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A review by christopherc
2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson
1.0
It is hard to see Kim Stanley Robinson’s novel 2312 as anything but a second go at his Mars trilogy (beginning with Red Mars), maintaining the epic scope of future expansion in space and terraforming of other planets, but reflecting the advances in science and culture in the two decades since he wrote that magnum opus.
For example, though the Mars trilogy takes place from the 21st to the 24th centuries, personal computing is missing and the issue of merging of man and machine, "transhumanism", never comes up. In 2312, however, wearable and implantable computing, and the rise of Artificial Intelligence are major themes.
The Mars trilogy also had invariably heterosexual love affairs, but as gay relationships and gender norm-defying artists have become more visible and more accepted in society, it is clear that love/sex/romance/identity in the future will be far more diverse than we used to imagine. 2312 depicts a society where gender is a spectrum explored in every detail. Nearly all of the characters here have undergone harmone therapies or surgical alterations, and some even change the pronoun used to refer to them over the course of the book ("he" one chapter, "she" the next). There’s a fairly graphic sex scene between two hermaphroditic characters.
Finally, the third new concern here is global warming and biosphere collapse. Earth in the future has seen its coastlines innundated due to melting polar ice, and most animal species are extinct. The inability of lawmakers to preserve the environment, even as science offers new, sustainable solutions, has made Earth the sick man of the solar system while the space colonies are flourishing.
So those are the ideas that Robinson explores in this new book, and they are thoughtprovoking. The plot itself, however, is disappointing and really half-baked. Some attacks happen on Mercury, and the characters have to figure out who is responsible. This plot is so barebones it’s almost like in outline form, and at one point, unforeshadowed and without any setup, he leaves it aside to suddenly go in a totally different direction (really, a character just ups and says “Hey, guys, let’s go to X and do Y”, and they do), before then returning to the main story. If the plot is meagre, the descriptive passages are grotesquely huge in comparison. We get pages and pages describing how a character whistles his favourite classical pieces, pages of descriptions of the landscapes of other planets (it was OK in the Mars trilogy, but here it’s getting old), pages of descriptions of animal migrations across a biosphere.
Plus I had a hard time suspending disbelief. These characters have lived with powerful quantum computing for over a century, but they still have long conversations about issues that would have been very familiar to them, like “How do you know if a computer is really conscious?” The protagonist is 130 years old and a venerable, respected figure, but at one point KSR has her threaten to scream to get what she wants in a meeting.
I really wanted to like 2312 because the ideas are so powerful. Like in the Mars trilogy, alternative economic models play a big role in the book, and I found that KSR was already thinking like me about the possibility that modern capitalism may preclude a Singularity, because entrenched interests would be unwilling to undergo the adaptation to a post-scarcity economy. However, the storytelling is just so godawful, even for a fan of this author, and I really wish I could find some non-fiction treatment of these issues. If you haven’t read KSR yet, definitely start with the Mars trilogy.
For example, though the Mars trilogy takes place from the 21st to the 24th centuries, personal computing is missing and the issue of merging of man and machine, "transhumanism", never comes up. In 2312, however, wearable and implantable computing, and the rise of Artificial Intelligence are major themes.
The Mars trilogy also had invariably heterosexual love affairs, but as gay relationships and gender norm-defying artists have become more visible and more accepted in society, it is clear that love/sex/romance/identity in the future will be far more diverse than we used to imagine. 2312 depicts a society where gender is a spectrum explored in every detail. Nearly all of the characters here have undergone harmone therapies or surgical alterations, and some even change the pronoun used to refer to them over the course of the book ("he" one chapter, "she" the next). There’s a fairly graphic sex scene between two hermaphroditic characters.
Finally, the third new concern here is global warming and biosphere collapse. Earth in the future has seen its coastlines innundated due to melting polar ice, and most animal species are extinct. The inability of lawmakers to preserve the environment, even as science offers new, sustainable solutions, has made Earth the sick man of the solar system while the space colonies are flourishing.
So those are the ideas that Robinson explores in this new book, and they are thoughtprovoking. The plot itself, however, is disappointing and really half-baked. Some attacks happen on Mercury, and the characters have to figure out who is responsible. This plot is so barebones it’s almost like in outline form, and at one point, unforeshadowed and without any setup, he leaves it aside to suddenly go in a totally different direction (really, a character just ups and says “Hey, guys, let’s go to X and do Y”, and they do), before then returning to the main story. If the plot is meagre, the descriptive passages are grotesquely huge in comparison. We get pages and pages describing how a character whistles his favourite classical pieces, pages of descriptions of the landscapes of other planets (it was OK in the Mars trilogy, but here it’s getting old), pages of descriptions of animal migrations across a biosphere.
Plus I had a hard time suspending disbelief. These characters have lived with powerful quantum computing for over a century, but they still have long conversations about issues that would have been very familiar to them, like “How do you know if a computer is really conscious?” The protagonist is 130 years old and a venerable, respected figure, but at one point KSR has her threaten to scream to get what she wants in a meeting.
I really wanted to like 2312 because the ideas are so powerful. Like in the Mars trilogy, alternative economic models play a big role in the book, and I found that KSR was already thinking like me about the possibility that modern capitalism may preclude a Singularity, because entrenched interests would be unwilling to undergo the adaptation to a post-scarcity economy. However, the storytelling is just so godawful, even for a fan of this author, and I really wish I could find some non-fiction treatment of these issues. If you haven’t read KSR yet, definitely start with the Mars trilogy.