Antarctica [Import] [Paperback]

Kim Stanley Robinson (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 420 pages
• Publisher: Bantam Books; New Ed edition (1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0002253933
• ISBN-13: 978-0002253932
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.1 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (74 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,285,317 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Kim Stanley Robinson is a winner of the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Awards. He is the author of eleven previous books, including the bestselling Mars trilogy and the critically acclaimed Fifty Degrees Below, Forty Signs of Rain, The Years of Rice and Salt, and Antarctica--for which he was sent to the Antarctic by the U.S. National Science Foundation as part of their Antarctic Artists and Writers' Program. He lives in Davis, California.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Different planet familiar story still enjoyable, April 26, 2002

By 

Michael Battaglia - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Antarctica (Mass Market Paperback)

After his Mars trilogy, just about anything Kim Stanley Robinson was going to do was highly anticipated. The worst thing he could have done was try and repeat his earlier trilogy just in a different setting. To his credit, he did try something different here, but not different enough at times to really make the book come alive. Don't get me wrong, it's a beautifully written and passionate book . . . in the acknowledgements Robinson mentions that he spent several months on the continent and the staggering amount of research shows . . . even if you've never been to Antarctica this book will make you feel like you have. Every mountain every cold gust of wind every pure blue sky is described beautifully here and that love of the land comes through both in the writing itself and the characters. The story, however, feels like a slight retread of the Mars trilogy, with the underlying conflict being whether to keep the land pure and unsullied or to exploit it as best we're able. To this end several plots spin around showing the different aspects, from the tentative oil drilling to the political angles to the scientific and the people just visiting. This crosssectioning almost defeats the book because with so many characters and views you don't get to know the characters as well as you did in the trilogy, only in several moments do they really come alive to the reader and the sparks start to fly. So the book functions mostly like a travelogue, albeit a wonderfully written one and the passion here just about makes up for the plot, but there are times when you'll sit back and wonder if the book is missing something important. The tension that drove the Mars trilogy is absent here, either because the setting isn't as futuristic or simply because he's trying to do more with less . . . but in the end it's entertaining and even a slight book by Robinson is miles better than anyone's best at this point. Don't expect to get as excited by it as his earlier books have done for you, but pick it up anyway. The pleasures it offers may not be new, but they're pleasurable nonetheless.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An entertaining portrait of a remote place and its people, August 5, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Antarctica (Hardcover)

This book is less a story taking place on and more of a portrait of Antarctica in the future, and the people who are so enthralled by the place that their passion for the continent, its history, and their vision of their place in it comes across on every page. Cleverly mixing the continent's short history with the book's current characters and issues, Robinson has added immensly to the growing literature, both fiction and non-fiction, about Antarctica. THe story however, is less important than the setting and the characters, and this is the book's flaw. It makes the book seem a bit long at times, though just when our interest is waning, something dramatic happens, or we become absorbed in adventures of past Antarctic explorers such as Shackleton, Amundsen, or SCott.The authors descriptions of the people and the place are undoubtedly its strong point. An enjoyable read. Also recommended is Elizabeth Arthur's Antarctic Navigation, a work of fiction on the continent and one woman's obsession with it.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Mars Trilogy redux, June 1, 1998

By 

John McKnight (Scottsdale, AZ) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Antarctica (Hardcover)

I'd been eagerly awaiting Robinson's new book - maybe too much so, admittedly, given the expectations he'd raised with the magnificent Mars Trilogy. But Antarctica is a disappointment: there's about 60 pages of story in the 400-page novel. Characters and situations are watered-down versions of their Mars analogs. Disappointingly, he hasn't advanced his program for economic, social and spiritual reform: I was hoping for something more than was presented in Blue Mars, and got the same, but less. One real strength of the book is his facility with creating tomorrow's future, in describing technology that doesn't quite exist yet, but is perfectly familiar. While passages of his prose are brilliant, in Antarctica his impulse to include every kitchen sink of his research really gets the better of him. Still, he's Robinson, and I don't know of anybody else with as lucid and passionate an opposition to modern capitalism. Antarctica is worth reading, but if you want real brilliance, re-read the Mars Trilogy