While Kim Stanley Robinson's Three Californias occupy differing universes, there still are some interesting links drawing them together. A brief reminder: Wild Shore (WS) is the post-holocaust novel about life in what was once Orange County; The Gold Coast (GC) tells of life in a Orange County which has become completely covered over with expressways, condos, and shopping malls; and Pacific Edge (PE) relates of life in a world that takes the future of humanity, the environment, and our fellow creature into account.
All three novels open with a similar event or adventure, depending upon the novel--digging up the past. In WS, Henry and his friends engage in a midnight raid on a graveyard located in one of the mostly deserted urban areas in the vicinity. They are looking for the silver trimmings (silver is especially valuable as a trade item at the swap meets) from the caskets. The problem is that these are considered to be their property by the scavengers who live there and have been known to kill trespassers. They find that the silver trimmings are not really silver and barely escape the scavengers who have come across them..
The past again becomes important in GC for Jim has persuaded his friends to dig up a parking lot which has paved over an old school, according to maps that Jim has found. He hopes to find a souvenir of that past time before the auto took over the county. In this case, the police take a dim view of the destruction of the parking lot and Jim and his friends barely escape them. One of his friends does manage to escape with a piece of wood.
In PE, Kevin and others in his town are engaged in town work. All residents must donate ten hours a week to doing work needed by the town, which has very few employees, part of the new legislation setting maximum levels of number of employees. Aside from this which is a distinct break from our world, is another even more startling: all governments must obey the same rules. They are busy digging up an old part of the town and putting aside for future use all the items made of metal with copper wiring and actually anything that can be reused.
Digging up the past is obviously an important element in all three novels, but this serves a different purpose in each. In WS it's for something that could be valuable as a bargaining/trading item, in GC, it's for a souvenir of the long ago dead past, while in PE, it's for recyclable items.
A second link uniting the three is the main character's love life, and the course is unfortunately consistent across the three universes. Henry, in WS, falls in love with the sexy daughter of a man who lives on the outskirts of the tiny settlement. He is viewed with suspicion by the others for he seems to have considerable wealth, but from where no one can say. It's a short brief but passionate affair (at least on Henry's side) that ends when Henry discovers the truth behind her sudden passion for him.
In GC, Jim has a short, brief passionate affair with a woman who has just broken up with her boyfriend, or perhaps he has dumped her. In any case, Jim is the lucky recipient of her affection, for a short time, that is.
Kevin, in PE, has been going with a woman for several years now, but it's clearly not going anywhere, and he's losing interest. Then he discovers that his long ago secret love has broken up with her boyfriend after living together for more than a decade. He finds that she suddenly discovers him, and he is ecstatic, until the sad end. He then decides that his old girlfriend is his true love but soon learns that in the interim she has found a new boyfriend.
The path of true love does not run smoothly, regardless of the universe.
The third link is the supposed author of the works, two of which are written by the main character in each work--Henry in WS and Jim in GC. In both cases we are shown just when Henry and Jim get the idea to write down their experiences of the past months which were highly significant for them, their families, and friends. We also hear from the author of PE, but the identify of that person is not clear. The authorial intrusions soon make it difficult to see him as Kevin. They live in two different universes. Comments made by the author also suggest that this is a work of fiction, and not autobiographical in any way. Perhaps this is Robinson's way of suggesting that this world could never exist. Sadly, I have to agree with Robinson that a post holocaust world is far more likely than a world that comes to realize that sheer greed and exploitation must be at least controlled, for eliminating greed and exploitation is impossible.
The last and most intriguing link is also the most direct. In each of the three novels, there is an old man called Tom. In WS, he is called Tom Barnard, and he is one of the few survivors from the pre-holocaust world. He is a valuable member of the small community, for his memories of the past are highly useful. Moreover, he is a teacher who conducts a school for the young people in the community. Literacy among the people of his community may be his greatest contribution. He is also a myth maker, not only telling about the pre-holocaust days but exaggerating the accomplishments of the Old Americans. For example, Shakespeare was an American. At one point, he becomes seriously ill and the entire community is concerned. Existence without Tom Barnard would be unthinkable.
In PE, the old man is also called Tom Barnard. He also lives on the outskirts of the community but is isolated from the community. This is his choice. He had been closely involved in the legislation that created the world as it is today in PE, and he now appears to be taking Voltaire's admonition to "tend to your own garden" quite seriously. He is Kevin's grandfather, and Kevin attempts to get him involved in the struggle to defeat Alfredo's plans. Tom's experience and knowledge would be very useful to those opposing Alfredo.
We find a very different situation in GC. The old man is Jim's uncle. I can't find any mention of him other than Uncle Tom, so I have no idea of what his last name is. He is in a nursing home, with moments of lucidness and times of confusion; He is mostly ignored by Jim, and by society in general, a too typical situation for many older people in our society as well. Jim has to be nagged at by his parents to visit him once in a while. On one visit, Tom is lucid and Jim finally realizes, much too late, that Tom has a storehouse of memories of the way Orange County was before progress took over.
In WS, the post-holocaust novel, and PE, the fantasy universe that has gone green, Tom is a valued member of the community with close ties to both Henry and Kevin. In GC, the universe that is closest to ours, Tom, for the most part, is ignored by Jim and of no value to society.
Highly Recommended (naturally)
Showing posts with label Three Californias. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Three Californias. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
Kim Stanley Robinson: Pacific Edge (Three California series)
I have to resist calling Kim Stanley Robinson's Pacific Edge the third book in the Three California Series because that sounds as though it's the third book in the series. It is, but only because it's the third book published in the series, which was originally called The Orange County Trilogy. Wild Shore was published in 1984 (actually his first published novel), The Gold Coast in 1988, and Pacific Edge in 1990. I published a short commentary on Wild Shore in March 2011, The Gold Coast in August 2011, and a very short summary of all three in a post titled The California Troika in January 2011.
Pacific Edge is a "what if" tale. It answers the question of what it would be like if the world turned green and developed a concern for the environment and ecology. It is also a fantasy whereas the first two novels are closer to SF in nature, and, frankly, I believe a nuclear war and a military-industrial takeover are far more likely than the premise in Pacific Edge. However, regardless of the change in perspective, Kim Stanley Robinson (KSR) has not created a utopia. People are still people, and there are those who don't see why they can't use the new rules for their own purposes, including grabbing for power and wealth.
Sustainability is the rule in this society. Excesses are eliminated, or at least, attempts are made to do so. Corporations are limited by the number of employees, although this limit can be effectively circumvented by setting up dummy corporations, or at least circumvented until the linkage is discovered. The growth of urban populations are controlled by the amount of water available--insufficient water results in no growth. In Pacific Edge, we see how these issues are worked out in a small town setting.
This is not a rural fantasy, where technology has disappeared. People are living in space habitats and there's a colony on the moon. An expedition is now being fitted out for a trip to Mars. KSR has not created a completely low-tech culture, but one that makes decisions about when and where to apply technology. Cars still exist, but in Kevin's small town, people either walk or ride a bike when they move about town. Cars are necessary only for long trips, not for short jaunts around town. Moreover, when the novel begins, we see the people engaged in town-work. All able-bodied citizens have to put in ten hours a week of town work. This reduces the need for town employees and the associated costs. Small government comes with a cost.
Kevin, the main character, is in his early 30s, although he seems a bit younger than that. Perhaps this will be the summer that matures him. It certainly will be a busy one for him, testing him in a variety of ways and providing new experiences. As to be expected in our real world, his experiences have two sides to them--good and bad.
Perhaps one of the most frivolous, frivolous perhaps to some, is his love of softball. This summer, as in the past, he plays in a softball league. But, this summer is different, for well into the season, he has compiled a perfect record at bat--he is batting 1.000! All recognize that this can't last the season, but when will it end? The attention he gets (the absolute silence, including a few hushes) from the players and spectators each time he comes up to bat is disconcerting. At times he wishes that it will end and even considers ending it deliberately. But, he is competitive and each hit helps his team.
He has been involved in a lukewarm relationship that's been going on for years and obviously going nowhere. This summer, though, the word (gossip) flashes through the young folk: Ramona has broken up with Alfredo. Ramona and Alfredo have been living together for years now, ever since high school, but they've never formalized their relationship. Now it appears as though it's over. Kevin has been nursing a secret (even from himself) love for her for years, but did nothing about it for there seemed to be no hope. Now, she was free.
He unobtrusively (or so he thinks) begins to pay her some attention. At first he has to listen to her complaints about Alfredo's faults. Frankly, this is a bad sign, although Kevin isn't aware of it. However, Kevin is ecstatic and their relationship flourishes during those summer months.
Kevin has also just been appointed to the town council. Being relatively apolitical, he hasn't paid much attention to local politics, but now he will find himself immersed in political maneuvering that could affect him personally. Kevin eventually wonders if perhaps his apolitical past is the reason why he is now on the council. Someone as naive as he is might not notice certain actions being taken by Alfredo, who is also the mayor at this time.
However, regardless of Kevin's lack of experience, there is one thing he's learned, and that is that Alfredo can not be trusted. Even if it's something as straightforward as giving the time of the day, Alfredo will create some sort of plot which will benefit him.
Therefore, at the first council meeting, Kevin discovers that one of the items on the agenda is a proposal to buy more water from the state water board. Kevin is immediately suspicious and questions Alfred about the reason for the proposal. They have enough water for the present and even a bit more than they need. Alfredo vaguely mentions that it is always good to have more water available than is necessary because something may arise requiring more water; however, he has nothing specific in mind, just thinking about the future.
Then Kevin discovers, buried at the end of the agenda, when most folks are gone and those who are left are tired and just want to go home, another innocuous proposal by Alfredo. A small hill outside of town would be given a commercial zoning rating. This hill, with no structures on it, is a favorite spot for picnickers and lovers and those (Kevin, for example) who just want to sit and be alone for awhile. It also has the best view in the area of the valley below.
Kevin then questions this motion, and Alfredo, irritated, insists he has nothing in mind; it's just that it's not zoned and he wanted to clear this up. Others on the council then begin to ask questions, and Alfredo withdraws the motion. After the meeting, Kevin, in a discussion with some members of the council, wonders if there is a connection between the proposal to buy more water, which would allow considerable growth in the town and the zoning motion for commercial use of the hill. What is Alfredo up to? It's time to take a closer look at Alfredo once again.
An interesting summer for Kevin--radical changes in his life in sports, love, and politics.
However, there's one more element to the story that isn't found in the other two novels of The Three Californias. In the other novels, the stories are written by the two main characters. as a record of the events of the unusual events of the past six months or so. This is made very clear in both works. KSR has decided to do something different in this novel. There are authorial intrusions throughout the work. The first one begins:
2 March 2012, 8 A.M. I decided that as a gesture to its spirit, I would write my book outdoors.
The author is in Zurich, Switzerland. Is this Robinson, injecting himself into the novel as does Samuel R. Delany in The Einstein Intersection or John Fowles in The French Lieutenant's Woman? But, the year in the quotation is 2012 while this novel was published in 1990, Could this be Keven himself, just as in the other two novels, writing down the events of a past summer? The intrusions become even more bizarre as the author appears to be in conflict with a hostile US Government and even is imprisoned at one point. The tone of these insertions is decidedly Kafkaesque, in direct contrast to the tale of Kevin's summer. Could Kevin's summer be some sort of idyllic escape for the author who is trapped in a world that seemingly is closer to Orwell's 1984 or Kafka's The Trial than to Kevin's world?
Or perhaps, the authorial intrusions represent a fourth California, one so much worse than even a post-holocaust world that Robinson can't quite bring himself to write about it, except in this oblique way.
Highly recommended, but then again, I'm biased. I highly recommend anything and everything Kim Stanley Robinson writes.
Pacific Edge is a "what if" tale. It answers the question of what it would be like if the world turned green and developed a concern for the environment and ecology. It is also a fantasy whereas the first two novels are closer to SF in nature, and, frankly, I believe a nuclear war and a military-industrial takeover are far more likely than the premise in Pacific Edge. However, regardless of the change in perspective, Kim Stanley Robinson (KSR) has not created a utopia. People are still people, and there are those who don't see why they can't use the new rules for their own purposes, including grabbing for power and wealth.
Sustainability is the rule in this society. Excesses are eliminated, or at least, attempts are made to do so. Corporations are limited by the number of employees, although this limit can be effectively circumvented by setting up dummy corporations, or at least circumvented until the linkage is discovered. The growth of urban populations are controlled by the amount of water available--insufficient water results in no growth. In Pacific Edge, we see how these issues are worked out in a small town setting.
This is not a rural fantasy, where technology has disappeared. People are living in space habitats and there's a colony on the moon. An expedition is now being fitted out for a trip to Mars. KSR has not created a completely low-tech culture, but one that makes decisions about when and where to apply technology. Cars still exist, but in Kevin's small town, people either walk or ride a bike when they move about town. Cars are necessary only for long trips, not for short jaunts around town. Moreover, when the novel begins, we see the people engaged in town-work. All able-bodied citizens have to put in ten hours a week of town work. This reduces the need for town employees and the associated costs. Small government comes with a cost.
Kevin, the main character, is in his early 30s, although he seems a bit younger than that. Perhaps this will be the summer that matures him. It certainly will be a busy one for him, testing him in a variety of ways and providing new experiences. As to be expected in our real world, his experiences have two sides to them--good and bad.
Perhaps one of the most frivolous, frivolous perhaps to some, is his love of softball. This summer, as in the past, he plays in a softball league. But, this summer is different, for well into the season, he has compiled a perfect record at bat--he is batting 1.000! All recognize that this can't last the season, but when will it end? The attention he gets (the absolute silence, including a few hushes) from the players and spectators each time he comes up to bat is disconcerting. At times he wishes that it will end and even considers ending it deliberately. But, he is competitive and each hit helps his team.
He has been involved in a lukewarm relationship that's been going on for years and obviously going nowhere. This summer, though, the word (gossip) flashes through the young folk: Ramona has broken up with Alfredo. Ramona and Alfredo have been living together for years now, ever since high school, but they've never formalized their relationship. Now it appears as though it's over. Kevin has been nursing a secret (even from himself) love for her for years, but did nothing about it for there seemed to be no hope. Now, she was free.
He unobtrusively (or so he thinks) begins to pay her some attention. At first he has to listen to her complaints about Alfredo's faults. Frankly, this is a bad sign, although Kevin isn't aware of it. However, Kevin is ecstatic and their relationship flourishes during those summer months.
Kevin has also just been appointed to the town council. Being relatively apolitical, he hasn't paid much attention to local politics, but now he will find himself immersed in political maneuvering that could affect him personally. Kevin eventually wonders if perhaps his apolitical past is the reason why he is now on the council. Someone as naive as he is might not notice certain actions being taken by Alfredo, who is also the mayor at this time.
However, regardless of Kevin's lack of experience, there is one thing he's learned, and that is that Alfredo can not be trusted. Even if it's something as straightforward as giving the time of the day, Alfredo will create some sort of plot which will benefit him.
Therefore, at the first council meeting, Kevin discovers that one of the items on the agenda is a proposal to buy more water from the state water board. Kevin is immediately suspicious and questions Alfred about the reason for the proposal. They have enough water for the present and even a bit more than they need. Alfredo vaguely mentions that it is always good to have more water available than is necessary because something may arise requiring more water; however, he has nothing specific in mind, just thinking about the future.
Then Kevin discovers, buried at the end of the agenda, when most folks are gone and those who are left are tired and just want to go home, another innocuous proposal by Alfredo. A small hill outside of town would be given a commercial zoning rating. This hill, with no structures on it, is a favorite spot for picnickers and lovers and those (Kevin, for example) who just want to sit and be alone for awhile. It also has the best view in the area of the valley below.
Kevin then questions this motion, and Alfredo, irritated, insists he has nothing in mind; it's just that it's not zoned and he wanted to clear this up. Others on the council then begin to ask questions, and Alfredo withdraws the motion. After the meeting, Kevin, in a discussion with some members of the council, wonders if there is a connection between the proposal to buy more water, which would allow considerable growth in the town and the zoning motion for commercial use of the hill. What is Alfredo up to? It's time to take a closer look at Alfredo once again.
An interesting summer for Kevin--radical changes in his life in sports, love, and politics.
However, there's one more element to the story that isn't found in the other two novels of The Three Californias. In the other novels, the stories are written by the two main characters. as a record of the events of the unusual events of the past six months or so. This is made very clear in both works. KSR has decided to do something different in this novel. There are authorial intrusions throughout the work. The first one begins:
2 March 2012, 8 A.M. I decided that as a gesture to its spirit, I would write my book outdoors.
The author is in Zurich, Switzerland. Is this Robinson, injecting himself into the novel as does Samuel R. Delany in The Einstein Intersection or John Fowles in The French Lieutenant's Woman? But, the year in the quotation is 2012 while this novel was published in 1990, Could this be Keven himself, just as in the other two novels, writing down the events of a past summer? The intrusions become even more bizarre as the author appears to be in conflict with a hostile US Government and even is imprisoned at one point. The tone of these insertions is decidedly Kafkaesque, in direct contrast to the tale of Kevin's summer. Could Kevin's summer be some sort of idyllic escape for the author who is trapped in a world that seemingly is closer to Orwell's 1984 or Kafka's The Trial than to Kevin's world?
Or perhaps, the authorial intrusions represent a fourth California, one so much worse than even a post-holocaust world that Robinson can't quite bring himself to write about it, except in this oblique way.
Highly recommended, but then again, I'm biased. I highly recommend anything and everything Kim Stanley Robinson writes.
Sunday, August 21, 2011
Kim Stanley Robinson: The Gold Coast
Kim Stanley Robinson's The Gold Coast (TGC) is one of the three novels in what was first called "The Orange County" trilogy, but is now being marketed as "The Three Californias." However, I still prefer my title, "The California Troika." The three novels are set in Orange County, California, at approximately the middle of the 21st century. However, they do not overlap because Robinson has postulated three widely differing futures for Orange County. It is, therefore, an alternate universe series, of a very unique kind.
I have already posted on another of the three novels--The Wild Shore (TWS), .which was a "What if" novel--one that answers the question what if there was a nuclear attack on the US? What would life be like for the survivors in Orange County some half century later?
The Gold Coast belongs to the “If this goes on” category, for it postulates the continuation of the Cold War along with massive urban population growth for Orange County, which is now a center for the military-industrial complex. Much of the industry in Orange County now consists of defense contractors, corporations whose existence depends upon gaining contracts for military weapons. The novel is an extrapolation of Orange County in the 80s when it was written.
The third novel, Pacific Edge, is a “What if” novel and is, in comparison to these two, pure fantasy. I will go into that in more detail in a later post.
While the two novels occupy widely varying universes, Robinson appears to have created a very broad pattern, at least for these two novels. The main character is a young male, Jim McPherson. In TGC he is about a decade older than the main character (Hank Fletcher) is in TWS. Physically McPherson is older; however, he still is a teenager for he hasn’t grown up yet. McPherson is still “finding himself.” He has two part-time jobs, one as a data entry clerk and the other a part-time instructor at a night school.
A second commonality is the importance of the relationship between the young man and his father, though the relationships are quite different. Jim McPherson’s father, Dennis, is an engineer who works for a defense contractor. A significant part of the story concerns the father’s problems at work, both with the work itself and his immediate supervisor, whose goal is getting the task done, regardless of whatever harm this might do to his subordinates.
The father has a dream: the weapons system (reminds me a bit of Pres. Reagan’s Star Wars System) he is now working on could eliminate the need for nuclear weapons. It might not completely eliminate war, but at least it will remove a possible nuclear holocaust that both threatens and sustains the volatile political world situation. As it is, the US is now involved in “Open wars in Indonesia, Egypt, Bahrain, and Thailand” and “Covert wars in Pakistan, Turkey, South Korea, and Belgium.”
Dennis McPherson’s job and employer are two of the reasons for the estrangement between Jim and his father. Jim is vaguely opposed to the war and therefore opposed to his father’s work. Dennis is unhappy with his son whom he feels hasn’t grown up yet, even though he was graduated from high school a decade ago. He also feels he’s being used by Jim as Jim only comes around when he wants a free meal and he needs his father to work on his car.
Both novels begin with digging into the past. In TWS, Hank and his friends, one night, go to a graveyard, hoping to dig up some coffins and find something valuable that they could use for bargaining at the local swap meet. In TGC, Jim and his friends dig up a parking lot, which covered the foundation of a school, hoping to find some relics of the past. In both cases, they are discovered and are forced to leave without finding anything valuable.
In both novels, there is an old man named Tom. Tom is an important character in TWS as he is one of the few sources of information about the world before the nuclear holocaust. In TGC, Tom is Jim’s uncle who plays a very minor role in the novel. However, he too is a source of information (occasionally) of what Orange County was like half a century ago.
One of the strongest parts of the novel is Robinson’s creation of a culture that is recognizable today, with some major differences, of course. If one were to describe Jim’s life, one couldn’t go too far wrong by bringing back the old cliché: “Sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll.” One of Jim’s friends is Sandy, who is an independent drug designer. What I find interesting is that his drugs are taken with an eyedropper and deposited directly on the eye. I guess this makes for a quicker absorption as it goes directly into the brain and also more efficient as less of the drug is lost along the way. Another friend is Tashi, who lives in a tent on a roof and tends his own rooftop garden. He fixes computers and other electronic devices.
The controlling technology in this world is TV. Nobody in the late 80s could have foreseen the development of the mobile phone and its impact on society. TV in TGC has supplanted reality. Jim, at a party, having accidentally hit himself on his head and under the influence of Sandy’s latest creation, has gotten himself involved in a ping-pong game with the local champion and is playing way over his head, making spectacular volleys and saves. The game gains the interest of the other partygoers who eventually leave the room the game is being played in for the adjoining room where they can watch it on CCTV. All of Jim’s friends, including Jim, have their places wired for CCTV so they can see what’s going on in any room from any room in the place. They would much rather watch the game on a TV screen than watch it directly.
Another incident demonstrating the superiority of life on a monitor over a flesh-and-blood presence occurs shortly after the ping-pong game. Jim hooks up with Virginia, and they leave the party for her place for sex. They arrive at her place:
Virginia flips on the lights, turns on the video system. Eight little cameras mounted high on the walls track them with IR sensors, and two big sets of screens on the side walls show Virginia undressing, from both front and back. Jim finds the images arousing indeed . . . They maneuver into positions where they can both see a wall of screens.
. . . . .
her face is in exquisite profile . . . and her breasts . . . well it’s almost enough to distract him from the screens. . .
The screens flicker and go blank. Glassy gray-green nothingness.
Virginia jumps off Jim . . . Angrily she punches the buttons of the control panel over by the light switches.
She can’t get the system to work. Sex is no longer interesting in itself, but only as performance.
Fortunately Jim comes to the rescue. He moves a large mirror into the room so that now they can see their reflections. They resume, finding the mirrors a bit kinky as the two couples stare back at each other.
The Plot: Jim becomes increasingly dissatisfied with his life and decides to become actively involved with a group that opposes the military-industrial complex. He begins with slapping posters around the mall and eventually gets involved with sabotaging the defense contractors. Eventually the group decides to attack Laguna Space Research (LSR), the company that Jim’s father works for.
Then it gets complicated and several plot lines converge. The next target is LSR. Since the group attacks installations only at night and only where there are no guards, many companies are putting guards in places they never were before. Surprisingly, LSR suddenly removes the guards from the site where Dennis McPherson is developing his super-weapon. The attack on LSR is set up. Sandy, who also occasionally deals as well as develops drugs, had to dump overboard a shipment of drugs along the coast where LSR is situated. He is told by those who ordered and paid for the drugs that he’s got to go back this night because the police and DEA will be distracted by an attack on LSR.
OVERALL COMMENTS: a complex tale with multiple themes—fathers and sons, the generation gap, the military-industrial complex, the effects of technology on those embedded in it, knowingly or otherwise. Recommended for those looking for a complex tale set in the near future that has some disturbing similarities to our own. Again, it makes no difference which of the three--The Wild Shore, The Gold Coast, or Pacific Edge--you read first.
Monday, March 21, 2011
Kim Stanley Robinson: The Wild Shore (concl)
Spoiler Warning: the following will bring out some important plot elements and hints about the ending.
Sometimes I think it's harder for me to write about a work that I have greatly enjoyed reading than to write about one I didn't like as much or even disliked. I have to step back, get some distance from a work, before I can comment on it and go beyond a simple plot summary or gushing about how much I liked it. If I really like a work, it's because the writer has grabbed me and put me in some way into the story itself and I can't get an overall view. Another reason is that I fear my comments will suggest the story is uninteresting and therefore drive readers away.
To be brief, I finished The Wild Shore last week and have been putting off writing about it, just as I'm doing right now.
To the story
Robinson broke the story into four parts: the first being an accounting of the life of this small group who are trying make a life for themselves in an US that has been destroyed by a sneak attack. The people of Onofre are now living as their ancestors did several centuries ago. Power is mostly human and water. They are aware of electricity but have no way of generating it. The closest they can come are batteries, not the small kind but car batteries. Occasionally, scavengers (those who occupy the ruins of cities) find batteries that were never filled and therefore might be functional once they are filled. They have books that tell them of what was possible before the war, so they do have some idea of what can be accomplished. However, they lack the knowledge and the materials at present to do anything more than wish for what has been lost.
But, at the end of the first part, it became obvious that something was happening that was going to affect them. The people of Onofre are visited by two travelers from San Diego. Tom Barnard, the only one in Onofre who was alive before the war, is suspicious of them. Since the people of Onofre have no official leaders (they work by consensus when making decisions), there is no one to decide what they should do in this situation. At a meeting, Tom Barnard is selected to return with them to San Diego and find out what the Mayor has in mind.
In Part Two, we follow Henry (the seventeen-year-old narrator) and Tom to San Diego where they meet the Mayor and learn just what he has in mind. The Mayor is ready to go to war against the rest of the world. He wants to establish communication with the people in the Los Angeles area, and since Onofre is between the two, he wants them to help. As Tom explains again, he isn't a leader and all he can do is relate the Mayor's ideas to the people who will decide what they will do.
The trip back to Onofre is far more hazardous than it was going to San Diego. They go by boat and encounter one of the Japanese blockade ships. In the firefight that breaks out, Henry is separated from the others and barely makes it ashore, fearing that Tom and the others are dead. Fortunately all have survived, including Tom.
In Part Three, Henry and his friends make the usual mistake of teens: their parents and the other adults just don't understand the true situation, for the vote just barely went against going along with the Mayor's plans. The teens, wiser than the adults, decide to work secretly with the Mayor's men.
In Part Four, Henry and his friends discover, sadly, that adults aren't always wrong. They are betrayed by both the Mayor of San Diego and even several people of Onofre. This betrayal costs Henry several of his friends. However, the resulting fight also results in the Mayor's death, along with several members of his group. Since San Diego is now without a Mayor, an election takes place, and the party that was opposed to the Mayor's empire building dreams takes control. The people of Onofre no longer have to worry about San Diego, at least for awhile anyway. At least some good came out of the disaster.
When it's over, Henry has to learn to live with the knowledge that he was at least partially responsible for the death of one of his friends. None of the people of Onofre blame him, even his friend's father, but Henry does and he struggles to learn how to live with it.
The novel ends or rather doesn't end, for the people of Onofre suffer their losses and move on. It has become clear that they need to at least find out what the rest of the world is doing, so they plan to get a shortwave radio working, but just for listening, at least for the present. Another of the Onofreans has decided that it's time to try whaling again, especially since the whales visit their bay annually. The oil would be useful for lamps and lubricants and trading at the swap meet. And, Henry himself has suddenly noticed a young woman, one he's known all his life, but now she seems different in some way, and she seems to have noticed Henry also.
Henry may also turn out to be a writer, for the novel is his account of the events of that summer, the one "that would . . . change us." He's also a bit confused by Tom Barnard, and he's no longer quite so quick to accept everything Tom tells him. Tom, who almost died of pneumonia during the summer, decides to tell Henry the truth about life before the war, or at least as much of it as he can. On the one hand he talks about the scientific and medical advances, the rapid transportation, the use of electricity as power, but on the other hand, Henry points out to Tom that he has said that "the old time was awful, that we live better lives now than they ever did."
The last paragraph:
"As for me, the moon lays a mirrorflake road to the horizon. The snow on the beach melted yesterday, but it might as well be a beach of snow the way it looks in this light, against the edge of the black sea. Above the cliffs stand the dark hillsides of the valley, cupped, tilted to pour into the ocean. Onofre. This damp last page is nearly full. And my hand is getting cold--it's getting so stiff I can't make the letters, these words are all big and scrawling, taking up the last of the space, thank God. Oh be done with it. There's an owl, flitting over the river. I'll stay right here and fill another book."
Some times I wish Robinson had written a sequel to this work. What happened to Henry and the people of Onofre. What changes came about? Did they continue to live lives that Tom Barnard said were better than before the war?
How long will the blockade continue? Nothing is forever. The quarantine has gone on for decades already. How much longer could it continue? There were already almost regularly scheduled clandestine visits by "tourists" who paid large sums to come ashore for a short time and perhaps come back with a "souvenir." During Henry's trip back from San Diego, the ship he was traveling on was sunk by one of the Japanese blockade ships, and Henry was on board briefly. He met the captain of the ship and noticed that he was wearing a ring that was the type that graduating high school seniors used to wear before the war. The captain of the blockade ship obviously had some contact with those who were running the blockage. Did he regularly become blind, for a fee of course, to what was going on?
But, Robinson hasn't written a sequel so far, and perhaps he's wisest to leave it to the reader to continue the story.
Overall Rating: It's one of my five favorite post-holocaust novels.
Five stars on a scale of 0-5.
Sometimes I think it's harder for me to write about a work that I have greatly enjoyed reading than to write about one I didn't like as much or even disliked. I have to step back, get some distance from a work, before I can comment on it and go beyond a simple plot summary or gushing about how much I liked it. If I really like a work, it's because the writer has grabbed me and put me in some way into the story itself and I can't get an overall view. Another reason is that I fear my comments will suggest the story is uninteresting and therefore drive readers away.
To be brief, I finished The Wild Shore last week and have been putting off writing about it, just as I'm doing right now.
To the story
Robinson broke the story into four parts: the first being an accounting of the life of this small group who are trying make a life for themselves in an US that has been destroyed by a sneak attack. The people of Onofre are now living as their ancestors did several centuries ago. Power is mostly human and water. They are aware of electricity but have no way of generating it. The closest they can come are batteries, not the small kind but car batteries. Occasionally, scavengers (those who occupy the ruins of cities) find batteries that were never filled and therefore might be functional once they are filled. They have books that tell them of what was possible before the war, so they do have some idea of what can be accomplished. However, they lack the knowledge and the materials at present to do anything more than wish for what has been lost.
But, at the end of the first part, it became obvious that something was happening that was going to affect them. The people of Onofre are visited by two travelers from San Diego. Tom Barnard, the only one in Onofre who was alive before the war, is suspicious of them. Since the people of Onofre have no official leaders (they work by consensus when making decisions), there is no one to decide what they should do in this situation. At a meeting, Tom Barnard is selected to return with them to San Diego and find out what the Mayor has in mind.
In Part Two, we follow Henry (the seventeen-year-old narrator) and Tom to San Diego where they meet the Mayor and learn just what he has in mind. The Mayor is ready to go to war against the rest of the world. He wants to establish communication with the people in the Los Angeles area, and since Onofre is between the two, he wants them to help. As Tom explains again, he isn't a leader and all he can do is relate the Mayor's ideas to the people who will decide what they will do.
The trip back to Onofre is far more hazardous than it was going to San Diego. They go by boat and encounter one of the Japanese blockade ships. In the firefight that breaks out, Henry is separated from the others and barely makes it ashore, fearing that Tom and the others are dead. Fortunately all have survived, including Tom.
In Part Three, Henry and his friends make the usual mistake of teens: their parents and the other adults just don't understand the true situation, for the vote just barely went against going along with the Mayor's plans. The teens, wiser than the adults, decide to work secretly with the Mayor's men.
In Part Four, Henry and his friends discover, sadly, that adults aren't always wrong. They are betrayed by both the Mayor of San Diego and even several people of Onofre. This betrayal costs Henry several of his friends. However, the resulting fight also results in the Mayor's death, along with several members of his group. Since San Diego is now without a Mayor, an election takes place, and the party that was opposed to the Mayor's empire building dreams takes control. The people of Onofre no longer have to worry about San Diego, at least for awhile anyway. At least some good came out of the disaster.
When it's over, Henry has to learn to live with the knowledge that he was at least partially responsible for the death of one of his friends. None of the people of Onofre blame him, even his friend's father, but Henry does and he struggles to learn how to live with it.
The novel ends or rather doesn't end, for the people of Onofre suffer their losses and move on. It has become clear that they need to at least find out what the rest of the world is doing, so they plan to get a shortwave radio working, but just for listening, at least for the present. Another of the Onofreans has decided that it's time to try whaling again, especially since the whales visit their bay annually. The oil would be useful for lamps and lubricants and trading at the swap meet. And, Henry himself has suddenly noticed a young woman, one he's known all his life, but now she seems different in some way, and she seems to have noticed Henry also.
Henry may also turn out to be a writer, for the novel is his account of the events of that summer, the one "that would . . . change us." He's also a bit confused by Tom Barnard, and he's no longer quite so quick to accept everything Tom tells him. Tom, who almost died of pneumonia during the summer, decides to tell Henry the truth about life before the war, or at least as much of it as he can. On the one hand he talks about the scientific and medical advances, the rapid transportation, the use of electricity as power, but on the other hand, Henry points out to Tom that he has said that "the old time was awful, that we live better lives now than they ever did."
The last paragraph:
"As for me, the moon lays a mirrorflake road to the horizon. The snow on the beach melted yesterday, but it might as well be a beach of snow the way it looks in this light, against the edge of the black sea. Above the cliffs stand the dark hillsides of the valley, cupped, tilted to pour into the ocean. Onofre. This damp last page is nearly full. And my hand is getting cold--it's getting so stiff I can't make the letters, these words are all big and scrawling, taking up the last of the space, thank God. Oh be done with it. There's an owl, flitting over the river. I'll stay right here and fill another book."
Some times I wish Robinson had written a sequel to this work. What happened to Henry and the people of Onofre. What changes came about? Did they continue to live lives that Tom Barnard said were better than before the war?
How long will the blockade continue? Nothing is forever. The quarantine has gone on for decades already. How much longer could it continue? There were already almost regularly scheduled clandestine visits by "tourists" who paid large sums to come ashore for a short time and perhaps come back with a "souvenir." During Henry's trip back from San Diego, the ship he was traveling on was sunk by one of the Japanese blockade ships, and Henry was on board briefly. He met the captain of the ship and noticed that he was wearing a ring that was the type that graduating high school seniors used to wear before the war. The captain of the blockade ship obviously had some contact with those who were running the blockage. Did he regularly become blind, for a fee of course, to what was going on?
But, Robinson hasn't written a sequel so far, and perhaps he's wisest to leave it to the reader to continue the story.
Overall Rating: It's one of my five favorite post-holocaust novels.
Five stars on a scale of 0-5.
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Kim Stanley Robinson: The Wild Shore, Pt. 1
I have finally managed to get some reading done in Kim Stanley Robinson's The Wild Shore, the first novel in what I call "The California Troika." But, now that I've started, it should flow quickly to the end.
I've now finished Part 1, "San Onofre." The story is possibly set in what is now San Onofre State Beach. The year is 2047, some 60? years since the war. It wasn't much of a war. The US was caught by a sneak attack--planted bombs--only a few survivors were left. Tom Barnard is the only one among the 20 some households that make up the settlement who remembers before the war. He is their sole repository of their history.
One of the continuing arguments at the local swap meet among the few who survived the war is the identity of the attacker. Some thought it was either the Russians or the Chinese, others the South Africans, some the French, and others the Vietnamese. Another debate is about whether the President of the US was right in refusing to retaliate. In a discussion that reminds me of Theodore Sturgeon's short story, "Thunder and Roses," Tom Barnard insists, in defense of President Eliot, that "'We were goners as soon as the bombs went off . . . Makes no difference what happened to the rest of the world. If Eliot had decided to push the button, that just would've killed more people and wrecked more countries. It wouldn't have done a thing for us. Besides, it wasn't the Russians or the Chinese that planted the bombs--.'"
Regardless of who did it, it was effective. Moreover, the rest of the world was not affected. Somehow there was an agreement among the nations of the world on two points: for future peace, the Americans must not be allowed to rebuild beyond a certain point and no one was to attempt to settle there. The West Coast was patrolled by the Japanese Navy to capture anyone who left (they were never seen again) and to prevent anyone from attempting to make landfall. At the beginning of the story, a bullet-riddled body washes ashore, apparently a Chinese who perhaps had attempted to run the blockade. They can only speculate.
This is not one of those post-holocaust novels filled with slavering mutants, zombies, or vampires who suddenly appear as the result of a nuclear war, nor is it that post-holocaust Edenic garden so beloved of some groups who believe Life would be Perfect if we could just get the Dang Government off our backs. It is a relatively realistic attempt to portray life where most of the inhabitants have died, and the infrastructure has been destroyed: no power, no water, no transportation (except for the original means of getting from one place to another--walking). There's no existential despair either ; the survivors are too busy surviving.
The first person narrator is Henry, a seventeen year old boy who is just beginning to get restless. There's a whole world out there about which he knows nothing. He and his friends have a lot of energy that isn't quite used up by the daily struggle to survive. The novel opens with an example of this:
"'It wouldn't really be graverobbing,' Nicolin was explaining. 'Just dig up a coffin and take the silver off the outside of it. Never open it up at all. Bury it again nice and proper--now what could be wrong with that? Those silver coffin handles are going to waste in the ground anyway.'
The five of us considered it.
. . . . .
Gabby Mendez tossed a pebble out at a gliding seagull. 'Just exactly how is that not graverobbing?' he demanded of Nocolin.
'It takes desecration of the body to make it graverobbing.' Nicolin winked at me; I was his partner in these sorts of things. 'We aren't going to do any such thing. No searching for cuff-links or belt buckles, no pulling off rings or dental work, nothing of the sort.'"
The swap meet was run on the barter system mostly, but silver was slowly becoming important as currency. The people of San Onofre, living in the hills just off the beach, found that fishing served several purposes: it provided a dependable supply of food, and the surplus could be dried and traded at the swap meet for whatever they lacked.
"Part One" of the novel focuses for the most part on the lives of the people clustered around the San Onofre River, as Henry experiences it. It is hard work, but there are the good times also, and Henry is the optimistic sort.
"As I turned up the south path towards the little cabin that my pa and I shared, the smells of pine and sea salt raked the insides of my nose and made me drunk with hunger, and happily I imagined chips of silver the size of a dozen dimes. It occurred to me that my friends and I were for the very first time in our lives actually going to do what we had so often boastfully planned to do--and at the thought I felt a thrilling shiver of anticipation. I leaped from root to root in the trail: we were invading the territory of the scavengers, venturing north into the ruins of Orange County."
But, nothing stays the same. Near the end of Part One, two strangers appear. They have come up from San Diego. The Mayor of San Diego has ideas and plans:
Lee, one of the two strangers, tells them that "'We've been working on the rails north of Oceanside for a few weeks now. . .The Mayor of San Diego has organized a bunch of work forces of various sorts, and our job is to establish better travel routes to the surrounding towns . . . And since the Mayor began organizing things, we've accomplished a good deal. The settlements are pretty well scattered, but we have a train system between them that works well. All handcars, you understand, although we do have generators providing a good supply of electricity back home. There's a weekly swap meet, and a fishing fleet, and a militia--all manner of things there weren't before.'"
They are there as sort of ambassadors. The Mayor would like to establish communication as far north as the Los Angeles basin, and they would like the permission and the cooperation of the San Onofre people. Part One ends with Tom Barnard and Henry going down to San Diego to meet with the Mayor. Henry is excited, for he is leaving San Onofre for the first time in his life and going to a place that has maybe 2000 people and electricity, but Tom is somewhat suspicious about what really is on the Mayor's mind.
End of Part One
I've now finished Part 1, "San Onofre." The story is possibly set in what is now San Onofre State Beach. The year is 2047, some 60? years since the war. It wasn't much of a war. The US was caught by a sneak attack--planted bombs--only a few survivors were left. Tom Barnard is the only one among the 20 some households that make up the settlement who remembers before the war. He is their sole repository of their history.
One of the continuing arguments at the local swap meet among the few who survived the war is the identity of the attacker. Some thought it was either the Russians or the Chinese, others the South Africans, some the French, and others the Vietnamese. Another debate is about whether the President of the US was right in refusing to retaliate. In a discussion that reminds me of Theodore Sturgeon's short story, "Thunder and Roses," Tom Barnard insists, in defense of President Eliot, that "'We were goners as soon as the bombs went off . . . Makes no difference what happened to the rest of the world. If Eliot had decided to push the button, that just would've killed more people and wrecked more countries. It wouldn't have done a thing for us. Besides, it wasn't the Russians or the Chinese that planted the bombs--.'"
Regardless of who did it, it was effective. Moreover, the rest of the world was not affected. Somehow there was an agreement among the nations of the world on two points: for future peace, the Americans must not be allowed to rebuild beyond a certain point and no one was to attempt to settle there. The West Coast was patrolled by the Japanese Navy to capture anyone who left (they were never seen again) and to prevent anyone from attempting to make landfall. At the beginning of the story, a bullet-riddled body washes ashore, apparently a Chinese who perhaps had attempted to run the blockade. They can only speculate.
This is not one of those post-holocaust novels filled with slavering mutants, zombies, or vampires who suddenly appear as the result of a nuclear war, nor is it that post-holocaust Edenic garden so beloved of some groups who believe Life would be Perfect if we could just get the Dang Government off our backs. It is a relatively realistic attempt to portray life where most of the inhabitants have died, and the infrastructure has been destroyed: no power, no water, no transportation (except for the original means of getting from one place to another--walking). There's no existential despair either ; the survivors are too busy surviving.
The first person narrator is Henry, a seventeen year old boy who is just beginning to get restless. There's a whole world out there about which he knows nothing. He and his friends have a lot of energy that isn't quite used up by the daily struggle to survive. The novel opens with an example of this:
"'It wouldn't really be graverobbing,' Nicolin was explaining. 'Just dig up a coffin and take the silver off the outside of it. Never open it up at all. Bury it again nice and proper--now what could be wrong with that? Those silver coffin handles are going to waste in the ground anyway.'
The five of us considered it.
. . . . .
Gabby Mendez tossed a pebble out at a gliding seagull. 'Just exactly how is that not graverobbing?' he demanded of Nocolin.
'It takes desecration of the body to make it graverobbing.' Nicolin winked at me; I was his partner in these sorts of things. 'We aren't going to do any such thing. No searching for cuff-links or belt buckles, no pulling off rings or dental work, nothing of the sort.'"
The swap meet was run on the barter system mostly, but silver was slowly becoming important as currency. The people of San Onofre, living in the hills just off the beach, found that fishing served several purposes: it provided a dependable supply of food, and the surplus could be dried and traded at the swap meet for whatever they lacked.
"Part One" of the novel focuses for the most part on the lives of the people clustered around the San Onofre River, as Henry experiences it. It is hard work, but there are the good times also, and Henry is the optimistic sort.
"As I turned up the south path towards the little cabin that my pa and I shared, the smells of pine and sea salt raked the insides of my nose and made me drunk with hunger, and happily I imagined chips of silver the size of a dozen dimes. It occurred to me that my friends and I were for the very first time in our lives actually going to do what we had so often boastfully planned to do--and at the thought I felt a thrilling shiver of anticipation. I leaped from root to root in the trail: we were invading the territory of the scavengers, venturing north into the ruins of Orange County."
But, nothing stays the same. Near the end of Part One, two strangers appear. They have come up from San Diego. The Mayor of San Diego has ideas and plans:
Lee, one of the two strangers, tells them that "'We've been working on the rails north of Oceanside for a few weeks now. . .The Mayor of San Diego has organized a bunch of work forces of various sorts, and our job is to establish better travel routes to the surrounding towns . . . And since the Mayor began organizing things, we've accomplished a good deal. The settlements are pretty well scattered, but we have a train system between them that works well. All handcars, you understand, although we do have generators providing a good supply of electricity back home. There's a weekly swap meet, and a fishing fleet, and a militia--all manner of things there weren't before.'"
They are there as sort of ambassadors. The Mayor would like to establish communication as far north as the Los Angeles basin, and they would like the permission and the cooperation of the San Onofre people. Part One ends with Tom Barnard and Henry going down to San Diego to meet with the Mayor. Henry is excited, for he is leaving San Onofre for the first time in his life and going to a place that has maybe 2000 people and electricity, but Tom is somewhat suspicious about what really is on the Mayor's mind.
End of Part One
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Kim Stanley Robinson: The California Troika
When Kim Stanley Robinson published these three novels--The Wild Shore (1984), The Gold Coast (1988), and Pacific Edge (1990)-- they were known collectively as "The Orange County Trilogy." In 1995, the three were reissued in trade paperback editions and were then called "The Three Californias." This probably represents the recognition that these three works do not constitute a trilogy, at least not in the accepted sense of the word. Calling them three Californias does suggest that they are related but not as tightly as a trilogy would be.
I think a better descriptive would be the Russian term "troika," which is a sled or carriage drawn by three horses that are harnessed side-by-side. The three horses therefore move forward into space side-by-side and are equals in that sense--no lead or trailing horse. The same is true of Robinson's three novels, for they move forward side-by-side into time. There is no first or last novel. All three are independent, and it makes no difference in which order the three are read. I read them over twenty years ago in the order of publication, and for this second visit, I will read them in the same order.
I never learned the reason for the change from Orange County to California, but my guess would be a marketing decision--more readers might go for a series set in California than in Orange County, because California is a more recognizable locale than Orange County.
These three novels are inhabitants of my TBR bookcase (To Be Reread in this case). I won't read all three back-to-back but hope to be able to move them eventually during the year out of the TBR bookcase. I shall start within the next week or two with The Wild Shore.
The Wild Shore is a post-holocaust novel and belongs in the "what if" SF category. "What if the US was suddenly attacked, and it was the only country attacked." No other country came to the aid of the US for fear of retaliation. The novel begins in 2047, several decades after the war, if a one-sided attack can be called a war. The POV character, Hank Fletcher, is a young man who lives with his father in a small community made up of others who struggle to survive on the California coast in what was once known as Orange County. He can see ships from Japan and other countries as they maintain a blockade along the Pacific Coast. They will prevent any ships from entering or leaving the coastal waters.
The people survive by farming and trading surplus goods and pre-destruction artifacts with other small communities in the area. Not surprisingly, barter is now the dominant economic system. These people's lives are not characterized as part of that idyllic pastoral romance that shows up in so many post-holocaust fantasies. It is a hard, difficult life, and there is little in the way of significant change until several strangers arrive, who claim to be from San Diego, and they have some ideas about disrupting the status quo.
The Gold Coast belongs to the "if this goes on" category of SF. It is Robinson's extrapolation of what life would be like in Orange County, California, if some existing trends continued. It is set in 2027 and the back page description says it better than I could:
Southern California is a developer's dream gone mad, an endless sprawl of condos, freeways, and malls. Jim McPherson, the affluent son of a defense contractor, is a young man lost in a world of fast cars, casual sex, and designer drugs. But his descent into the shadowy underground of industrial terrorism brings him into a shattering confrontation with his family, his goals, and his ideals.
Pacific Edge, the third novel in the troika, is set also in the same area in 2065, but again in a very different universe. It belongs to the "what if" category, and frankly I consider it to be closer to fantasy than the other two works. I, anyway, believe this universe to be the one that is least likely to happen because the question answered by Pacific Edge is this: "What if the whole world suddenly goes green?"
Big is bad, small is good. Air and water pollution are not to be permitted for any reason. No company can have more than a certain number of employees. Growth, unless it is demonstrably necessary for survival, is forbidden; increasing profits has nothing to do with survival and therefore is not considered an adequate reason for expansion. A new set of three "Rs" has been added to the traditional "Readin', 'Ritin', and 'Rithmatic": "Reuse, Recycle, and Repair."
From the back cover description: "Kevin Claiborne, a young builder who has grown up in this 'green' world, now finds himself caught up in the struggle to preserve his community's idyllic way of life from the resurgent forces of greed and exploitation." I suspect this book is on or would be on every Chamber of Commerce's black list.
While there are no links among the novels--all three are independent and occupy separate universes--there are some commonalities among them. Locale, of course, is one of them. Another commonality is that the main character in each is a young male. A third is that shortly after the novels begin, the young male is involved in digging up something from the past. A fourth is the presence of the old man, who provides a type of historical commentary or perhaps even continuity with the past in each of the three novels.
What Robinson has created is a work that provides three different futures for Orange County or California, if you prefer, each of which takes place roughly during the middle third of the 21st century. Robinson thus gives readers an opportunity to select and discuss which is the preferable one and which is the most likely one.
I don't know of any other author who has created a similar series. If there is one, I would certainly like to hear about it.
I think a better descriptive would be the Russian term "troika," which is a sled or carriage drawn by three horses that are harnessed side-by-side. The three horses therefore move forward into space side-by-side and are equals in that sense--no lead or trailing horse. The same is true of Robinson's three novels, for they move forward side-by-side into time. There is no first or last novel. All three are independent, and it makes no difference in which order the three are read. I read them over twenty years ago in the order of publication, and for this second visit, I will read them in the same order.
I never learned the reason for the change from Orange County to California, but my guess would be a marketing decision--more readers might go for a series set in California than in Orange County, because California is a more recognizable locale than Orange County.
These three novels are inhabitants of my TBR bookcase (To Be Reread in this case). I won't read all three back-to-back but hope to be able to move them eventually during the year out of the TBR bookcase. I shall start within the next week or two with The Wild Shore.
The Wild Shore is a post-holocaust novel and belongs in the "what if" SF category. "What if the US was suddenly attacked, and it was the only country attacked." No other country came to the aid of the US for fear of retaliation. The novel begins in 2047, several decades after the war, if a one-sided attack can be called a war. The POV character, Hank Fletcher, is a young man who lives with his father in a small community made up of others who struggle to survive on the California coast in what was once known as Orange County. He can see ships from Japan and other countries as they maintain a blockade along the Pacific Coast. They will prevent any ships from entering or leaving the coastal waters.
The people survive by farming and trading surplus goods and pre-destruction artifacts with other small communities in the area. Not surprisingly, barter is now the dominant economic system. These people's lives are not characterized as part of that idyllic pastoral romance that shows up in so many post-holocaust fantasies. It is a hard, difficult life, and there is little in the way of significant change until several strangers arrive, who claim to be from San Diego, and they have some ideas about disrupting the status quo.
The Gold Coast belongs to the "if this goes on" category of SF. It is Robinson's extrapolation of what life would be like in Orange County, California, if some existing trends continued. It is set in 2027 and the back page description says it better than I could:
Southern California is a developer's dream gone mad, an endless sprawl of condos, freeways, and malls. Jim McPherson, the affluent son of a defense contractor, is a young man lost in a world of fast cars, casual sex, and designer drugs. But his descent into the shadowy underground of industrial terrorism brings him into a shattering confrontation with his family, his goals, and his ideals.
Pacific Edge, the third novel in the troika, is set also in the same area in 2065, but again in a very different universe. It belongs to the "what if" category, and frankly I consider it to be closer to fantasy than the other two works. I, anyway, believe this universe to be the one that is least likely to happen because the question answered by Pacific Edge is this: "What if the whole world suddenly goes green?"
Big is bad, small is good. Air and water pollution are not to be permitted for any reason. No company can have more than a certain number of employees. Growth, unless it is demonstrably necessary for survival, is forbidden; increasing profits has nothing to do with survival and therefore is not considered an adequate reason for expansion. A new set of three "Rs" has been added to the traditional "Readin', 'Ritin', and 'Rithmatic": "Reuse, Recycle, and Repair."
From the back cover description: "Kevin Claiborne, a young builder who has grown up in this 'green' world, now finds himself caught up in the struggle to preserve his community's idyllic way of life from the resurgent forces of greed and exploitation." I suspect this book is on or would be on every Chamber of Commerce's black list.
While there are no links among the novels--all three are independent and occupy separate universes--there are some commonalities among them. Locale, of course, is one of them. Another commonality is that the main character in each is a young male. A third is that shortly after the novels begin, the young male is involved in digging up something from the past. A fourth is the presence of the old man, who provides a type of historical commentary or perhaps even continuity with the past in each of the three novels.
What Robinson has created is a work that provides three different futures for Orange County or California, if you prefer, each of which takes place roughly during the middle third of the 21st century. Robinson thus gives readers an opportunity to select and discuss which is the preferable one and which is the most likely one.
I don't know of any other author who has created a similar series. If there is one, I would certainly like to hear about it.
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