624 pages
English language
Published July 30, 2017
New York 2140 is a 2017 climate fiction novel by American science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson. The novel is set in a New York City that has been flooded and altered by rising water. The novel received generally positive reviews.
i think i love this book, which is... strange: i've read throuhg robinson's mars trilogy and aurora, and while i liked those, the were kind of bordering dull: too distant, too... mechanical. new york 2140 is more personal, humane, non-robinson. it has even reminded me of stephenson's zodiac ! love it, can't recommend it enough.
Disappointing. The collection of stories and viewpoints didn't work for me at all.
After what seems like it took forever I finally finished listening to the audio.
This must have been the best audio-book I listened to ... ever. And that is saying a lot. I think there are about 8 or 10 speakers - one for each main character. But they all have to speak the other characters, too, when they appear in their chapters... and they are all done so well.
Anyway, this a classic Kim Stanley Robinso. If you've read the Mars trilogy you know what you're in for. If not: it is a lengthy exploratory story with tons of meticulously researched background and well-put together consequences and thought experiments.
Interestingly, this book has one big difference. Apparently, readers gave some feedback to the author how he kept writing these huge info-dumps and how boring those were. So he took the info-dumps and put them into separate chapters, once even …
After what seems like it took forever I finally finished listening to the audio.
This must have been the best audio-book I listened to ... ever. And that is saying a lot. I think there are about 8 or 10 speakers - one for each main character. But they all have to speak the other characters, too, when they appear in their chapters... and they are all done so well.
Anyway, this a classic Kim Stanley Robinso. If you've read the Mars trilogy you know what you're in for. If not: it is a lengthy exploratory story with tons of meticulously researched background and well-put together consequences and thought experiments.
Interestingly, this book has one big difference. Apparently, readers gave some feedback to the author how he kept writing these huge info-dumps and how boring those were. So he took the info-dumps and put them into separate chapters, once even breaking the forth-wall and telling the readers that they can just skip the info dump chapters if they so choose, but that they'd be stupid to do so because at some point they became too much but here they felt more fitting and less story-interrupting. So seems like a good choice :)
The story meanders through the lives of a group of future New Yorkers who live in the Met building which now is surrounded by water like all of the still-standing buildings in lower Manhattan because the rise of sea-levels all over the world. But this book doesn't only explore climate change and ecological damage we do to our world but also the backgrounds and economics that contribute to all this and it leads to a cleverly engineered "solution" in which the characters get to play a central part.
It is a complex book, that was hard to process and rather low-key story arcs that took me a long long time to finish. But it is absolutely worth reading and I highly recommend the audio.
Sprawling book with some odd fluff, but it moves really well and is engaging. As climate fiction, it's daunting and realistic. As humans relating to each other and organizing, I didn't buy in. I might have utopian radical leanings, but I didn't connect with those plot-points.
The book starts of a bit slow but is still a great read.
The author manages to paint a cool picture of what he thinks the world would look like and how society will function after sea levels rise 50ft and New York becomes flooded.
While not Robinson's best, the end picks up to a delirious pace and conclusion.
DNF. I got about halfway through, realized I gave absolutely no f's about any of the characters or the plot. Life's too short.
