Reviews

Antártida by Kim Stanley Robinson

escapevelocitycollection's review against another edition

adventurous hopeful informative inspiring reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

 Peter : ****

Listened to the audiobook with Adam Verner – good narrator for a complex book; he did take an hour of getting used to.

Antarctica is one of these interesting near-future science fiction works that actually get overtaken by the near future they’re describing. Written in 1997, it feels much like it took place a couple of years ago, with ‘wrist phones’ having inexplicably replaced smartphones or smartwatches, and working remotely being called ‘telecommuting’.

Antarctica may be outdated in some ways – some of its scientific debates have, as I understand it, mostly been resolved – but it doesn’t read like an outdated work. Rather, it reads like a turn-of-the-millennium optimist’s version of the 2020s. Antarctica feels like a here and now where the problems aren’t necessarily solved, but the political cynicism of populism hasn’t taken hold and instead there is room for science and optimism instead. Looking back, Antarctica almost feels a little naïve at times. Still, reading Antarctica, I constantly felt like I would rather live in that version of our world.

So, thematically, the novel hasn’t aged a day. Antarctica is about climate change and about capitalism threatening the last real wildernis on Earth. It is about what we can do to stop it. That is even more pertinent now than it was in 1997.

But it is also about why humans go to the extremes that they do to live in the most inhospitable region on Earth. About the quest for prestige of the early explorers, the quest for knowledge of modern scientists, and about the quest for the edge of the human experience sought by today’s tourists who literally follow in the footsteps of the great explorers in an attempt to claim a piece of whatever it was that made those men great.

Mixed with all that are the small troubles of the daily lives of the guides and maintenance workers and scientist that live on Antarctica every day to make it all possible for everyone else. And as always, Kim Stanley Robinson writes these characters as well as he does the larger political picture.

Antarctica does not start off with a big bang, but Robinson rather builds the pressure slowly as the book progresses. Just as we feel we are starting to understand each character, something goes wrong. And as the troubles mount, life in Antarctica feels more and more dangerous.

The pace increases throughout the book, only held down by sections discussing research into Antarctic geology that might not be for everyone (and which reminded me a lot of Neal Stephenson’s style). But if you’re confident you can get through those, I can promise you Antarctica, despite its literary style, will not let up.

I finished the 20-hour audiobook in less than a week – perhaps that says something about my listening habits, but it definitely says something about how I kept wanting to dive back into this fascinating book. 

rafidotnet's review against another edition

adventurous hopeful reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

sarabz's review against another edition

5.0

waffling between 4 and 5 stars. the book did have a few flaws, but overall it was totally amazing!

terpgirl42's review against another edition

5.0

4.5 - reminded me of The Ministry for the Future, but with more of a narrative

domhnall's review against another edition

adventurous hopeful mysterious slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

erikinthedistrict's review against another edition

4.0

Typical KSR book: good characters, slow plot, heavy on the policy ideas for environmentalism. If you like that, it’s gonna be great.

alizy's review against another edition

challenging informative reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

sametimesfour's review against another edition

adventurous informative reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

ashryn's review against another edition

4.0

Read this one in summer.

gengelcox's review against another edition

adventurous informative reflective tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

This is the longest book I’ve read in some time, but then I read it while engaging in one of the longest trips I’ve ever taken, a visit to the Antarctic peninsula by a 130-person capacity cruise ship called the Sylvia Earle. While Jill read the primary documents about the continent—accounts of the Scott and Shackleton expeditions—I let Stan Robinson summarize those for me in his near future SF about people who want to work and live in one of the most inhospitable environments on Earth. Perfect fodder for a writer whose previous books were about terraforming Mars. Robinson’s book came from his own visit to Antarctica as a fellow for the NSF U.S. Antarctic Program’s Artists and Writers’ Program in 1995. The first third of the book, after a small action hook, is a slow burn through the details of what it is like to be in Antarctic as well as recaps of those adventurers who had strived to be the first: the first to go the farthest south, the first to the pole, the first to traverse or climb this or that. Halfway through, Robinson’s plot finally begins (somewhat predictably), leading to a climax that allows him to postulate about many, many things, from the effects of population growth, resource extraction, climate change, and sustainable living, to feng shi and employee co-ops and scientific endeavors. The paperback edition I read is 650 pages and Robinson packs it with a lot of thought experiments.

I enjoyed it, but some of that may have been the fact that I could look out my window, or reflect on the continental landing I had just completed, as Stan writes about the beauty of ice fields and the glassy ocean and how the cold hits your nose and tries to freeze the snot in your sinuses. While I did not engage in any of the hardships suffered by his characters or the explorers before them, it was certainly less difficult for me to imagine what they went through by being so close to the places it happened. I have no doubt that Robinson got his research right, nor that he spent long nights contemplating the Antarctic Treaty and its tenuous hope for a world where science rules over politics, or at least calls the shots. What he creates in this novel, however, is no utopian solution, recognizing such a thing is hopeless, but he does provide some clues as to how people might work towards something other than the dystopia we seem to be barreling towards. In the decades since this book was first published, science fiction has seen the birth of a burgeoning subgenre alternatively termed solarpunk or hopepunk. If that subgenre ever becomes a thing, Robinson’s Antarctica surely seems to be an early example if not precursor.