Customer Reviews

Fifty Degrees Below (Science in the Capital Trilogy)

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

This is the second book in a trilogy, or perhaps the second part of a three book novel. (More on that later.) It works better for me than the first installment (Forty Signs Of Rain) because it is a lot more focused.

Where the first book followed a bunch of mostly-separated stories about a bunch of mostly-separated characters, this one concentrates on a single character, Frank Vanderwal. Some of the other characters from the first book are also covered in a secondary way, but Frank is the center of the story. (Leo is completely absent. Charlie and Anna are sometimes used as viewpoint characters, but quite sparingly.)

Some of the author's longtime fascination with Tibet shows up in a secondary storyline, but the major plot thread details Frank's attempt to live homeless in the middle of Washington DC as a "modern forest primate". This is complicated by a severe winter that is brought on by global climate change. It is contrasted by an examination of what happens when the zoo animals that were released during the flood of the previous book end up "going feral" and trying to survive in the now-wrecked Washington city parks.

Frank is also the focus of domestic surveillance operations, and Robinson presents an image (which is quite possibly true) of a society where domestic high tech spying is rampant and extends even to people who live "off grid" as much as possible. (The headlines in US papers this week are about the NSA performing illegal domestic spying, so perhaps this was a timely subject for fiction!)

He also discusses the idea of letting science replace politics as a method for keeping society running. Those familiar with Robinson's other works will recognize this idea. He likes to come up with new systems of economics and government, which he then uses as the background for a story about his characters. Many of these focus on "market failures" in the current capitalism/democracy system that is in place in the West. Climate change is a well-known market failure scenario, and fits in well with Robinson's political interests.

In the book, Charlie's boss Phil Chase decides to run for president against the unnamed but very Bush-like Republican incumbent. This is a small story in the book, but it is thematically important to the idea that "business as usual" just isn't working.

Frank also finds himself somewhat torn between a possible romantic involvement with his boss, Diane, and an on-going relationship with the mysterious woman he met while stuck in an elevator at the end of the first book.

The bottom line is that this book reads better than the first one. It has a focus, a more definite storyline, and a better feeling of completeness -- even though it is obviously not a complete novel.

Which brings me back to a complaint about this series and several other recent fiction series that I have read. When did it go out of fashion to publish complete novels? More and more it seems that novels have grown to the point that partial novels are being released as "parts of a series". That has its place in some stories, but in most of them (as in this one) it breaks up the story too much and weakens it overall. I think this "series" would have better if it had been a more tightly composed single book, about two thirds the length of the total trilogy.

Just as Federico Garcia Lorca might be said to be a novelist of magic realism, so too, I would argue that Kim Stanley Robinson has established a new novelistic genre: bureaucratic realism.

The problem with this is that bureaucratic realism is as deadly dull in fiction as it is in real life.

If you cherish reading about the lives of people who spend most of their time in committees, worrying about committee politics, and alternate that with episodes of imagining themselves in the jungle as "paleolithic man," (Frank, the protagonist)... you're a more bored person than I.

Combine that with an incorrigible urge to promulgate the kind of '80's REI-camping-gear yuppie old-school health-nut chest-thumping that veers awfully close, awfully too often, to turning into Advertising for New Age Healthy Life Goodies, along with Frank's consummate urge to combine his self-important delusions about leading the paleolithic life with slumming among a cleaned-up, yuppified version of homeless street people (they're smart! they play chess! they play Frisbie! they're formerly Vietnam Vets so they're also heroes! the 21st-century Noble Savage Writ Large, indeed), and you have a novel that is barely tolerable to read without the strong urge to throw it into the gas-log fireplace. In the middle of summer.

There are a few moments of interesting speculation on actual global warming science, and a few moments of intended disaster-movie scenario painting. There is even a spy-vs.-spy chase scene, as if, along with all his hopelessly naive aspirations, the author is thinking this novel might make a good movie.

However, I had to force myself to complete this thing, and I'm sympathetic to KSR's causes, point of view, yuppie scientist Starbucks klatch clique, fascination with the actual processes of science, and so on. How sad.

I would rate this novel 5 stars on the scale of Most Likely to Infuriate Irrational Hillary-Clinton-Hating Rednecks, ahead of Hillary herself, actually. That is its main value as a work of literature, unfortunately.

I'm girding my loins to read the last of the trilogy, since I'm a completist; I hope it takes awhile to get into paperback.

Sigh.....

I'm giving this only three stars, not for the writing, but for the serial nature of the two books so far in this trilogy.

Like the first book, this one has a lot to offer. Rapid climate change continues apace, and Robinson's scientists and politicians grapple with the effects as they work as involved professionals on the problem. Imagining Minnesotan winter temperatures in Washington DC is a powerful way to bring home how climate change could day-to-day life. The characters are touching and human, and their relationships with each other are as important as their relationship with the weather.

But for Pete's sake... the two books published so far aren't novels, they're the first two-thirds of a novel. They're not long enough nor dense enough to be satisfying as individual stories. The Mars trilogy, another trilogy by Robinson which followed a set of characters for three books, covered centuries of events in over two thousand pages; the first two books of this trilogy, by contrast, have the same page count as the last book of the Mars trilogy and span events over roughly a year, and even at that they seem a little padded with a lot of lunches and phone calls and searches for parking spaces. Worst of all, this book ends with another big 'To Be Continued...' placard.

It's praising with faint condemnation when a reader's principal frustration with book is that there isn't more of it, but still, be aware that whatever appetites were aroused by _Forty Signs of Rain_ won't be satisfied here. I remain optimistic about the end of the story, but I sure wish I didn't have to wait another year to read it.

The second book in a trilogy on catastrophic global climate change. '50 Degrees' starts off where '40 Signs ' left off, Washington D.C. and much of the eastern seaboard has emerged from the deluge and clean-up ensues. This book, like its predecessor, is a book about bureaucracy and governmental infighting. Despite the writing on the wall the government and the NSF have a difficult time gaining any sort of traction on changing the status quo and leading the nation into reversing climate change and establishing some sort of carbon sequestration.

The character Frank plays the main protagonist in this book, he emerges from the deluge homeless and decides to go feral much like the Washington DC zoo animals had done during the rain storm. He lives in a tree house and tries to survive in the park even though temperatures are changing drastically after the thermohaline stall of the Gulf Stream. Much as the book suggests, temperatures reach 50 degrees below and many cities are woefully unprepared for it.

Much like the first book, this one spends the first 2/3rds taking us through the bureaucratic infighting between DoD and DoE versus the NSF and EPA amongst others. The last third involves the response to temperature change and the mini ice-age that looks imminent after the West Antarctic ice-shelf begins to separate. Along with this, Robinson tangentially discusses a secret governmental conspiracy to steal elections (a la Diebold) & warantless spying on Americans. This book is sure to make conservatives cringe and could be the anti 'State of Fear' Michael Chricton screed.

It's a fine book & Robinson is a very talented writer, I just wish he would focus less on the Tibetan obsession and stick to the weather. A good book, I plan on reading the final novel, but I think it could have been much better featuring more of the weather / governmental conspiracy angle.

This is the second in a proposed trilogy about abrupt climate change triggered by the melting of the polar caps and stalling of the gulfsteam. It is better than the first book in the series, in my opinion, because it follows one character, Frank VanderWal, to a greater extent. There are unrealistic, but nevertheless entertaining plot developments with Frank: hanging with homeless guys in a park (where he builds a treehouse), running with frisbee golf players regularly, running with his work colleagues at NSF over lunch (8-minute mile pace, talking shop the whole way), working out with his boss in the mornings at a work-out facility, rock-climbing with friends, volunteering with zoo friends to track and re-capture the animals released during the flood of the first book, sleeping in his treehouse or Odyssey van, and developing a relationship with a mystery woman who is stalked by her estranged/controlling/spy type of a husband. Not much time left for work. Mr. Robinson is obviously an athletically-oriented guy; if I wasn't also inclined in this way I would find this character almost too unrealistic to enjoy. But I ultimately liked the homeless and frisbee character plot add-ons so I overlooked the fact that Frank had about no time to do any of the *important work* he needed to be doing. Having said that, I like the information you get about global warming and about possible interventions. And there is a very interesting attempt to engage science in politics to a greater extent. The author states that President Nixon was responsible for pushing Science further to the periphery as an aid in policy decision-making. The Buddhist side story is interesting if you are attracted to Buddhist philosophy, but so far it is tangential to the main story. Mr. Robinson also re-vsiits the Prisoner's Dilemma, a social game theory that states that 'always defect' (compete against your neighbor) is the best strategy. He proposes that 'always generous' may actually be best under certain circumstances. One hopes this is true for the good of our longevity as planet stewards... A good, intellectully stimulating read; I guess we will see if it becomes prophetic or not. Great effort Mr. Robinson.

I slogged through all 400-odd of its pages, waiting for something, anything to happen -- and it never does! The book has no climax; it doesn't end, it simply stops. I loved Robinson's MARS trilogy, and I tolerated FORTY SIGNS OF RAIN, but here Robinson's technocratic bent has completely overwhelmed his novelist's sensibilities. This is the most boring novel I have ever read. It narrative consists entirely of the mundane life of protagonist Frank Vanderwaal, a bureaucrat at the National Science Foundation, and a minor character from the first book. And mundane it is -- workouts, committee meetings, fantasizing about a nameless mystery women. Frank was renderend homeless by a Katrina-like flood in Washington, DC and lives in a treehouse he builds in Rock Creek Park. Frank'a life is so stunted, so repetitive, I wondered if KSR was trying to depict someone with autism. But in the end I don't think so. I think he approves of Frank's sad, vagabond life.

Some authors would try to present the threat of global warming by setting part of the story in the thick of the action -- at the melting polar ice caps, perhaps. Not Robinson. This has to be the least cinematic book ever. For KSR, bureaucracy is where it's at. If this is what it's going to take to save us from global warming -- endless series of committee meetings -- then we're doomed, I tell you. Frankly, freezing to death because the Gulf Stream stalls sounds more exciting than this book.

If there is a subject that is capable of capturing the imagination these days, it's the impact of global warming on the climate, landscape and people. That is the premise of the second installment of a global warming trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson. Unfortunately, the author chose to tell this story from the perspective of bureaucrat/scientist Frank Vanderwal, who can best be described as a human yawn. With the world climate falling apart around him, Frank sets an alarm for 5 pm as a reminder to avoid working late, lest he put in overtime solving the global warming crisis. He also spends an extraordinary amount of time thinking about his (completely boring) love life instead of work. The plot goes virtually nowhere for the first two-thirds of the overly-long book, with dozens of pages often going by that contribute absolutely nothing to the story or character development. All in all, this book was a disappointment to me.

In the second installment of this trilogy, in flood ravaged Washington D.C. the scientists across the river at NSF are working overtime trying to find solutions to the ominous challenge presented by rapid climate change. The main character, Frank, unhappy with the status quo, is forced to juggle the task of controlling global warming, living in DC without a home, and of course there's the mystery woman from the elevator.

Although often breezy and oversimplified, I greatly enjoyed the science writing. The dialogue and brainstorming sessions between NSF scientists were entertaining. The tedium of bureaucracy and the excitement of scientific discovery are successfully brought to life in a manner that was fun to read.

Spread throughout the book in short anecdotes and comments are several political diatribes which I found pretty boring and thoughtless. Since a couple of the characters are explicitly involved in politics, the senator Phil Chase and his assistant Charlie, these comments were consistent with the direction of the book. However, they detracted somewhat from my enjoyment of the story.

I predict that the chessman character will turn out to be a trouble maker, the mystery girl from the elevator will be needed to save the world, and of course that the scientists will triumph in the end.

There are some perils in writing such a near-term speculative book when one takes the long-view of critical appraisal (as we try to do). The problem: reality is very quickly going to outstrip its relevance. For all that this book may be worthwhile reading to a lot of different people in the next 5 or even 10 years, it is not artistic to the point where readers will return to these novels decades after many of these issues have been resolved one way or the other. (Michael Flynn's gorgeous book on space exploration, Firestar, has the same problem.) To combat that, near-term books need to exude an immediacy and power and, very simply, that power is lacking in Fifty Degrees. Is it interesting: yes. Is it relevant: yes. It's going to make the rounds, many people will talk about it, other people will proffer its ideas in conversation at cocktail parties as if it's their own (a high form of flattery). Yet its life will be brief, necessarily so. People will go back and read science that's out-of-date: as they do with some Asimov, Wells, and Lewis' Space Trilogy. We don't see any particular draw in these novels for people to do that.

WHO SHOULD READ:

A whole host of people will really enjoy this book. Robinson fans who have enjoyed the Martian Trilogy, The Years of Rice and Salt, and Fort Signs of Rain will eagerly buy and deeply appreciate. We encourage them to do so. Readers of a more Capitalist bent, like us, will actually enjoy this novel more since the politics are ratcheted back a bit and makes the whole thing a bit more compelling. There is a mainstream audience which doesn't often venture over to this side of the bookstore who will also enjoy this book: people who are concerned about climate change, students in the sciences, and amateurs who read non-fiction by Jared Diamond (Guns, Germs, and Steel and Collapse) will also find these novels highly engaging.

WHO SHOULD PASS:

People deeply immersed in the politics and the science of these issues is probably-and counter intuitively-going to be annoyed by this book. It is not enough of a polemic to satisfy many of these people and the science is not rendered so complete and visceral to satisfy that camp either. These are novels made for a much more mainstream audience and we suppose many elements more on the fringe might even accuse Robinson of selling out. There are also a large number of science-fiction fans who want to read books in this genre for the fiction in the science; near-term novels of any scope probably annoy them in general and this novel will annoy them even more due to the near-term political nature of the novel. These people should be steered towards the Martian trilogy but away from this Climate Change trilogy.

READ THE ENTIRE REVIEW AT INCHOATUS.COM

I have gone back and forth on this review because I'm just not sure how I feel about this book. In "Forty Signs of Rain", I gave Robinson a lot of leeway in the slow progression of that novel. I believed that I understood what he was trying to say: That we are all going about our lives, almost blithely, as the effects of global warming start to catch up with us. That book flipped between the academic struggles to address global warming and the day-to-day realities of domestic life. Finally in the end, the gathered clouds unleash and we are off and running...

...And then in "Fifty Degrees Below" Robinson switches character emphasis and presents a new slow progression. There have been significant weather related events, but these are told as back-story--we do not get to go through them with the characters. But something is coming, and there are ominous portends in Siberia, tornadoes along the east coast of Canada, excessive rain in California, and drought just about everywhere else. Washington D.C. has been remade by an almost biblical flood, and most of the story takes place there. While the federal government does practically nothing to restore Washington D.C., Robinson's central character begins to adapt to the new reality, discovering primal urges within him that force him to cope. This is interesting characterization, but still small in the world of things.

The book just plods along. Winter in Washington D.C. gets really bad, but people manage to survive. The central character's efforts to help, both scientifically and culturally, are noble but seem like too little, too late--too small. And perhaps this is what Robinson is trying to say; if so I give him credit, but the vehicle for his message could still be more compelling. Suspending disbelief is difficult in a story in which the government won't even move to restore the nation's capitol (New Orleans?). And Robinson takes a lot of jibes at the Right (deservedly so), as if he were as disgusted as many of us by events since the 2004 election and felt compelled to air them out in this story.

So I believe, if I am interpreting Robinson's message correctly, that he is making some significant, profound observations about our fate as a species and as individuals, but the story moves along so slowly that I know many will not finish it. So how to rate this book? I'm just not sure.