[Books] New York 2140

[Kyle]

I'm a big fan of Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy and I've recently been on a "future speculation" kick. So when I saw that he had written New York 2140, I was pretty stoked. It's a near future screed against global warming AND capitalism? Sign me the fuck up because this looks awesome.

And let me say, a lot of people get turned off by his lavish devotion to geologic functions and features. Not me. You want to spend thirty pages describing the rock formations over eons on Mars in this one specific area? Hell yes. I love that shit.

And this book has plenty of that. Detailed descriptions of how our ecology and climate get screwed up by global warming and the effects of sea level rise and all that. And it's so great.

And a big part of the book is about how capitalism takes advantage of ecological disasters to further strangle the poor to the benefit of the rich. Fuck yeah! Let's march on Red Square KSR! I'm with you 100%! You want to go on and on and on about history lessons about how finance has been a function of rich elite manipulating culture and resource? I'm down with it.

So why didn't I like this book?

It commits the fundamental flaw of hatching the "big plan" in the first third of the book-- you know what I mean, the "how are we going to make the world a decent place again" plan-- and then you spend the next two thirds of the book watching that plan get carried out perfectly to the letter. No monkey wrenches, no unforeseen circumstances, no complications. So by definition is was completely predictable. He told me the plan, and then we spent the rest of the book watching the plan be carried out. Then the story was over. What a disappointment.

I'm not going to say I hated the book, because I didn't. He's a great writer with great ideas. But at the end of the novel, you realized this was just one long rant against capitalism with a story crafted around it to excuse the rant. Very disappointing.