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sophiaserpentiaI just finished reading Kim Stanley Robinson's "Science in the Capital" trilogy: Forty Signs of Rain (2004), Fifty Degrees Below (2005), and Sixty Days and Counting (2007). Longtime fans of KSR, global warming wonks, and dedicated SF readers may want to give it a try; i fear, though, that i can't recommend it beyond that.
There's two things going on here: the first is a brewing global climate disaster, developing at the speed of life. Which is to say, not exactly cinematically fast, but climate change caused by global warming is still more rapid and vast than our ordinary consciousness can easily grasp. Droughts, rising sea level, more and more violent storms, and the shutdown of the North Atlantic Gulfstream, leading to arctic temperatures in Europe and the Northeastern US, are some of the problems that come up in the trilogy. The second thing going on here is a kind of panoramic portrait of what everyday life is like for people in the science bureaucrasy of Washington, DC.
Guess which gets about 90% of the trilogy's bandwidth?
Ordinarily i'd be disinclined to knock KSR's desire to make his trilogy fundamentally a story about people. Character development is what really makes science fiction tick, IMO. KSR recognizes that if he writes about people working in Washington to stave off the worst side effects of global warming and force human society to stop its destructive ways, that he is still fundamentally telling a story about people.
Normally though the way you'd handle this is, the early parts of the story would involve some exploration of representative but relatively brief episodes in your characters' lives so that we find out who they are and what they want and why they want it. As the story progresses, the tension should rise. The real guts of the story should take center stage, and should become gripping, absorbing, growing to a climax.
And i, the reader, certainly want to spend more time reading about what the heck we're going to do if we're faced with the sudden prospect of sea level rising 20 feet, than the protagonist's appreciation of Emerson and his endless navel-gazing about his love life. Especially in the third book of the trilogy. By the end of the third book i was bored out of my skull. Actually i'd have to say the majority of the problems i have with the trilogy involve the third book. The first two books felt like they were paced just right, and had a lot of interesting events in them.
Along the way there was some discussion of several very interesting ideas and practical solutions, and some descriptions of environmental disasters in progress, but these took up far too little space in the book.
The third book also gets too tidy in wrapping things up. It doesn't have the ring of truth to it, IMO.
There's two things going on here: the first is a brewing global climate disaster, developing at the speed of life. Which is to say, not exactly cinematically fast, but climate change caused by global warming is still more rapid and vast than our ordinary consciousness can easily grasp. Droughts, rising sea level, more and more violent storms, and the shutdown of the North Atlantic Gulfstream, leading to arctic temperatures in Europe and the Northeastern US, are some of the problems that come up in the trilogy. The second thing going on here is a kind of panoramic portrait of what everyday life is like for people in the science bureaucrasy of Washington, DC.
Guess which gets about 90% of the trilogy's bandwidth?
Ordinarily i'd be disinclined to knock KSR's desire to make his trilogy fundamentally a story about people. Character development is what really makes science fiction tick, IMO. KSR recognizes that if he writes about people working in Washington to stave off the worst side effects of global warming and force human society to stop its destructive ways, that he is still fundamentally telling a story about people.
Normally though the way you'd handle this is, the early parts of the story would involve some exploration of representative but relatively brief episodes in your characters' lives so that we find out who they are and what they want and why they want it. As the story progresses, the tension should rise. The real guts of the story should take center stage, and should become gripping, absorbing, growing to a climax.
And i, the reader, certainly want to spend more time reading about what the heck we're going to do if we're faced with the sudden prospect of sea level rising 20 feet, than the protagonist's appreciation of Emerson and his endless navel-gazing about his love life. Especially in the third book of the trilogy. By the end of the third book i was bored out of my skull. Actually i'd have to say the majority of the problems i have with the trilogy involve the third book. The first two books felt like they were paced just right, and had a lot of interesting events in them.
Along the way there was some discussion of several very interesting ideas and practical solutions, and some descriptions of environmental disasters in progress, but these took up far too little space in the book.
The third book also gets too tidy in wrapping things up. It doesn't have the ring of truth to it, IMO.
