Great stuff. This continues on from where 40 Signs of Rain left off and I really, really enjoyed it. Frank lives in a tree house! How could you *not* like that? Let me get my thoughts straight on this first before I write something more... Okay, have went through my thoughts. Or rather ignored them since I finished the book. Let's just say that as a testament to how much of a KSR fan I am that I have already bought the 3rd book in this series! I have read about 2 thirds of about 3-4 trilogies this year (and countless first or first few books of other series) and for this trilogy - I just had to get the third one. Haha. Trust my library to have Books 1-2 and not 3 of this (and countless other series/trilogies :p). Anyhow. 50 Degrees Below. Where the first book focused mostly on the Quiblers, this one focuses mostly on Frank. Yeah, KSR does characters like no one else. He makes you care about the people in the book... which indirectly makes you root for what those people care about. *chuckles* Which is... climate change. And there is some really intriguing science to be had in that regard. Also. Big Brother. Being tagged? And having whole transcripts and files of your life on tape to be pulled out if anyone in the up-and-up ever looked at you funny? Yeah. A bit of the Snowden thing going on in this book too. Makes me think twice about the internet and such. Keep your nose clean and what not. Also. Part of this book focused on Frank living off the grid. I swear that it read like page from Outside Magazine! And you know what? It even *mentions* Outside Magazine at one point! *chuckles* I used to buy Outside - it was the only mag I bought at one point in time (apart from the odd gaming mag or Popular Science/Mechanics and NGO). So another one of the many things to like about this book.Also. Since I didn't mention it in the previous book, I really like the Khembalis. Such a great side story.Can't wait to get started on the third book.In other news (June 30th): I went to the library last night to borrow "Years of Rice & Salt" but it has mysteriously disappeared from the shelves. And from the library system too! Meh. Now I have to buy it. HAHAHAHA. Removing all trace of whatever books I saved from the library system from GR too. Oh well. After this novel, big brother is more real than you think.Addendum (July 4th): Not being American, I didn't get the Democrat climate change thing in the beginning... and how Republicans might actually throw this book to the wall in consternation. Honestly though. I think we're all mature enough to appreciate stories that may bruise our fundamentals - isn't that a test of the strength of them? How much they can be bruised? Anyway, being a Catholic, I would vote Republican all the way. #runsaway
Arrrrgh, I really wanted to like this a lot more than I did! The problem is, I can't stand Frank! The last book was evenly split between three point-of-view characters: Anna, workaholic scientist; Charlie, her husband and environmental adviser to a senator, and Frank, a narcissistic professor who enjoys poverty tourism. In this book, we get ONE scene from Anna's point-of-view, two or three from Charlie's (all of which are him worrying about his son, Joe, because Robinson is so intent on making sure we understand that he understands gender stereotyping), and the rest... the painful rest... are the World According To Frank. The endless sociobiological asides, which Frank (Robinson) admits are a character flaw, are as irritating as they were in the last book. We continue to hear in painstaking detail of his pursuit an 'optimodal' lifestyle while the world falls apart around him. There are a whole array of beautiful, strong, intelligent women, who are suddenly nothing but love interests when Frank enters the room. MEANWHILE, THE SEA LEVEL IS RISING, AND WE DON'T GET TO SEE ANY OF IT. I wanted to know more about everyone ELSE'S social adaptations to climate change. Not how it affects a single white male with a huge cash pile to back up his life decisions. All of these huge events are happening -- so we hear, from other characters, or see on the news -- but the only impact we see is that Frank gets a bit chilly and has to move indoors. In my last Frank-related rant, the whole black ops caper thing seems very tacked-on, far-fetched and cliche, thrown in to show how manly and awesome he is when his lady is threatened.I'm grudgingly saying it was OK, because in the end it did get a little bit more exciting, and the geopolitical details were pretty good. The sheer inertia of Business as Usual also got a look-in. And the weather descriptions seem pretty prescient, given the 'polar vortex' just last month. But the good bits are few and far between. I'd quite like a fan edit that knits together these three books into one good story, which cuts out most of Frank's Inner Life altogether.
What do You think about Fifty Degrees Below (2007)?
I'm not sure if this is the place for this scree. For a while about a decade ago I was very interested in 'end-of-the-world' novels. It didn't matter if it was asteroid impact, nuclear war, pandemic disease, alien invasion, or micro-scopic blackholes run-amok -- I read a bunch of these.Much to my annoyance, nearly all of these books started to sink into the supernatural. If everybody dies of disease, some of the survivors suddenly morph into vampires while others develop magical camoflage abilit
—Christopher
After setting the near-future climactic calamity in Forty Days or Rain... KSR expands more on Frank, the nature-loving surfer/genomic scientist and deep-thinker from the first volume, getting some interesting movement in his plot-line... Charlie the Wonder Staffer/Mr. Mom for Senator Chase and his wife, Anna, co-worker to Frank at NSF deal with climate change as a post-modern single family (well... one that has both a Biomics doctorate and Senate technocrat policy wonk in the house)... and their combined interactions with displaced Khembalis... The weather is still chaotic, the staff at NSF are thinking the big thoughts. Trying to fix it with bold, BIG solutions. Interestingly, KSR portrays a major political paradigm shift-- Science as policy; a stark counter-point to recent real-world political policy motivated by faith and/or belief.I think this is one reason I LOVE KSR books... it's not just about the technology or the examination of seemingly fantastical ideas, but about how it affects people and how they think and interact with their world.
—Alan
I stopped two thirds of the way through, which is the first Robinson novel with which I've done that. The problem is that Robinson took the least interesting character from Forty Signs of Rain and made him the main viewpoint character. Frank is obsessed with sociobiology (which, as someone who majored in anthropology, I am thoroughly convinced is bunk), so there are several (an incredible number) of lengthy objectifying descriptions of women and their evolutionary fitness. Frank's biggest personality trait in this book is "that feel when no gf" and it becomes incredibly tedious. The surveillance subplot is tedious as well, even in this post-NSA leak time.It's a bummer, but I don't feel bad not continuing this series. The environment collapse in real life is almost certainly past the point of no return anyway, so reading this just bums me out.
—Ethan Everhart
