2312

Kim Stanley Robinson

May 2012 · Sold by Orbit

About this ebook

From the acclaimed author of New York 2140 and Red Mars, this NYT bestselling novel tells the story of a future where humanity has populated miraculous new habitats engineered across the solar system -- and the one death that triggers a precarious chain of events that could destroy it all.

The year is 2312. Scientific and technological advances have opened gateways to an extraordinary future. Earth is no longer humanity's only home; new habitats have been created throughout the solar system on moons, planets, and in between. But in this year, 2312, a sequence of events will force humanity to confront its past, its present, and its future.

The first event takes place on Mercury, on the city of Terminator, itself a miracle of engineering on an unprecedented scale. It is an unexpected death, but one that might have been foreseen. For Swan Er Hong, it is an event that will change her life. Swan was once a woman who designed worlds. Now she will be led into a plot to destroy them.

Ratings and reviews

Chock-full of interesting ideas, which are the highlight of this book. Unfortunately, plotting and pacing are given second shrift. 2312's characters wander about the solar system, but the critical events driving them aren't given any sense of urgency or threat. As a "tourists' guide to known space in 2312", the book excels. The descriptive prose and world-building is a delight. Everything else -- characterization, plot, pacing -- feels listless and distant, similar to old Golden Age Sci-Fi where the authors forgot that, in the end, all that matters is people. If I hadn't been interested in what neat, imaginative environment the characters ended up next, I wouldn't have bothered finishing the book.

Read this to follow up on the terrific mars trilogy. Unfortunately not in the same class. At best, tired and pointless rehashing of old ideas, but mostly painful unmotivated exposition. Random plot points scatter listlessly, none of the characters gel. More than once I hoped they'd all die. Trudged through the whole thing, not one iota of suspense, no denouement, and it read as though KSR was bored of the source material, or was deliberately trashing his own style. Random lists of scattered imagery suggest that the author thinks a painfully poor attempt at mid 80s postmodernism is an adequate substitution for plot development. It is not. Unlike earlier books, which endure the odd pointless intertextual reference, the science here can only be described as lazy, shoddy, and ad hoc. This book represents a tremendous wasted opportunity.

There seem to be two kinds of science fiction I enjoy. Those that write well and tell a good story. And those for whom the story is just a way to explore ideas. Idea explorers. I would put Asimov, for instance, in this category. Kim Stanley Robinson likes words. And he likes using a lot of them. Sometimes so much so that I felt my eyes glassing over. But that isn't always a bad thing. So part of the reason I decided this was going to be my next pick is an interview I'd listened to where he spoke at length about gender. One of the topics was the indeterminate gender of one of the characters, Jean Genette. He talked about trying to avoid the use of gender defining pronouns in regards to this character. I was with it until it started creeping in as the character became more of a POV character, and made more frequent appearances. And the odd thing was that the definition was consistent, consistently male. Repeatedly masculine pronoun usage slipped in, which completely destroyed the image of this character that had been conjured. Oh well. That said, the story itself reached what, to me, was a predictable conclusion [SPOILER] the synthetics (qubans or quboids) being fired off extra-sol-system [/SPOILER] primarily because KSR has stated in several interviews that he doesn't believe homo sapiens will expand beyond this solar system. The conclusion was predictable, but the manner in which it was reached was ham fisted. All in all I found the novel somewhat frustrating. I'm glad I read it, but the story itself seemed kind of weak. And after having gone on at length about this future vision of a diversified and self-directed humanity, it ends with a rather stereotypical princess meets prince charming (almost too literally) and they get married.

About the author

Kim Stanley Robinson is a New York Times bestseller and winner of the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards. He is the author of more than twenty books, including the bestselling Mars trilogy and the critically acclaimed Forty Signs of Rain, The Years of Rice and Salt, and 2312. In 2008, he was named a "Hero of the Environment" by Time magazine, and he works with the Sierra Nevada Research Institute. He lives in Davis, California.