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Green Earth (The Science in the Capital) (2015)

di Kim Stanley Robinson

Serie: Science in the Capital (omnibus with updates)

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1816149,460 (3.85)6
"The landmark trilogy of cutting-edge science, international politics, and the real-life ramifications of climate change--updated and abridged into a single novel. More than a decade ago, bestselling author Kim Stanley Robinson began a groundbreaking series of near-future eco-thrillers--Forty Signs of Rain, Fifty Degrees Below, and Sixty Days and Counting--that grew increasingly urgent and vital as global warming continued unchecked. Now, condensed into one volume and updated with the latest research, this sweeping trilogy gains new life as Green Earth, a chillingly realistic novel that plunges readers into great floods, a modern Ice Age, and the political fight for all our lives. The Arctic ice pack averaged thirty feet thick in midwinter when it was first measured in the 1950s. By the end of the century it was down to fifteen. One August the ice broke. The next year the breakup started in July. The third year it began in May. That was last year. It's a muggy summer in Washington, D.C., as Senate environmental staffer Charlie Quibler and his scientist wife, Anna, work to call attention to the growing crisis of global warming. But as they fight to align the extraordinary march of modern technology with the awesome forces of nature, fate puts an unusual twist on their efforts--one that will pit science against politics in the heart of the coming storm. Praise for the Science in the Capital trilogy. "Perhaps it's no coincidence that one of our most visionary hard sci-fi writers is also a profoundly good nature writer--all the better to tell us what it is we have to lose."--Los Angeles Times. "An unforgettable demonstration of what can go wrong when an ecological balance is upset."--The New York Times Book Review. "Absorbing and convincing."--Nature"-- "For the first time, the entire Science in the Capitol trilogy (Forty Signs of Rain, Fifty Degrees Below, and Sixty Days and Counting) is available in a single trade paperback, abridged and updated, with a new introduction by the author"--… (altro)
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I liked this massive tome a lot, and even though Kim Stanley Robinson is a hopeful writer and the book ended on a hopeful note, this still left me sad. I knew going into this book, that it would probably have this effect on me, because this book is about climate change in contemporary times. Its actually a little bit earlier, probably takes place in the late 2000s - early 2010s. What is depressing to me about it is that in this version of the US, we actually have politicians who have the will and means to do something about climate change, unlike in our country at the moment. The characters in this book are not afraid to challenge the status quo, they are not afraid to try big things to combat the effects of man-made climate change from putting too much carbon into the atmosphere. Just earlier this week, there were headlines about how the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation current could collapse as early as 2025, but more likely over the next 75 years. This happens because too much less dense freshwater is melting from Greenland, causing the more dense saltwater to sink. This will have broader impacts on the climate, making northern Europe's climate much closer to that of Canada's, drying out and heating up Northern Africa even more, and doing the same with the American midwest. This will make growing adequate amounts of food even harder. Well, in this novel, to combat this, they come up with a plan to salinate the freshwater, pumping millions of tons of salt into the ocean to match the density of the saltwater already there. Many countries work together on this problem, and are willing to share in the costs because they understand that not taking action is going to be more expensive than taking action, even if it was risky. So it was particularly depressing to see this headline this week, after reading about how it could have been handled in this novel. There's also a few subplots in this book about Buddhism and acceptance of things changing, but also about multiple black ops government agencies who are basically operating without much oversight and how they are spying on citizens and operating a futures market based on who they think has the most social capital to change society. It was very strange and didn't mesh as well with the overall story about climate change, but was an important look at what our government and society have grown into. In that aspect, this book was more about current times (or slightly before now), and provided a sort of blue-print of how we can overcome the current problems by having a strong vision and not being afraid to experiment and using the government as a force for good. I found it depressing because I know we will never have that in this country. There were a lot of good ideas here, some that I would like to revisit later, but I don't know if I would ever read the whole thing again. It was originally a trilogy of novels, but they were edited together to create one novel about a decade after they were first published. It wasn't heavily plot driven and ambled about a lot, and that was okay, because its more like true life, but I could see how this would be a struggle for many people to get through. ( )
  quickmind | Jul 29, 2023 |
review of
Kim Stanley Robinson's Green Earth
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - August 6-15, 2019

For the complete review go here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/1135644-kim-stanley-robinson?chapter=1

In addition to thousands of bks neatly placed on shelves in my personal library I have large piles of bks elsewhere in my house awaiting some sort of processing. There's a very large literature new arrivals section, a much smaller one for SF, a smaller one for crime fiction, an even smaller one for poetry, the smallest of all for plays, multiple large piles for miscellaneous, & then small piles on my bed for read-soon. Maybe more than 500 bks just in these piles. Kim Stanley Robinson's Green Earth was in the SF pile, the largest of all the SF bks &, as such, the one least likely to be read any time soon. & then I decided to read it anyway. I'm glad I did. Perhaps ironically b/c, as the author explains in his Introduction: "my original idea had been to write a realist novel as if it were science fiction" (p xii). In other words, I picked it to read off my SF piles & it turned out to not quite be SF despite its author having already written another massive SF bk called Red Mars.

Originally, this had been a trilogy, even larger than Green Earth's 1069 pp. I wd've been fine w/ reading the original immensity but the author decided to edit it:

"So with those above considerations in mind, I went through my text and cut various extraneous details, along with any excess verbiage I could find (and I could). Inspired by Matthiessen, who compared his middle volume to a dachsund's belly, and shortened his original 1,500 pages to 900, I compressed about 1,100 pages to about 800. Nothing important was lost in this squishing, and the new version has a better flow, as far as I can tell. Also, crucially, it now fits into this one volume, and is thereby better revealed for what it was all along, which is a single novel." - pp xii-xiii

Well, in the print version herein reviewed, that "800" pages manifests itself as almost 1,100 pp & it still "fits" & is still "a single novel". Is there an upper limit to how many pages one volume can hold? The Complete Works Lewis Carroll (Vintage Books) is a one volume 1,294 pp paperback from 43 yrs ago & it still hasn't fallen apart yet. Joseph McEllroy's Women and Men (Dalkey Archive) is a one volume 1,192 pp paperback from 26 yrs ago & it's still holding together fine too. I cd name many other examples but I'll restrict myself to one more 'classic': Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace (Penguin Books) wch is a one volume 1,444 pp paperback from 35 yrs ago that's still holding together. I've read them all. Where do I find the time?!

"It's a story about many things: climate change, science administration and politics, Buddhism, biotechnology and investment capital, homelessness, sociobiology, surveillance, life in Washington D.C., life in a treehouse, life with a fractious toddler. A kitchen sink makes an appearance. With that much thrown in, it should not be surprising that the story "predicted" quite a few things that have since come to pass; near-future science fiction always does that.

"Still, working on this version I was startled pretty often by such pseudo-predictions. That the storm that wrecks the East Coast was named Sandy is strange enough to be one of J. W. Dunne's examples of precognition in An Experiment With Time—in other words, a coincidence, but quite a coincidence." - p xiii

J. W. Dunne's An Experiment With Time & José M. R. Delgado's Physical Control of the Mind are 2 bks I've had on my 'too-read' list for over 40 yrs now. I still haven't read them. Seeing the Dunne mentioned in Green Earth reminds me of how much more there is for me to read before I die.

"Most disturbing, perhaps, is the way the National Security Agency's recently revealed surveillance program has confirmed and even trumped this book's spy plot. There were signs when I was writing that this kind of thing was going on, but I thought I was exaggerating it for satiric effect. Not at all. You are a person of interest, your calls are recorded, and computer programs are rating your potential danger to the system. And elections? Cross your fingers!" - p xiv

This combined edition is from 2015. The 1st section of it is from 2005. That makes Robinson at least 25 yrs behind the times as far as NSA surveillance reality is concerned. In Covert Action Information Bulletin Number 11, December, 1980, there's an article entitled "Big Brother 1980: The National Security Agency: The Biggest Eavesdropper of Them All - A CAIB Interview" Introduction by Stewart Klepper. The opening paragraph for this article states:

"Imagine this. It is 1984, and the government annouces that henceforth, because of foreign threats and growing terrorism, no sealed mail will be delivered. All mail will be scanned by computer, based primarily on the address and return address, and any mail to or from potential security risks will be read and copied. Shocking? Yet this situation already exists for almost all telegrams and phone calls coming into or going out of the U.S. The main difference is that this policy has never been announced; it was, for may years, one of the better kept secrets of our intelligence community." - CAIB 11, Dec, 1980, p 35

The article is 9pp. It goes into substantial detail. It was written 39 yrs ago. Imagine how sophisticated surveillance has become since then.

I don't have much of an opinion about Global Warming. Since belief in Global Warming is an unwritten law requirement for acceptance as a 'liberal/left-winger' & since I find any 'peer pressure' annoying, I reserve having an opinion on the subject until I feel like I'm truly knowledgable on it — wch I'm not likely to ever be. I can say that I read Michael Crichton's State of Fear, a bk that ridicules belief in Global Warming, & found it repulsively unconvincing (see my review: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15860.State_of_Fear ). Now I've read Green Earth, wch makes a strong case for believing in Global Warming, & found it very intelligent & convincing.

"The Earth is bathed in a flood of sunlight. A fierce inundation of photons—on average, 342 joules per second per square meter. 4185 joules (one Calorie) will raise the temperature of one kilogram of water by one degree C. If all this energy were captured by the Earth's atmosphere, its temperature would rise by ten degrees C in one day.

"Luckily much of it radiates back to space. How much depends on albedo and the chemical composition of the atmosphere, both of which vary over time.

"A good portion of Earth's albedo, or reflectivity, is created by its polar ice caps. If polar ice and snow were to shrink significantly, more solar energy would stay on Earth. Sunlight would penetrate oceans previously covered by ice, and warm the water. This would add heat and melt more ice, in a positive feedback loop.
" - p 3

A contingent of Buddhists moves near a contigent of scientists.

""Yes," Anna said. "I saw your arrival ceremony, and I was wondering where you all come from."

""Thank you for your interest," the youth said politely, ducking his head and smiling. "We are from Khembalung."

""Yes, but . . ."

""Ah. Our country is an island nation, in the Bay of Bengal, near the mouth of the Ganges."

""I see," Anna said, surprised; she had thought they would be from somewhere in the Himalayas. "I hadn't heard of it."

""It is not a big island. Nation status has been a recent development, you could say. Only now are we establishing a representation."

""Good idea. Although, to tell the truth, I'm surprised to see an embassy in here. I didn't think of this as being the right kind of space."

""We chose it very carefully," the young monk said." - p 8

"He got up stiffly. It was midafternoon already. If he left soon he would be able to hack through the traffic out to Great Falls. By then the day's heat would have subsided, and the gorge walls would be nearly empty. He could climb till sunset, and do some more thinking about this algorithm, in the only place in the D.C. area left with a touch of nature to it." - p 18

One of the reasons why I find Green Earth so convincing as an ecological narative is b/c I grew up in Baltimore, a mere 10 hr jog from the small town where I lived from ages 3 to 22 to the Great Falls Park wch I don't recall ever hearing of until I read this bk — & Robinson's descriptions of the environment are so familiar that I can immediately relate. Can't you just imagine my firm fit body in tight spandex running gear covered w/ ads for the products that've made it so that a 10 hr jog doesn't even make me out of breath? Can't you imagine that spandex tight around my erect.. Oh, well, what I'm getting at here is that I hope to meet you, woman review reader, at Great Falls Park someday soon where we'll fall madly in love w/ each other even though I don't really, uh, match the description I've just written.

"At Great Falls, the Potomac River builds up speed and force as it falls over a series of steep, jagged rocks and flows through the narrow Mather Gorge. The Patowmack Canal offers a glimpse into the early history of this country. Great Falls Park has many opportunities to explore history and nature, all in a beautiful 800-acre park only 15 miles from the Nation's Capital." - https://www.nps.gov/grfa/index.htm

What can I say? (As my firned Lizard always sd) It's not just the environment being so familiar, it's things like the following:

"The invention of set theory, and the finessing of the various paradoxes engendered by considering sets as members of themselves. The discovery of the incompletability of all systems." - p 19

Ok, that's where I live (not really). I've written a math humor bk called Paradigm Shift Knuckle Sandwich & other examples of P.N.T. (Perverse Number Theory). There're movies of me reading from it online:

484. "Is this a Black Theorem?"
- shot at tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE's launch of his book entitled "Paradigm Shift Knuckle Sandwich & other examples of P.N.T. (Perverse Number Theory)" at the Glitter Box Theater in Pittsburgh on April 1, 2017E.V.
- shot using 2 mini-dv camcorders & 1 iJones
- edit finished April 10, 2017E.V.
- 1700X1275 (4/3)
- 1:01:38
- on my onesownthoughts YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/gw48jIh0oS4

480. ""Paradigm Shift Knuckle Sandwich" Reading at Té Café"
- tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE reading from his 'pataphysics / math / humor / cognitive dissidence book at the Open Poetry/Prose Mic night on Wednesday, March 8, 2017
- landscape camcorder: Jonathan Wayne, portrait camcorder: Marc V. Rock-Steady
- 9:41
- 1700X1275 (4/3)
- edit finished March 10, 2017
- on my onesownthoughts YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/pWiuslygsWo

If you're a Moslem, forget about facing Mecca X-number of times a day to pray to Allah. Read my math bk instead. If you have to learn English to do it, so be it. If you feel motivated to translate it into Arabic or any other language please just do a good job. There are some subtle ideas in there that it's very important be understood w/ utter clarity. You owe it to the memory of Avicenna.

My point is, set theory is extremely important to me, so are Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems — even though I admit to having not even an amateur mathematician's understanding of them. Just read my bk, you don't have to understand that either.

Robinson's not exaggerating when he states that "It's a story about many things: climate change, science administration and politics, Buddhism, biotechnology and investment capital, homelessness, scoiobiology, surveillance, life in Washington D.C., life in a treehouse, life with a fractious toddler". If you're not interested in one or more of those topics, never fear, Robinson's writing about the rest of them is wonderful.

"Indeed, one method of inserting the altered DNA into the body was to put it into a virus and give the patient a viral infection, benign in its ultimate effects because the altered DNA reached its target. But since the body fought viral infections, it was not a good solution. You didn't want to compromise further the immune systems of people who were already sick.

"So, for a long time now they had been the same as everyone else chasing the holy grail of gene therapy, a "targeted nonviral delivery system."" - p 26

Or, at least, that's what they were doing before I came along & convinced them that Herpes was the best medium & that my penis was the best insertion device. The drawback being that I only came to the assistance of women I found attractive. Sorry, guys, but as I like to say: "I hate women.. but I hate men even more."

Not only can I feel deeply connected to this story b/c the environment described is a very familiar one, b/c the mathematics are important to me — but also b/c Robinson mentioned Second Story Books fairly often. I worked for Second Story from 1984 to 1988. Of course, if Robinson had been really on top of the crème de la crème he wd've had to fit NORMAL'S in there somewhere. NORMAL'S is the bkstore I cofounded 1989 w/ other ex-Second Story people.

"He stopped in at Second Story Books, the biggest and best of the area's several used bookstores. It was a matter of habit only; he had visited it so often with Joe asleep on his back that he had memorized the stock, and was reduced to checking the hidden books in the inner rows, or alphabetizing sections that he liked. No one in the supremely arrogant and slovenly shop cared what he did there. It was soothing in that sense." - p 43

For the complete review go here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/1135644-kim-stanley-robinson?chapter=1 ( )
  tENTATIVELY | Apr 3, 2022 |
Great? Good? It was a fun read with some truly insightful moments, but it got long and a little too pat. Read New York 2140 instead ( )
  Venarain | Jan 10, 2022 |
I read this 1100 page book mostly on my phone. ( )
  lightkensei | May 17, 2020 |
Please read the full 2583 word analysis on Weighing A Pig...

Green Earth is a revised version of The Science In The Capital-trilogy, a near future series on climate change, American politics and science. The original trilogy consists of Forty Signs Of Rain (2004), Fifty Degrees Below (2005) and Sixty Days And Counting (2007). They were meant to be one long novel all along. In movies, most director’s cuts are longer, but not here so… Robinson cut about 300 pages, still leaving Green Earth to be a mammoth of 1069 pages. It’s unclear how much updating took place, if any – there’s about a decade of extra research and data on climate change since the first volume was published, and it’s not unthinkable that KSR tinkered a bit with some of the data in the original books too.

You can read the 6 page introduction of the book on io9. It is an excellent text by KSR himself on the reasons for this revision, and he tackles some other interesting topics too. His take on the ethics of contemporary literature & science fiction is bold, and rings very true to these ears.

Also, my original idea had been to write a realist novel as if it were science fiction. This approach struck me as funny, and also appropriate, because these days we live in a big science fiction novel we are all writing together. If you want to write a novel about our world now, you’d better write science fiction, or you will be doing some kind of inadvertent nostalgia piece; you will lack depth, miss the point, and remain confused.

I’ll start with some remarks about the book in general, and afterwards zoom in a bit on the 3 parts. I should probably mention that I made about 7 times as many notes while reading as I do for most reviews, and some of that is surely on behalf of the 1000+ page count, but still. Green Earth is an extremely rich book, and this review should have been at least twice as long to do justice to the scope of its ideas: I’ll leave a lot unsaid. So, don’t forget to read the book too!

(...) ( )
1 vota bormgans | Apr 13, 2016 |
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"The landmark trilogy of cutting-edge science, international politics, and the real-life ramifications of climate change--updated and abridged into a single novel. More than a decade ago, bestselling author Kim Stanley Robinson began a groundbreaking series of near-future eco-thrillers--Forty Signs of Rain, Fifty Degrees Below, and Sixty Days and Counting--that grew increasingly urgent and vital as global warming continued unchecked. Now, condensed into one volume and updated with the latest research, this sweeping trilogy gains new life as Green Earth, a chillingly realistic novel that plunges readers into great floods, a modern Ice Age, and the political fight for all our lives. The Arctic ice pack averaged thirty feet thick in midwinter when it was first measured in the 1950s. By the end of the century it was down to fifteen. One August the ice broke. The next year the breakup started in July. The third year it began in May. That was last year. It's a muggy summer in Washington, D.C., as Senate environmental staffer Charlie Quibler and his scientist wife, Anna, work to call attention to the growing crisis of global warming. But as they fight to align the extraordinary march of modern technology with the awesome forces of nature, fate puts an unusual twist on their efforts--one that will pit science against politics in the heart of the coming storm. Praise for the Science in the Capital trilogy. "Perhaps it's no coincidence that one of our most visionary hard sci-fi writers is also a profoundly good nature writer--all the better to tell us what it is we have to lose."--Los Angeles Times. "An unforgettable demonstration of what can go wrong when an ecological balance is upset."--The New York Times Book Review. "Absorbing and convincing."--Nature"-- "For the first time, the entire Science in the Capitol trilogy (Forty Signs of Rain, Fifty Degrees Below, and Sixty Days and Counting) is available in a single trade paperback, abridged and updated, with a new introduction by the author"--

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