PhilPaine.com

Kim Stan­ley Robin­son is always read­able, though the nar­ra­tive often stops dead so that the read­er can be sup­plied with large quan­ti­ties of sci­en­tific, his­tor­i­cal, or polit­i­cal infor­ma­tion. It’s to Robinson’s cred­it that he can pull off these dis­qui­si­tions with­out los­ing the read­er. But it makes his nov­els a bit emo­tion­ally cool. This is Robinson’s Glob­al Warm­ing nov­el. It begins, inter­est­ingly, with the city of Wash­ing­ton rav­aged by a dev­as­tat­ing flood. The descrip­tion of the clum­sy and inad­e­quate response is won­der­fully pre­scient — the book was released only months before the New Orleans flood, and must have been writ­ten in 2004. The book didn’t strike ter­ror into my heart, as was intend­ed, since the sci­ence fic­tional premise is that the Unit­ed States is sud­denly forced to have Canada’s cli­mate. I’ve been out­doors in fifty-below zero weath­er numer­ous times, and, while a brac­ing expe­ri­ence, the phrase “fifty below” doesn’t have quite the same scare val­ue for me that it does for a Californian.