A review by ja_hopkins
2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson
3.0
This is an interesting read, although as ever with KSR I found a few sections less interesting than others – I suppose having read many of the author’s books, it should not be a surprise.
The world building is as ever excellent. We jump forward three centuries; the Solar System is colonised and ‘humans’ are not just humans anymore – a vast array of genetic modifications means there are dozens of types of people. All are represented – spacers, smalls, mixed sex, the list goes on. Our lead is Swan, a middle-aged artist, adventurer and well, all sorts. Her home is Terminator, a city on Mercury that moves with the sun to avoid burning up. Here KSR takes us on an evocative tour of the planet, and later we get the same treatment for asteroids turned into farms, spacecraft, zoos, and tourist attractions, we tour the moons and rings of Saturn, the skies of Venus and a climate change devasted Earth. Swan is slowly pulled into the world of politics, following in her grandmother’s footsteps as an unofficial representative of one of the main power blocks in the Solar System.
There are some oddities. The book is littered with chapters called ‘extracts’ which appear to be, well, random extracts from some text or other, and ‘lists’ which are, lists of stuff. I am not entirely sure of the purpose of these sections and I could have done without them. There is also a long chapter where Swan and another character as stuck in a long tunnel – perhaps there is some deeper meaning to it, but it passed me by.
Overall, this is worth a read for the world-building if nothing else – it is absolutely superb. The surfing on Saturn, the sailing on an ocean terrarium (terraformed asteroids), the trips around the ‘drowned’ planet Earth, which is always central to people – the homeland as it were.
The world building is as ever excellent. We jump forward three centuries; the Solar System is colonised and ‘humans’ are not just humans anymore – a vast array of genetic modifications means there are dozens of types of people. All are represented – spacers, smalls, mixed sex, the list goes on. Our lead is Swan, a middle-aged artist, adventurer and well, all sorts. Her home is Terminator, a city on Mercury that moves with the sun to avoid burning up. Here KSR takes us on an evocative tour of the planet, and later we get the same treatment for asteroids turned into farms, spacecraft, zoos, and tourist attractions, we tour the moons and rings of Saturn, the skies of Venus and a climate change devasted Earth. Swan is slowly pulled into the world of politics, following in her grandmother’s footsteps as an unofficial representative of one of the main power blocks in the Solar System.
There are some oddities. The book is littered with chapters called ‘extracts’ which appear to be, well, random extracts from some text or other, and ‘lists’ which are, lists of stuff. I am not entirely sure of the purpose of these sections and I could have done without them. There is also a long chapter where Swan and another character as stuck in a long tunnel – perhaps there is some deeper meaning to it, but it passed me by.
Overall, this is worth a read for the world-building if nothing else – it is absolutely superb. The surfing on Saturn, the sailing on an ocean terrarium (terraformed asteroids), the trips around the ‘drowned’ planet Earth, which is always central to people – the homeland as it were.