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stephbgTo my knowledge I haven't read anything by Kim Stanley Robinson, but I've been staring down copies of Red/Blue/Green Mars at second hand shops for quite some time. A Worldcon I'm not going to seemed as good an excuse as any to try them out. Naturally they all disappeared at the first sign of actual interest, so in the meantime I picked up Forty Signs of Rain to try.
Climate change, Washington technocrat politics, and biotech corporate shennanigans about covers it. At one point I forgot what I was reading and thought it was Stephen Baxter (as per Evolution at least), with all the references to humans as mere primates responding to threats and opportunities on the savannah and checking out the curves in the females for reproductive fitness. I've just read too much of the same sort of thing lately, and the street-by-street rendering of Washington DC geography got more than a bit tedious. I have no head for maps rendered in text.
Characters: Mostly offensive males and frankly unbelievable females for whom I felt no empathy whatsoever.
Narrative: Started promisingly, but whittered away to nothing with a majorly disappointing climax.
Writing: Competent. The grammar didn't make me want to die.
Science content: Glimpsed only. The biology seemed fine but there were just little spikes of it here and there in the first third and then it went away. I can't comment on the quality of the mathematics. The philosophy was internally consistent. There was not much else. Science wasn't the star here.
I'm not sure who the audience was for this. I already believe in climate change, so as a cautionary tale it was wasted on me. Looking back on this post I am surprised at how depressing it seems; I didn't hate the book nearly so much while I was reading, but at the end I did feel both disappointed and unsatisfied. I'm pretty sure this says more about me than the work.
Climate change, Washington technocrat politics, and biotech corporate shennanigans about covers it. At one point I forgot what I was reading and thought it was Stephen Baxter (as per Evolution at least), with all the references to humans as mere primates responding to threats and opportunities on the savannah and checking out the curves in the females for reproductive fitness. I've just read too much of the same sort of thing lately, and the street-by-street rendering of Washington DC geography got more than a bit tedious. I have no head for maps rendered in text.
Characters: Mostly offensive males and frankly unbelievable females for whom I felt no empathy whatsoever.
Narrative: Started promisingly, but whittered away to nothing with a majorly disappointing climax.
Writing: Competent. The grammar didn't make me want to die.
Science content: Glimpsed only. The biology seemed fine but there were just little spikes of it here and there in the first third and then it went away. I can't comment on the quality of the mathematics. The philosophy was internally consistent. There was not much else. Science wasn't the star here.
I'm not sure who the audience was for this. I already believe in climate change, so as a cautionary tale it was wasted on me. Looking back on this post I am surprised at how depressing it seems; I didn't hate the book nearly so much while I was reading, but at the end I did feel both disappointed and unsatisfied. I'm pretty sure this says more about me than the work.
