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A review by yates9
New York 2140 by Kim Stanley Robinson
3.0
Impressive in that the book world is realistic, a time frame that is a hundred or so years away is particularly difficult because of the complexity of factors that impact. The characters are lively and mostly well defined amd believable.
There is a lot to learn from this book but it does present some problems. There is a dogmatic presence of a body of culture ((Marx, Keynes, Melville, etc..) that has even faded in discourse today. The characters’ “new ideas” come down to this same sphere and this feels not only unrealistic but naive on part of the characters. The ideas of socialised banking are thrown around as if revolutionary but as a reader they do not feel new but rather part of contemporary left wing politics.
The chapters skip from character to character with a formulaic plot that involves an obstacle to overcome that leads to some sense that the character is developing. But onerall this development feels insubstantial, fleeting. And this may be the point the author is making - no happy ending as he describes at the end. I think for this to work smoothly the reader needs more preparation or it just feels like a lame ending.
There is a lot to learn from this book but it does present some problems. There is a dogmatic presence of a body of culture ((Marx, Keynes, Melville, etc..) that has even faded in discourse today. The characters’ “new ideas” come down to this same sphere and this feels not only unrealistic but naive on part of the characters. The ideas of socialised banking are thrown around as if revolutionary but as a reader they do not feel new but rather part of contemporary left wing politics.
The chapters skip from character to character with a formulaic plot that involves an obstacle to overcome that leads to some sense that the character is developing. But onerall this development feels insubstantial, fleeting. And this may be the point the author is making - no happy ending as he describes at the end. I think for this to work smoothly the reader needs more preparation or it just feels like a lame ending.