New York 2140 by Kim Stanley RobinsonMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
This book has a solid near-future premise. Robinson is ultimately an optimist (more on that later) and comes to this book to portray New York City as the very special place that it (believes it) is, having made a very difficult adjustment to a 50-foot sea level rise. This is happening all around the world but the story consciously sticks to NYC.
Some reviewers have problems with the characterizations but I really didn't. They are not as strong as some KSR books but I found their voices recognizable and reasonable (except maybe for Amelia Black, the ditzy animal activist cloud star. KSR does not have a way to get into the head of this kind of person).
Mostly this book seems to do what so many other SF novels do--set their time at some relatively far future, but project technology and social ideas only a short way ahead. Example: Franklin Garr, one of the main characters, is a high-finance trader. As we speak this job is being automated out of existence. The future already belongs more to the quants than this book says it will 120 years from now.
This really should be New York 2040. Sea level rise might not be 50 feet, but it doesn't need to be to create the disruption described in the book, and the rest of it is not really a stretch for the present day. It never develops real strength in speculation beyond climate, and sort of breaks down into utopianism as it goes along. It starts to ask for people not to behave like people. We like to think this has happened before (say, with the US "founding fathers") but they were much more complex and flawed characters than our heroes here.
In 2312 Robinson avoided that short-range thinking I mention above. His society had truly progressed. This novel is pretty much today, only warmer. His predictions about our future may come true (one can hope), but if they do it's going to be a lot sooner than depicted here.
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