This is one heck of an unruly beast of a book – I hesitate to even call it a novel. This is what’s called climate fiction and Kim Stanley Robinson takes you on an utterly fascinating and disturbing and painful and horrifying and yet hopeful journey through our climate crisis future. The story has two protagonists, but switches from chapter to chapter to a seemingly endless number of characters and perspectives – all of it enriches the overall experience. The thing that is most bland, oddly, are the aforementioned characters. So don’t think of this is straight-forward fiction – this is a vision of our future. I found it to be an important read, eye-opening and mind-expanding in places, offering visions of what our next decades might look like, depending on the actions we do or do not take to combat climate change.
Robinson takes today’s science and takes it forward, taking ideas to build a possible future. What he shows is far from utopian – and yet it is hopeful – he shows just how hard-fought meaningful change will be. In his vision, there’s plenty of dystopian before we arrive at some semblance of utopian. A more sustainable future IS possible – but, if you didn’t know before, you’ll realize after reading this book that it’ll take a) the world of finance (the central banks) to step in and create the backed currency that will drive a sustainable future (the carbon coin) and b) it’ll also take extreme shocks for humanity to alter course away from our current ways of everything everywhere all the time. Some of the shocks he envisions are hard to take (such as the disaster in India, such as ‘Crash Day’) – but when you read about them, you’ll grasp that they are the very things that change minds – and governments – to take hard decisions and action toward the more sustainable.
Like I said, I think this is an important read. Not a great novel, not a book packed with fascinating protagonists, but a book that is filled with ideas (that already do exist today – such as the Half-Earth Project) and visions of what can be. This book should be mandatory reading.