Earl vs. New York 2140

Despite my wavering ambivalence of Kim Stanley Robinson's work, I continue to read his books.

I purchased New York 2140 from the West Edmonton Mall Chapters in 2017. As with many of Robinson's books, I found my greatest enjoyment in his worldbuilding and theme while struggling to work my way through his baffling characterization and prose. (I will say that this time around some of his characters come close to resembling human beings.) But at last, after nine and a half years, I have finished the book. 

In Robinson's imagined future, the sea level in the vicinity of New York has risen some 50 feet. Its residents have adapted by creating a Venice-like existence, Manhattan's streets now waterways. 

Strangely, aside from the comeback of airships--for travel, shipping, and anchoring floating communities in midair--there's very little mention of technological change in this novel, such as details on adaptive mechanisms for the higher sea levels, resilience measures, computers, transportation, what's going on with space exploration, health care, and so on. Aside from the airships and the sea level change, this book feels like it could have taken place in 1988. 

Robinson's central concern here is economics. The novel is a critique of unfettered capitalism and the harm its done to the world and its people. And by the time we reach the end of this 600 page novel, there's a peaceful revolution wherein the people of the United States and elsewhere in the world force the trillionaires to pay their fair share of society's burdens. 

(So this is a science fiction novel, after all, ha-ha, as Robinson might write.)

There are two action scenes--a midair floating city rescue, and a whopper of a hurricane that precipitates the revolution near the novel's end. Robinson somehow manages to make both of these scenes boring. 

This isn't to say that I don't appreciate the novel. I think its message is important, and the solution the characters find at the novel's climax something we might apply to our current situation. Indeed. I think if I'd read this back before Trump, its impact would have been somewhat lessened. As history has played out in recent years, I find myself thinking that Robinson's prescription might be needed about 120 years earlier than predicted.