger Penrose to write White Mars (1999), a novel that takes quite a different approach (and appears to be very much out of print). Robinson's future is believably messy but the compressed time line and extended lives of the main characters take away something of the realism I guess. By the end of this novel the First Hundred are well into their third century.

This advanced age is the topic of one of Sax' most fascinating sections though. Robinson goes back to an idea he used in his 1984 novel Icehenge and explores memory problems in the extremely long lived. Sax of course takes the scientific approach to combating the increasing problem of whole trains of thought just blanking out completely. Robinson goes into quite a bit of detail on the structure and workings of the brain, which in the 23rd century is still a bit of a mystery. These books are saturated with Robinson's love for the scientific process but no section shows it better than Sax researching his memory problems. The fact that he keeps loosing useful thoughts and he can't seem to record them as he goes add a bit of urgency and frustration to his efforts and made me wonder how much of a verbal process thinking really is.

I guess you could say this book is a bit more introvert than the previous novels. There is homesick Michel finally returning the Provence after a century on Mars, Ann dealing with the loss of the pure Martian landscape, Maya slowly loosing her grip on her mental problems, Sax deeply withdrawn in his science and Nirgal trying to figure out what a revolutionary is supposed to do after a successful revolution. They all show us facets of the newly developing Martian culture but each somehow feels like a bit of an outsider. Not a problem Zoya Boone, John's great-granddaughter has to deal with. She is the fresh new face of a part of Martian society and the Accelerando, a time of great expansion and scientific progress, as a whole. Nihilistic and hedonistic are terms often used to describe her. In a way she is naive as well. Though her eyes we explore what goes on elsewhere in the solar system in a kind of tour reminiscent of the one portrayed in The Memory of Whiteness (1985). The Mercurial rolling city named Terminator appears in both books and I understand it shows up in 2312 as well. Blue Mars my well turn out to be the lynch pin of Robinson's output. There are plenty of links between his books despite the fact that they don't fit into one larger universe or time line.

As a novel, I don't think Blue Mars works particularly well. Where Red Mars and Green Mars each had more of an overarching story to keep all the different points of view together. For most of the book, which covers almost a century, Blue Mars does not have this kind of tension. The threat of Earth, while always present, appears to be distant to most Martians, many of whom are much more concerned with their own planet. We get to see bits and pieces of the time line and various other places in the solar system but there doesn't seem to be a unifying factor that welds all this separate stories together. When the eventual showdown with Earth finally comes, it almost feels as an afterthought. The novel is carried by the strength of Robinson's ideas, the breath of the topics discussed and the fascinating descriptions of increasingly green Martian environments. For the reader who expects a bit more plot and action this novel may be a bit of a let down.

For me personally it is a fascinating book though. I loved just about every aspect of it when I first read it and my rereads have not diminished this love. No matter how many more books I'll read on the subject, the Mars trilogy will probably remain the definitive work on the colonization of Mars for me. The scale of the story, the diversity of Robinson's scientific, political and social influences and his fascinating characters make these novels some of the most captivating science fiction I've ever read. Sure, there are plenty of elements to criticize in these novels, and in my reviews I've named a few of those. That doesn't take away anything from the fact that these books are a monumental achievement in science fiction. A superb attempt to combine hard science fiction with social and religious elements, insert some optimism into the genre and expand the ecological themes which, up to this point, had been pretty rare in science fiction. Blue Mars is a fitting end to the project that will no doubt turn out to be the one Robinson will be most remembered for. I can't think of a book that impacted me as deeply as this novel has. In other words, you should read it.

Book Details
Title: Blue Mars
Author: Kim Stanley Robinson
Publisher: Voyager
Pages: 787
Year: 1996
Language: English
Format: Mass Market Paperback
ISBN: 0-586-21391-0
First published: 1996

Green Mars - Kim Stanley Robinson

Green Mars is the second book in Robinson's most well known work, the Mars trilogy. Although many critics consider the second and third volume not quite as good as Red Mars, Robinson won both the Locus and Hugo Awards with this novel in 1994. Green Mars must have been a lot more difficult to write than Red Mars. The planet is no longer empty, vast changes take place in the physical environment and ideologies buckle under the stress of practical application and opposition from Earth. Mars is a mess in this book and Robinson obviously struggled with that.

After the revolution of 2061, the few members of the first hundred that are still alive are forced into hiding. Taking refuge with Hiroko's group in a dome habitat under the south pole of Mars, they bide their time. A whole new generation of Martians grows up around them in the small world under they ice. The remaining First Hundred members know they cannot stay hidden forever. The Martian underground is too extensive to suppress and the Transnationals that currently run the planet, too preoccupied with their own struggles to take notice of the social tension that are rising on the planet. Another revolution seems inevitable. Only the question of how to make sure this one succeeds remains to be answered. As usual, the first hundred disagree and they are by no means the only players in this political game.

The novel is divided in ten parts, each told from the point of view of a single character. As if to underline the changes taking place on Mars, Robinson first introduces us to Nrigal, the son of Hiroko and stowaway Desmond, and Art Randolph, Praxis employee sent to Mars to make contact with the underground. Nirgal in particular, is an interesting character. He and and John Boone's granddaughter Jacky, represent the new Martian human, tall, healthy, expecting to live for centuries and supremely ignorant of the planet that was the cradle of their species. The other parts are filled in by characters we have already met. First Hundred members Ann, Sax, Maya and Nadia, each of them using their fame as the first settlers of Mars to pursue their own agendas.

The plot of Green Mars is messy from start to finish. Robinson tries to tie a lot of political, social and scientific developments into the novel and this makes the story a lot more complicated than Red Mars. I guess a confrontation between Sax and Ann shows this most clearly.

Most of the people there had seen de famous videotape of Ann and Sax's argument in Underhill, and certainly their story was well-known, one of the great myths of the First Hundred - a myth from a time when things had been simpler, and distinct personalities could stand for clear-cut issues. Now nothing was simple anymore, and as the old enemies faced off again in the middle of this hodge-podge group, there was an odd electricity in the air, a mix of nostalgia and tension and collective déjà vu, and a wish (perhaps just in herself, Nadia thought bitterly) that the two of them could somehow effect a reconciliation, for their own sakes and for all of them.

Nadia witnessing an argument between Ann and Sax - Part Seven - What Is To Be Done?

Ann and Sax, thesis and anti-thesis in the Hegelian sense (with the synthesis yet to come in Blue Mars) arguing over a point that is essentially moot by this time. Rehashing an old argument while waiting for the right moment to launch a bid for Mars' independence. In a sense a lot of this book is waiting for the 'trigger' ans Sax puts it later on in the novel. Personally I think Robinson draws this out a bit too long. He has a lot to say on various political positions, scientific developments and social experiments, most of it very interesting, but all together it is probably more than the plot can carry.

Much of the Martian problems in this novel stem from Robinson's vision of late 21st and early 22nd Earth. With the effect of gerontological treatment beginning to make an impact, the planet seems to be heading towards a Malthusian crisis of huge proportions. The treatment is still only available to a (substantial) minority of the people however. Although some states guarantee the procedure as a basic human right, in practice only the privileged receive it regularly. Nevertheless, the population is booming and the pressures on Earth's already overstretched ecosystem become enormous. Earth is desperate for a way to take some of the pressure off and the empty red planet looks tempting. Even if it is quite clear Mars will never be capable of supporting a population large enough to make an impact back on Earth.

Through newsflashes received by the Martians, Robinson effectively shows us an Earth on the edge of complete ecological breakdown, a process helped along by the power of the Transnats. These organizations are conglomerates of the Metanats of Red Mars. Their turnover dwarfs the budget of any government save the few largest economies on Earth and their power is ever increasing. Using their capital to gain more and more political influence, they have effectively reduced Mars to their private property. It is not a pretty picture of capitalism Robinson is painting in this book. At the very least it appears incapable of finding a market incentive to respect the ecological limits of the planet. Most of Robinson's work is political very left wing (particularly by American standards) so the failure of capitalism to deal with the crisis should come as no surprise. Still, if neo-liberal economics are your thing this book is going to be painful to read.

The novel contains several attempts to offer an alternative. On Earth, the Transnat Praxis is trying to implement more ecologically sustainable business practices. Founder of the company, William Fort, is aiming for a kind of eco-economics (looking at the etymology of economy and ecology it sounds a bit like a tautology is you ask me ). Back on Mars, the underground is running a kind of gift economy that is partly based on an energy source as currency and party on preventing the stockpiling of resources by allowing a portion of the earnings to dissipate into the environment as either heat of nitrogen (both of which aid the terraforming process and therefore the long term goal of making the surface habitable). It's a system that knows a lot of problems. Robinson mentions some in the book but the most obvious, what to do if the long term goal is not terraforming, in other words the Reds' political position, is not tackled here. It's a great source of tension in the Martian underground. Economics have never been my forte but it appears there are a great number of problems still to be worked out. I can't help but feel this part is much more speculative than the hard science fiction elements in the book.

Of these there are still plenty. One of the things Robinson describes is the building of a new space elevator. He also goes into detail on the changes in the Martian landscape. Where in Red Mars, we mostly saw the planet as it was then known from the photographs returned by various space probes, Robinson is now actively trying to describe the impact of higher temperatures and a thicker atmosphere. With such a huge vertical dimension to the planet, the highest point on the surface is some thirty kilometres above the lowest, erosion is taking on dangerous proportions. Like in Red Mars, there are plenty of descriptions of people travelling across the planet and seeing interesting geological formations and fascinating meteorological phenomena (Robinson pays attention to the colours of the sky in particular). Even more than in the previous book, Robinson impressed the acute danger the planet poses to its new inhabitants. The terraforming effort, which can be charitably described as somewhat disorganized, is wreaking havoc on a massive scale. I'm still in awe of Robinson's ability to make this landscape come to life in his books.

On the whole I think Green Mars is not quite as good and Red Mars. I feel that Robinson tried to put too much information and too much very rapid change in the already compressed time-scale of the series. That being said, the attractions of the first novel are still present in this book. Robinson's vision of the colonization of Mars in frighteningly plausible in some respects and very well thought through. Despite the huge challenges being faced by the characters, there is a sense of optimism about these novels that human ingenuity and common sense will be able to overcome them. Although the situation is bad at times, there are always people working on ways to improve it, usually with very innovative ideas. I'm not sure all of it is equally realistic but it certainly makes for fascinating reading. It'll have to wait for a bit, but I already look forward  to my reread of the novel that got me hooked on Robinson's work  in the first place, the final volume in this trilogy: Blue Mars.

Book Details
Title: Green Mars
Author: Kim Stanley Robinson
Publisher: Voyager
Pages: 781
Year: 1996
Language: English
Format: Mass Market Paperback
ISBN: 0-586-21390-2
First published: 1993