I've been interested in Kim Stanley Robinson for a while, since I muttered something to my sister about wanting books that dealt with limited resource management and she mentioned his Years of Rice and Salt. Then on a much later ecological sci-fi (which I feel a pull to write myself) hunt, I discovered some loglines that made him sound like my beloved Ursula K LeGuin; the description of his Three Californias trilogy, to be precise. Plus, he lives in Davis! *I* know people who live in Davis! So I put the Three Californias and this -- which sounded incredibly relevant to my interests -- on my Bookmooch wishlist and had quite forgotten about it until it was sent to me a year later and, being in a bit of a reading rut with all my current chosen books, I opened it with curiosity. Only after I had gotten going did I realize I was once again breaking my no straight white male authors rule.The story (insofar as there is one) is, on its face, indeed very relevant to my interests. It rotates between four POV characters, three scientists and one political staffer (also three male and one female, all white and straight) and is set in very-near-future Washington DC as well as San Diego. It deals with the scientific establishment's problems and politics within the context of trying to avert and reverse disastrous climate change. Also sort of cure disease via biomathematical algorithm, but that plotline kinda gets dropped, presumably to be picked up in the next part of the trilogy, because congratulations: you're accidentally reading a trilogy! The plot's inciting incident is the arrival of diasporatic Tibetan monks whose adopted island home, Khembalung, is threatened by rising sea levels. There is much discussion of politics and money setting agendas that continue to not serve public needs, of economic inequity, of Buddhist thought, of appreciating nature. All things I like.But man oh man does this book not live up to its subject matter, ruined by the twin prongs of straight white male fuckery and eye-peelingly mediocre writing. First, we have Frank. Frank is one of the male narrators, and he is the worst. Of course, the book is secretly all about him -- in the latter part of the novel the other POVs all but disappear as his chapters suddenly go from being one in four to every other, and looonger, and then the lone female character's chapter end up being about Frank too, just from her POV. Frank spends all his time thinking about: a) human behavior as just barely adapted from "the savannah" and how everything everyone does is appealing to unevolved instincts about caves and shit b) game theory and prisoners dilemmas vis-a-vis traffic, no really c) chicks and how wild and strong and appealing they are and how he doesn't MEAN to stalk them he just keeps accidentally chasing after them after they've made it clear they aren't interested d) how much he hates being a grownup and just wants to go back to San Diego and surf. Also he's like ~skeptical~ about Buddhism because of plot (it makes no sense given his love of athletics as a form of meditation) so that he can have the most atrociously written and interminal epiphany I've ever read when he realizes that EVERYTHING! IS! CONNECTED!The other three narrators aren't so offensive -- the other dude scientist has no noticeable personality because his chapters are all about explaining biomath to the reader; the lady scientist's entire story is about her enjoyment of statistics and her helping the Khembalis; and her husband, staffer and stay-at-home dad is probably the best character although I could really do without the weird asides about his sex life. But there's no good reason none of the Khembalis are POV characters telling their own story, and the bizarre inconsequential pointings-out of race ("Washington is really run by unimpressed black secretaries!" "An unusual number of black people on the Mall make the city look like Carnival!") speak to a mild but ultimately backwards effort to be racially progressive.The most interesting thing about this book is the part that Kim Stanley Robinson couldn't control and had no knowledge of; the fact that it was published just before Katrina and thus is basically all setup for a fictional climate-based natural disaster on U.S. soil, because (as is clearly his thesis) political action will only come about after the U.S. is directly affected by global warming. Haha, it's funny because in real life a much worse disaster happened than the one he envisioned, and it revolved entirely around political inaction. And has continued to not change shit, eight years later. Ha ha ha. Meanwhile, his frequent "everyone is happy and generous in a disaster!" (p.s. the Khembalis, whose makeshift island home is drowning, are just always happy period) statements fall flat at best.Finally, this book suffers from a tragic and unacceptable dearth of commas. Who edited this shit. Oh, that's right: no one.Straight white males! When will I learn my lesson? Back to the backburner you go, sir.
Glimpses Of An Ordinary FutureHow would it be to live in the very near future? What will happen once we cross the rubicon, the point beyond which climate change overwhelms the Anthropocene and humans are no longer in charge of their surroundings?We should expect high human drama under such extreme duress, right?Wrong.Daily life will carry on. That is what will happen.So What’s New in The Very Near Future?Extinction Rate in Oceans Now Faster Than on Land. Coral Reef Collapses Leading to Mass Extinctions; Thirty Percent of Warm-water Species Estimated Gone. Fishing Stocks Depleted, UN Declares Scaleback Necessary or Commercial Species Will Crash.Topsoil Loss Nears a Million Acres a Year. Deforestation now faster in temperate than tropical forests. Only 35% of tropical forests left.The average Indian consumes 200 kilograms of grain a year; the average American, 800 kilograms; the average Italian, 400 kilograms. The Italian diet was rated best in the world for heart disease.300 Tons of Weapons-grade Uranium and Plutonium Unaccounted For. High Mutation Rate of Microorganisms Near Radioactive Waste-treatment Sites. Antibiotics in Animal Feed Reduce Medical Effectiveness of Antibiotics for Humans. Environmental estrogens suspected in lowest-ever human sperm counts. The Antarctic ice has started to break up as early as May every year. The El Nino cycle has accelerated so much that it is now called The Hyper Nino. The Gulf Stream has begun to shut down and the water no longer sinks due to the influx of fresh water from glaciers. Europe faces a complete ice age.Two Billion Tons of Carbon Added to the Atmosphere This Year. One of the five hottest years on record. The Fed Hopes U.S. Economy Will Grow by Four Percent in the Final Quarter.The Day After Tomorrow I was constantly reminded of the movie The Day after Tomorrow when I read this. But unlike DAT, 40 Signs is not designed as a disaster story, but as a ‘domestic comedy’, to use KSR’s own phrase. It is not meant to shock and awe the audience; or to use the disaster potential of sudden climate change to produce high drama. Instead it is a very subtly constructed future, achieved by sketching ordinary people from specifically selected walks of life that the audience knows are bound to be affected, and thus pays attention for tiny hints on how they have been in fact affected even as they go about their daily lives.We soon notice that the plot advancing moments have a tendency to be connected to the changed world they live in. For example, the elevator scene shows how life, or at least the perception of daily life, has changed radically from our’s when flooding of the subway system is par for the course and does not even make the list of things to be discussed over dinner.And thus it turns out that their lives have been altered immensely by the gathering doom -- it is just that they are now used to every incremental change and walks, almost casually, into the gathering ‘whimper’ that awaits them at the end.The Theaters of the FutureThere is not much here plot wise or excitement wise compared to a the dense action of Red Mars, but as always KSR makes up for it by the wealth of ideas and thoughts provoked.The plot operates mostly in what KSR clearly considers to be the Theaters of the Future - Science & Politics. In fact, a core sub-plots of the book, and one of the key ideas in it, is about the Paradigm Shift (yup, Kuhn again) that has to occur in the field of science to make the scientists aware of their political responsibility. He says that an unfortunate repercussion of the World Wars' political promotion of science was that this overt politicization of Science led to an almost knee-jerk reaction -- the scientific community withdrew almost entirely from politics and took a much more ’neutral’ role. This meant that they no longer get directly involved in important political questions and so a vital and authoritative voice that can save humanity is lost to us. This has to change.A Disaster Too SlowOf course, most of the characters are scientists or politicians, and all of them have adequate information, theories and concerns, and fully appreciates the threat that global warming poses, but they just can't seem to awaken a Day After Tomorrow sort of urgency in their lives.No matter how fast climate change occurs, it is not fast enough to not let us say ‘let us get used to this’, and to postpone decisive action for later.The disasters just cannot strike fast enough for them to really act!The most environmentally aware and empathetic politician in the book has this to say even as world falls apart around him:Then the words burst out of Charlie: “So Phil! Are you going to do something about global warming now?”Phil grinned his beautiful grin. “I’ll see what I can do!”
What do You think about Forty Signs Of Rain (2005)?
Apropos whilst reading a book on climate change, the New York Times just published a fairly in-depth article on investigations of sea level rise. The article, As Glaciers Melt, Science Seeks Data on Rising Seas, also has some interesting multimedia attachments. One fairly alarming tidbit I learned is that the ice piled on top of just Greenland would, if melted, raise sea levels by twenty feet.The article also links to an excellent tutorial from the NGO CSIRO on Sea Level changes. Book selection for the Hard SciFi group (aka the Yahoo hardsf group) for the month of October, 2010.
—Richard
A few years back my friends and I started a book group. The book that really killed it was The Years of Rice and Salt. I won't revisit the horror except to say it was very bad. I tell you this because it was by the same author as this book. But this one sounded interesting so I gave it a shot.It reminded me very much of Next by Michael Crichton. It was not quite as bad, but the lecturing tone was much the same. The major problem with this book (besides that the action doesn't start until about the last four chapters) is that nearly the entire first 3/4 of the book is a series of thinly disguised "as you know Bob" vignettes.Also, even if one of your main characters is a Senate staffer, very, very few people actually want to wade through even a few paragraphs of a bill. The bill may be monumentally important, but the text is dry and will appeal only to a few scientists and policy wonks.The whole thing read like a series of mini lectures by a not very interesting or good professor. It's possible it was all required to set up the next two books. The end was promising enough that I'll read the next book.
—Schnaucl
I thought I should finally try some Kim Stanley Robinson, as he’s kind of a classic at this point. This was…huh. I’m not really sure what this was. It was the first book in a trilogy, certainly—I’m not sure I’ve ever read such a long book that was almost entirely setup. Seriously, almost nothing happened until the very end—though that end is very dramatic. I wasn’t particularly wowed by the writing—DUDE PUNCTUATE YOUR DIALOGUE DO YOU SEE HOW ANNOYING THIS IS KTHX—or the characters, either; Frank was pretty much the only one who grabbed me, and I found him to be an asshole most of the time. Still…I kind of want to read the next volume and see what happens next. I mean, Robinson’s got to be building to something, right? Also, I just like the idea of there being a series about science and political intrigue and global warming. Therefore, I am kind of determined to like these books despite my reservations. Bring on volume two!
—Trin
