Bien écrit, mais il ne se passe ABSOLUMENT rien dans ce livre ! ( )

Best known for his work with the Mars trilogy, and The Years of Rice and Salt, Kim Stanley Robinson is a visionary author whose works have challenged readers' views about nearly every aspect of society, from government, to business, to global warming and religion itself. His latest novel, 2312 takes place three hundred years in the future, and provides a glimpse at a very believable humanity that's spread to the other planets.

Synopsis for 2312:

The year is 2312. Scientific and technological advances have opened gateways to an extraordinary future. Earth is no longer humanity’s only home; new habitats have been created throughout the solar system on moons, planets, and in between. But in this year, 2312, a sequence of events will force humanity to confront its past, its present, and its future.

The first event takes place on Mercury, on the city of Terminator, itself a miracle of engineering on an unprecedented scale. It is an unexpected death, but one that might have been foreseen. For Swan Er Hong, it is an event that will change her life. Swan was once a woman who designed worlds. Now she will be led into a plot to destroy them.

It's always difficult to find fault with Robinson's works. His use of vocabulary and stage-setting is without equal, and continues to impress in 2312 as well. It seems that the perfectly appropriate word is used in every circumstance, which enriches the strength of the story. He writes of many places and situations that humans have never before been associated with, but in a way that's purely authentic; indeed, it would be thoroughly surprising if reality differs from Robinson's depictions by much at all. He portrays a web of humanity that has spread to nearly every conceivable location in our solar system, and even beyond, by the later chapters of the book. From the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, to the terrariums built out of asteroids, the book reads almost as a history of the future.

As always, Robinson's choice of characters is both excellent, and profoundly believable. Characters with real flaws always tell the best stories, and those in 2312 are not only realistic, but very flawed, each in their own way. The primary character, Swan Er Hong is moody, eclectic, often quick to anger, and not even particularly sympathetic, yet the reader is forced to care deeply about her, thanks to Robinson's work. In the same way that the book seems to tell the history of events that haven't yet happened, the characters in 2312 feel so real, it's as if they just haven't been born yet.

The dialogue is equally astute, and shows that these characters live in their world, and have been a part of it long before the reader picked up the novel. Though there are a lot of terms that should be foreign to the reader, they are somehow not. The author does a great job of weaving story, characters, and dialogue together as to make the page disappear, and the plot live on in the readers' mind.

Kim Stanley Robinson books are typically slow-burning, and 2312 is no exception. Often times, it's difficult to place exactly where the climax is coming from, as events necessarily build toward a specific point. However, 2312 does build up, only with small, but significant sections. The plot comes together very quickly, and once it does, readers will be rewarded with an excellent consolidation of seemingly minor plot points, that suddenly mean everything. The book takes place in so many locations as to be a whirlwind, but it never feels that way. Majestic vistas, from the bright side of Mercury, to the rings of Saturn, and even the shattered locations of Earth are portrayed perfectly in the book; it's completely understandable how these locations have come to be the way they are by 2312.

Perhaps some of the most surprising aspects of this novel are the depictions of places like New York City, and the terrariums themselves. Terminator on Mercury is also an intriguing locale, though Robinson perhaps could have spent some more time describing and exploring that section of the book. Still, the idea of New York City as a drowned metropolis, yet being converted into a bustling Venice-like city of glass towers reflecting on water seems magical. Most works that detail New York City being flooded seem to portray people as abandoning it to rot and collapse back on itself. It's refreshing to find an author who sees how people would likely really see the city. It's also unusual to hear New York City sound as if it's better for having been drowned.

For all the good this novel does, however, there are a few things that tend to get in the way of the enjoyment. The challenges to genders in 2312 seem rather confusing, and are never explained particularly well. It seems that the idea of male and female have been transformed tremendously, and yet it never seems to affect the characters all that much. With the exception of a sex scene, it's almost as though gender doesn't matter, yet Robinson goes to great lengths in certain sections to describe the various genders. It seems that in only three hundred years, gender is essentially removed from the equation, which feels somewhat far-fetched in this novel. Still, it's perhaps a unique insight into how Robinson sees us moving forward as a species, and the trends that today's societal roles see changing.

2312 does a fantastic job of building a new fiction universe for Robinson to continue working in. The book itself seems to tell only a part of a very large story that takes place in this futuristic reality of 2312, and it would truly be a shame to not see more of this particular future that he has so masterfully created. 2312 is world-building at its finest, and no author accomplishes it quite as successfully as Kim Stanley Robinson. ( )

Great story overall, but some passages were way too long. I tended to skip the lists, and history bits as I really just wanted to know what was coming next, but I did enjoy it. ( )

As someone who adores and has reread the MArs Trilogy multiple times, I'm so pleased that this exists. I will be rereading it for sure. I love the worldbuilding and the characters and just the whole thing makes me happy. ( )

I was forewarned that this book moves slowly, and I found that to be true. However, I was in a rare mood where that didn't bother me. My major take-away is that some themes were introduced and their implications left unexplored. (I can't say much more without straying into spoiler territory.) I most enjoyed the mega-engineering aspects of the story: colonizing the planets, moons, and asteroids throughout the Solar system. That's the sort of thing I fell in love with as a child of the Gemini/Apollo era. Robinson doesn't delve deep into the economic reasonableness of such activity, though, and the adult me thinks that is a bit of a cheat or sloppy oversight. If I were to recommend this book to a friend, I would include plenty of caveats and probably try to direct them to a similar book with better pacing. ( )

Overall: 5/10, Not worth the read.
2312 has a lot of really strong points. The diegesis (world) is extremely interesting, basically creating a very realistic look at colonizing our solar system and even its asteroids. All the politics and social challenges facing the solar system are clever and insightful, especially the socio-economic differences between the colonies and Earth. Lastly, intrapersonal identity is also explored, from gender to body modification and technological integration. However, all these brilliant components do not make engaging content.
The main problem with the book is its story and structure, making it mostly worthless. In fact, I would encourage the author to rewrite the entire thing. The story is a really boring account of a terrorist attack. 20% of the book is spent with two characters walking through a tunnel. The minor story arc about an Earthing the main character saves does not end up having enough relevance to justify its inclusion. The common scifi device of explaining facts about the world through quoted books from the period is used, but is also done so poorly that it makes all those pages worthless. In the end, a lot of good material is wasted and bad content is stuffed into a never-ending book. ( )

There will be no rating.

This book is a journey. There is a story too of course, but it is dissolved in the world this book walks in. And oh this world... there is no expression for it. It is transhuman but yet so close somehow, so really "what must be". This one is positive. Strange. Probably one of the most positive futures without been too bright.

I skipped a lot. A really really lot. There was too much words for me. But every time I've done that I catched a thought that it is because of easiness to feel and believe, because of knowing what it is already...

Really can't rate it. It's no use to rate someones future life.

This book is a slog and the main character, Swan, is not very likeable. I really wanted to like this book. This future world with terraformed planets, asteroid terrariums, and modified humans was fascinating but I felt the book went off on too many tangents describing the world and not enough focus on moving the plot forward. I struggled to remain engaged in the story and I’ve decided not to finish. Not a decision that comes lightly. I don’t abandon books no matter how predictable or poorly written because I’m usually driven to see how a book ends.

I gave 3 stars to be fair since I didn’t complete it. The writing is good but at the halfway point, I’ve read enough and don’t imagine the book will suddenly change style. ( )

I love Kim Stanley Robinson's books, but this one was very disappointing. ( )

An epic tale of a possible human future.

You can't fault the author's imagination here. He obviously spent some time extrapolating science and human nature 300 years into the future and came up with some pretty off-the-wall stuff. The problem for me was mostly the shear overwhelming volume of it all. This future is so wildly imaginative that I could scarcely keep my feeble brain wrapped around all the concepts.

I also had some difficulty identifying with the main characters. One is a 140 year old, hermaphrodite, mostly female, galactic hippy that usually acts about 1/10th her age. The other is a younger and often wiser mostly male who's having a mid-life crisis and follows the woman around the solar system in an infatuated fog.

I almost gave up when the story kept bogging down describing cities that crawl around planets and asteroids (become spaceships containing odd self contained communities) that rocket between planets and avoided describing the very interplanetary conflict that was supposedly driving events. But I powered through for the sake of my book club and wound up appreciating the sweep of the story. ( )

Swan Er Hong's grandmother has passed away and left Swan with a posthumous errand: to carry a message from their home planet, Mars to a colleague of the grandmother's on Saturn. Swan herself is not privileged to know what the message contains; but it becomes clear that the big project to which her grandmother had dedicated her life is at stake. In her interplanetary journeys aboard terraformed asteroids to complete her mission, Swan comes to a new understanding of her role not only in relation to the assignment, but her responsibility towards the outcome and, her feelings toward Warham (the contact on Saturn). There are secret projects, covert plots, ethno-geographic leagues and many of KSR's hallmarks: environmentalism, Antarctic-like landscapes, a reference to Indian culture (e.g., Kali the death goddess), a female protagonist-- who despite her years-- acts oddly young and immature and, passages that read like credible non-fiction.... There are dozens of threads one could follow throughout the book; but the overarching theme is made self-evident in an interstitial chapter called, "Lists (15)" where KSR posits at the end of a 48-item catalog, "the opportunity to become more what you are... that's all you need." ( )

I finished this feeling unsatisfied. Without giving spoilers, this is a book that has two layers of plot: one largely personal and interpersonal, one about the 'big events' going on. If you've read Robinson before, this isn't surprising. In this book, I just didn't like it. The resolution of the 'big events' were unsatisfying, to say the least. Even though he straight up just says that events are resolved they just evolve, this is still an unhappy ending for me. (Minor spoilers-ish comments follow.) What happened with the qubes? It seems like that is a pretty major development and they are are just whisked off stage left. Their schemes? Well, schemes; that what schemes are. Unsatisfying even if, philosophically, kind of true. ( )

It took me a long time to get through this book and I almost gave up on more than one occasion but persevered but didn’t find it very engaging. Some interesting concepts that get you thinking about what the world we currently live in and the opportunities (and threats) of the universe. The lists and extracts portions I found strange. I also wasn't engaged by any of the characters. ( )

Interesting world building straight out of the "Red Mars" series, but tainted by one-dimension professional protagonist characters and an unexciting story. Not the author's best. ( )

Beautiful. Listened on audio The narrator was perfect. The protagonist, Swan, was a complicated and intriguing character, a product of her time, her longevity, her unique experiences, and her environment—Mercury, and the whole solar system. Robinson’s descriptions of the panoramas of the various planets, of deep space, of surfing the rings of Saturn, of floating in space in just a spacesuit are unforgettable. Swan’s and Wahrem’s trek through an endless underground safety tunnel beneath the surface of Mercury with Wahrem humming and Swan bird whistling (by means of bird DNA implanted in her) Beethoven are scenes I’ll never forget. ( )

The protagonist Swan is hard to like: she has a defiance disorder (the farther in the future you get, the more mental disorders People have, right?), yet she still finds someone who loves her. Mercury has a city under a dome, on tracks, and as the sun Dawn's in the East, the rails expand and push the city west, keeping it from frying. Earth is a jungle Planet (many of us will see this in our lifetimes), and AI has evolved.

This lagged at times, but an overall entertaining read for sci-fi fans. ( )

This book was amazing.

Really the characters feel a bit alien, just as they should with a gap of 300 years, but they are still human. Some actions of Swan don't make much sense, in that sense, it is inconsistent, but probably that happens if you want to understand somebody that different from you. ( )

This book is about the investigation into an attack on a Mercury outpost. The main character, Swan Er Hong, is on Mercury during the attack and is lead on a mystery from her recently deceased relative, Alex. Swan is an expert in building ecosystems, mostly in Asteroids. Alex had left her a message that leads her to Fitz Wahram from Titan who Swan describes as a toad, big chest, big stomach, short legs. He is the main supporting character we don’t really know much about except he seems to be an official of some sort and had access to a lot of resources.

Earth’s global warming had destroyed most ecosystem and most of the animal life. During the investigation, Swan and Wahram take it upon themselves to fix the Earth by parachuting animals throughout the world in aerogel bubbles. I’m guessing Kim Stanley Robinson (KSR) doesn’t understand either aerogel nor bouyancy.

Swan, as a protagonist, doesn’t seem to make many decisions. During the majority of the book she is a passive observer and just goes with the flow of events. I understand that KSR writes a lot about politics and our pollution issues, but the Earth repopulation seems to be given more thought than the main plot. And it seems peculiar that Swan and Wahram are of one mind on how to go about a solution. It’s even more surprising that this simplistic action would actually work without first restoring ecosystems for the animals.

The pacing of the book is odd. For the most part it is very slow. This is compounded by the tendency of KSR to use unusual words that you either have to look up or ignore. Admittedly, many of them are interesting, but the habit just slows the reading process. Too often there are simpler synonyms that would have worked just as well, except for slowing down the reader.

The other issue in pacing is that between paragraphs too much can happen. After leaving Mercury for Pluto, there is only one blank line between being barely underway and arriving, there is no indication of time passing.

Clear to the end, I was expecting the book to pick up, I’ve liked other books he’s written. This one just didn’t pan out and the ending really felt anticlimactic. ( )

Not as amazing as New York 2140, but still enjoyable. ( )

September 25, 2014
In spite of a glowing, enthusiastic recommendation from a good friend with very similar tastes, I had to bail on this one. It started off slow and then...

LISTS

and not just ANY lists - lists of authors and scientists and composers, both well-known and obscure. Was there a point to these lists? Doubtful, except to show the author's pretentiousness ("oh, look, I name-dropped PROUST! I must be SOOOO intellectual"). Maybe it's because I'd recently finished The Hyperion Cantos, but I'm very weary of books with long lists that prove nothing except the author's research skills.

This is the line that finally did it for me:

There is an escarpment named Pourquoi Pas.

I have no idea what that means. It's the final line in a chapter comprised solely of geographical names based on the afore-mentioned authors, scientists and composers. I'm a pretty smart guy, but I guess I'm not smart enough to read this book. And it seems that the author wants to PROVE that I'm not smart enough, but I'm not going to stick around to give him that chance.

Perhaps this book really is as good as everyone says it is. Maybe the LIST issue is not that big of a problem when you're reading the book with your own eyeballs and can quickly skim over them, but as an audiobook listener, that's not as easy to do.

So I'll have to add this to the gave-up-on shelf ( )

The scenarios for the future solar system were interesting. That part gets 5 stars. The changes to humanity and social structure was new and complex. I was less interested than that but it was well done. The main characters, one mercurial from the planet Mercury and one saturnine from Saturn and their relationship took a little too much of the stage but that is probably what helped the book get a Nebula award nomination.

Finally, the story revolves around a couple of central mysteries that are solved about 20 pages before the book finishes. My interest lagged after the mysteries were solved.

Overall, a good book. ( )

I recommend Kim Stanley Robinson if you like your science fiction hard and you love reading about technology. I love reading him because his books (and this one is no different) is chock-full of ideas of what a Earth and colonization of our solar system might look like a few hundred years from now. Don't read it for characters to love--he always manages to create some characters that you feel ambivalent about. I can't really say I connected with the hero. But the ideas!? Yes. The ideas. ( )

WAY TOO LONG. holy crap - I only made it half-way through this monstrosity, moving at a glacial pace, before I just gave up, skimmed the last few chapters, confirmed basically what happened and called it a day. GEEZE! ( )

I liked this book. The idea of living on asteroids is cool. Some reviews I read talked about the amazing vision of the book, but I didn't really see it. It seemed like normal humans to me. ( )

I ended up stopping about 75% of the way through since the pacing was very slow. ( )