Review: 2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson 6/10

[jesse_the_k]

Kim Stanley Robinson: 2312
available in print and ebook; 6/10 stars
Excerpt here thanks to publisher

As with most of Robinson's work, I'm torn. He's really skilled at great big ideas—big enough to use the whole solar system. He recognizes that an economic system that enormous would have fundamental differences. There's a lot of space travel required to keep the system moving—so he uses some standbys like space elevators, as well as micro-terraformed asteroids. These come as "innies" (hollowed out) or "outies" (modified to hold an atmosphere on the surface). For some this is home; for many this is transport.

Robinson gives a new meaning to the SF standby "world-building." He provides terraforming instructions and histories for the innies and outies. These seem plausible, amusing, and surprising. If you can read small white print against black background, visit the publisher link above to see an innie construction diagram.

KSR's particular strength is action scenes across novel landscapes. Terminator is a city on rails, always two hours ahead of Mercury's murderous sun. The fiendishly clever projectiles which damage that city, and our heroes' challenging response, are lucidly detailed. Trig was my terminal math class, but I could visualize the action clearly.

Some of the book's weaknesses may be rightfully blamed on an absent editor, but I can't tolerate a solar-system-wide polity which measures everything in meters excepting two 30-feet trees. The cultural foundations are mostly 20th century and earlier: no explanation is offered why humans quit making music and art for 300 years. Recognizing the new items in cultural citation lists is a peculiar joy of SF. The first mention of a Martian song is page 420 (of 560). I read only the first of KSR's Mars trilogy, and perhaps there's answers in its later volumes.

In this universe, the issue of gender identity is totally uncoupled from one's gender at birth. Humans are free to perform whatever gender one wants; many people have both (fully functional) male and female sex organs. There seem to be no gender role expectations at all. My response is: tell me more! KSR's response is: nothing to talk about here, but society demands a dividing line, so it will be "talls" and "smalls."

Okay. Tell me more! How did this happen? Is it genetically encoded? What is the physical impact? What is the cultural meaning? Basically, the response is "Ask again later." There's an action scene where it takes two smalls to transport one tall. There are sightlines mentioned. That's it. Oh, and by the way humans live much longer lives for reasons not clear; our central actors are 120 and up.

Robinson does acknowledge the effect of gravities we haven't evolved for. Humans customarily return to Earth every seven to ten years (but how do they afford it?) for a health sabbatical: feel a familiar pull, bask in known wavelengths, breathe without a helmet. Otherwise, there's the delightfully named "body bra," which helps folks who've spent years in 1/3g to stay upright as they travel to Saturn or Venus. Sometimes the right name can do the work of a hundred paragraphs: don't care who invented it or how much it costs—I just want one to manage my personal 1g.

KSR does expose one of the lead characters to icy Mercury, so seriously that amputation is considered. I thought, "bring on the super body bra!" Unfortunately the author brings on a manual wheelchair and inaccurately explains its propulsion. He reminds us the chair is there with noun and verb ("he rolled his wheelchair") for each one of the five pages until the limb magically regenerates. I won't even count the readily available 2010 resources he didn't consult on that technical detail.

In summary

• Fascinating, imaginative, creative world-building


• Characters lack agency or motivation; they have hobbies, yet lack desires or sorrows or fears


• World-building conveyed via data dumping and doll play. Formatting this information as an encyclopedia might actually have been a more adventurous literary choice[1]


• If gender issues can be completely eliminated in less than 300 years, please give me a hint on how.

[1] KSR mentions John Dos Passos in the acknowledgements, but 2312 doesn't seem to share characteristics with the U.S.A. trilogy, JDP's most famous work. John Brunner's exuberant, scary novel, Stand On Zanzibar, consciously used U.S.A. as a model, with—as this essay points out—readable, rollicking and eerily predictive effect.

Thanks to Luzula who said she was interested in my reaction. It's much easier to write to a known reader.

Comments

[sasha_feather]

Thanks for the review!

[jesse_the_k]

You're most welcome.

[davidgillon]

Thanks for this, haven't read any KSR recently and he used to be one of my favourites.

Ick on the wheelie stuff, really, is it that hard to do a little research! It's the kind of minority-relevant detail I'd expect KSR, of all people, to get right.

[jesse_the_k]

There's something about the breadth of KSR's imagination which fits the slot that Heinlein filed when I was a little one. So I keep trying 'em ... slowly.

Yeah, he wrote about the user's "wheeling hand," as if one can propel a standard chair with one hand.(Hemi setup, yes, but that wasn't what was there.)

[davidgillon]

he wrote about the user's "wheeling hand," as if one can propel a standard chair with one hand

Well, if you don't mind going around in circles ;)

[davidgillon]

There's something about the breadth of KSR's imagination which fits the slot that Heinlein filed when I was a little one.

For me I can't think of two writers who are further apart! I can't see Heinlein writing the Mars Trilogy, though I certainly can see him frothing about it - what, anarchists and communists and ecologists as heroes, and some of them Russians at that, fighting the terraforming of Mars.... Actually that right there is one of the reasons I love KSR, he took the SFnal trope of terraforming, go forth and subdue the planets, and said 'Hang on a minute, is this a good idea? Are there some ethical concerns we need to explore?'.

RAH certainly helped the development of the genre, and I think we all had times when he was the writer who spoke to us, but I never really thought of him as a big ideas writer. Whereas KSR clearly is and I think the way he delves beyond 'this is so cool' makes the genre a better, deeper place. KSR and Niven is more the comparison I'd be tempted to make, though with much the same analysis of why KSR does it better.

(And that's why him skimping his research on chairs hurts!)

[davidgillon]

society demands a dividing line, so it will be "talls" and "smalls."

Oh, God, I've just realised any Brit of a certain age is going to be invariably thrown out of suspension of disbelief by memories of two comedy sketches, the Frost Report's class sketch, and The Goodies ApartHeight episode.

[jesse_the_k]

Managed to view the Class Sketch on the BBC; like all good comedy it was fast and stinging. At least from the tall POV, the talls seemed to feel superior. The small's POV was to never mention the height of others, except in recognition—bunch of us small are going out for a pint.

I didn't get to the height-relevant part of The Goodies' sketch: I was stunned by the blackface.

[davidgillon]

I'd forgotten about that, but it's probably 40 years since I watched it in its entirety. Yeah, it's a product of it's time, sadly, 'The Black and White Minstrel Show' was probably still running for that matter. The height part was pretty much what you might imagine, fairly crass, but with a core recognition that apartheidt is something we need to be ripping apart in comedy even if we aren't very good at it yet....

[luzula]

Yay review! \o/

It's funny how we latched onto different things to criticize--like, I was bothered by some of the (to me) unrealistic science stuff.

I agree, the evolution of the gender system is not well explained, though I find it interesting. I don't read "tall" and "small" as being the new dividing line, though? I just read it as being one spectrum on which people vary that they didn't before.

Stand on Zanzibar, yeah, I should read that some time.

Why did you only read the first Mars book? Did you enjoy it or not?

[jesse_the_k]

Answering backwards: I read Red Mars when it was published, and forgot about the sequels.

I read Stand on Zanzibar when it was published, in 1969, and I was stunned and delighted and horrified. Stunned that something as "slow" as a book could capture the tumultuous moment; delighted by the goofy prose and enthusiastically inventive interstitials (newspaper articles, game texts, advertisements), and horrified by the accurate rendering of a political system going to hell. (War. Violent police actions. Richard M. Nixon). I've reread it twice. I think I'll reread it again. It recharged my idealistic-hope battery.

I thought the "tall"/"small" distinction was important merely because it was used so much. I couldn't imagine KSR making the "rookie epithet" mistake so common in fanfic — "the Mountie looked sideways at his blonder friend."

I'm guessing that the terraforming/climate creation details were not much more than handwaving: feel free to tell me why!

Thanks, finally, to catapulting me from keyboard silence to actual writing! \0/

[luzula]

It recharged my idealistic-hope battery.

We all need that sometimes. : )

feel free to tell me why!

Oh, hmm, it was in my review. *rereads* Apparently I was not bothered by the gender stuff?

Thanks, finally, to catapulting me from keyboard silence to actual writing! \0/

I always enjoy your book reviews! Would read more of them if you wanted to write them. : )

[jesse_the_k]

In your review. Why of course! I even remarked on it at the time.

/o\

I have no memory outside my email store.

But that gave me a chance to enjoy your review all over again: yes more than 27,000 years for a bit of terraforming Florida is not, er, um, realistic.

[oursin]

My feeling was that despite the 'we are now beyond gender' thing, the two main characters were quite strongly conventionally coded. The use of pronouns did not help that, of course.

[jesse_the_k]

The two leads seemed to be enacting a positively courtly relationship: the unfettered artist, who ranges wildly from isolation to actually rolling all over the landscape. The tightly laced bureaucrat, who listens to proper classical music even when none is playing, and protects the paramour above else.

Guess the sex roles blindfolded.

And if someone is literally both sexes physically why "he" and "she" all the time? Is this an issue in much of KSR's work? (I didn't notice it in Antartica.)

[oursin]

Yes: aren't 'mercurial' and 'saturnine' already heavily coded with certain assumptions that map to gender preconceptions?

[jesse_the_k]

Snap!

[adrian_turtle]

I kind of bounced off the beginning because the characters seemed so dull. I thought I was just failing to understand their motivation, so I ought to try again when I had more brain. So, thanks for saving me from wasting more time.

[jesse_the_k]

Happy to serve :,)