I read each of these books as soon as they came out about a year apart. I had become a big KSR fan with his screwball humor in the baseball-cap-wearing Yeti stories published in Asimov's Magazine in the late 80's and later anthologized into Escape from Katamandu.

The scope and intensity of these books was a huge and much appreciated surprise. I remember liking the books (read over 25 years ago).

All the books focus on Orange County. The Wild Shore is a post-apocolyptic view some 60 years after the US was bombarded by 1000's of neutrino bombs resulting in catastrophic damage and death tolls but little long-term radiation. The culture is small, subsistence farming communities. We never learn how initiated the attack or how the rest of the world did. There are hints that parts of the world survived intact - or may never have been bombed. The California coast is guarded offshore by high tech Japanese military to maintain US quarantine from the rest of the world. There are hint that the bombing was done by third world country or countries fed up with US over consumption of world resources and its imperialism.

Book 2, The Gold Coast depicts an Orange County resulting from unfettered growth that has totally consumed and devastated any open space with housing developments and malls. Life is driven by frantic hedonism and consumerism.

Book 3, Pacific Edge depicts an Orange County that embraced a Green perspective in time to scale back and create a more balanced co-existence with nature, an attempt at Utopia.

Their relationship as companion pieces (a triptych) view of alternative futures for California rather than a series per se, was clear. However, their reading dates were too spread out to appreciate some of the more subtle structural and thematic linkages.

Listened to the individual Audible versions: Books 1-3 of the Three California Triptych ( )