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adam_mcphee 's review for:
Antarctica
by Kim Stanley Robinson
Wonderful.
Kim Stanley Robinson brings his imagination and joie-de-vivre to bear on yet another strange corner of the solar system. I loved the ferals: technological nomads who can't hunt and gather on the barren continent, and so instead they fish and farm. Mobile agriculture! It's one of those sci-fi ideas from KSR that's audacious but all the same you wonder why we aren't doing it already. And Antarctica is perfect for it: greenhouses on skis, pushed through the snow like one of the early explorer's huts. And they have blimps! Some of the other sci-fi technologies are interesting given that they were in their infancy when the book was being written and have already become commonplace.
And the characters are great: a nomadic Russian from an abandoned base who kiteboards the continent and creates an underground waterslide with an ice borer and plans to pump Lake Vostok to the Sahara, or the Chinese feng shui popstar who runs a livestream of his trip.
I liked that the villains in this eco-conscious tale aren't heartless oil oligarchs, which would be the case in a lesser thriller, but the sort of Greenpeace, Naomi Klein types who stand against technology and who somehow think they can veto their way out of the climate crisis.
There are history lessons as well. Which reminds me that I want to read Caroline Alexander's [b: Endurance|128717|Endurance|Frank A. Worsley|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1349108731s/128717.jpg|123967] as well as [b: Big Dead Place|40919|Big Dead Place Inside the Strange and Menacing World of Antarctica|Nicholas Johnson|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1388866091s/40919.jpg|40504] about a real life Antarctic GFA.
Kim Stanley Robinson brings his imagination and joie-de-vivre to bear on yet another strange corner of the solar system. I loved the ferals: technological nomads who can't hunt and gather on the barren continent, and so instead they fish and farm. Mobile agriculture! It's one of those sci-fi ideas from KSR that's audacious but all the same you wonder why we aren't doing it already. And Antarctica is perfect for it: greenhouses on skis, pushed through the snow like one of the early explorer's huts. And they have blimps! Some of the other sci-fi technologies are interesting given that they were in their infancy when the book was being written and have already become commonplace.
And the characters are great: a nomadic Russian from an abandoned base who kiteboards the continent and creates an underground waterslide with an ice borer and plans to pump Lake Vostok to the Sahara, or the Chinese feng shui popstar who runs a livestream of his trip.
I liked that the villains in this eco-conscious tale aren't heartless oil oligarchs, which would be the case in a lesser thriller, but the sort of Greenpeace, Naomi Klein types who stand against technology and who somehow think they can veto their way out of the climate crisis.
There are history lessons as well. Which reminds me that I want to read Caroline Alexander's [b: Endurance|128717|Endurance|Frank A. Worsley|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1349108731s/128717.jpg|123967] as well as [b: Big Dead Place|40919|Big Dead Place Inside the Strange and Menacing World of Antarctica|Nicholas Johnson|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1388866091s/40919.jpg|40504] about a real life Antarctic GFA.