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GETTING_WARM
June 7-27, 2013
I've been interested in
Kim Stanley Robinson ANARCHIC_ROBINSON
again of late...
FIRE_DOWN_BELOW
So I thought it was time to catch
up with a trilogy he published in
the mid-naughts, which uses the
somewhat forced naming scheme of:
"40 Signs of Rain"
"50 Degrees Below"
"60 Days and Counting"
On the macro scale: global warming
is kicking in sooner that expected,
the glaciers are melting, the gulf
stream shuts down-- after a massive
civil engineering effort, it's
restarted, but then the sea level
starts to rise rapidly... There are multiple links
between the macro and micro,
and yet it remains fairly
loose. It has to be loose,
On the micro scale: a scientist because KSR is decidedly not
stationed at the NSF in DC, starts telling a story of a single
Getting Weird: he begins living in a person's heroic effort to save
treehouse; hanging out with a few the world.
groups of homeless guys; he associates
with some Tibetan Buddhists; and Bruce Willis will not
then, he inadvertantly gets involved be playing this role
with a fight between factions of the any time soon.
spies infesting Washington, DC.
So, our hero's real role
is to co-ordinate, to
act as an intermediary
between multiple groups.
There are many Perhaps his finest
difficulties: hour: he makes a
rousing speech about
The passive protagonist is a the role of the NSF.
difficult trick, and that
essentially describes our hero Compare this to John
here. He takes very little Shirley's "Eclipse", where
positive action, and when he does the novel closes with a
it almost always fails. For much heroic sacrifice, and yet
of the novel he's afflicted with a without glorifying violence.
brain contusion that interfere's
with his ability to make decisions.
Like a plot
anti-device.
I suspect that KSR was ROMANCE
drawing a parallel between
the hero's paralysis and There's some Buddhist remarks
humanity's as a whole. about the need to act on
thought for it to really be
thought-- so where's the action?
This is a multi-viewpoint novel,
at least at the outset, but all
but one dwindles into near
insignifcance as the story
progresses. And despite fhe
multiple viewpoints, its
afflicted with single vision:
the author makes no attempt at Much like KSR's "Red
getting inside the head of the Mars", where it seemed like
villains. I think his own soul there were entire strains of
is too straight-forward to grasp human thought that were
the really twisted. erased by author fiat.
Our hero is obsessed with the ERASED_MARS
primate-nature of humanity (which he
thinks of as sociobiology)-- he's a This is a serious flaw
rock climber who turns to tree-house for a novel of ideas...
living (and in private likes to make
ook-ook noises like a chimp). Compare this to Kenneth
MacCleod's "Cassini
MONKEY_TRICKS Division", which shows
a deep understanding of
But really and truly: I don't think different intelligent
KSR grasps the monkey-spirit. He is positions at war with
not a trickster, and can't write each other, to the
about them. He can't even play point where it's hard
tricks on the reader: everything is to say what the author
always just as it appears, as he really believes.
stalks a straight-forward path.
Though I suppose
As George Orwell commented there's a serious
about H.G. Wells (in an essay question about
revived recently by Krugman): whether the
opposition on the
"Kipling would have global warming
understood the appeal of issue actually
Hitler, or for that matter has any ideas.
of Stalin, whatever his
attitude towards them WARM_ENEMIES
might be. Wells is too
sane to understand the
modern world."
Many things here work well, or
*almost* work well, and let me make
one of my grudging, painful attempts
to stop focusing on the negative for
once...
I always appreciate a book
where the main character
has some climbing ability. DOORWAYS
(Why always give martial
artists and gun-fighters
top billing?)
FAILURE_FAIL
KSR is someone with a lot of respect for
scientists, and he wants to capture ANARCHIC_ROBINSON
something about their lives and motivations.
The scientific endeavor is
necessarily a rather slow, grinding
process, a collaborative enterprise There may be a kind
where progress is distributed among of excitement and
many different players. even heroism in
science but not of a
It does not map easily to sort that's easy to
to popular fiction, or even dramtize.
to unpopular fiction.
The main character moves on
And as traditional plot from sociobiology to
devices go, I like having American Transcendentalism--
a beautiful, mysterious definitely an improvement.
spy walk in the door.
KSR's updated version works:
she's a Homeland Security
analyst on the run from an SPOOKED
estranged husband who happens
to be a rouge spy involved
with electronic election
rigging.
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