Customer Reviews

Sixty Days and Counting

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For Kim Stanley Robinson fans, like me, who have read ten of his novels, Sixty Days and Counting is a big disappointment. For Robinson himself, the book may be worse than that -- perhaps heralding a career crisis.

Robinson has two main problems. First, he has no new things to say. Second, for what he DOES want to say, the novel is not the best vehicle -- and so Sixty Days is awkward and ineffective.

But first, the good. Robinson is a great writer who combines powerful expressive skills with a passionate and insightful understanding of politics and philosophy. Moreover, he is a meticulous researcher who presents science by lifting the reader up, instead of dumbing the science down.

In addition, Sixty Days presents a detailed and compelling portrait of how a real President should behave, at a time when people are craving such a model. In fact, much of Sixty Days is simply political advice to a future Democratic Presidential administration. It is good advice, and that is perhaps the best that the book has to offer. You normally expect a Robinson book to offer loads of "Gee Whiz!" science, but because climate change has become so much more prominent in the public discussion than it was when this series began, most of what would have been fascinating science is now old hat.

Except for the politics, and without the science, Sixty Days is quite empty. The book might best be seen as a victory lap, or perhaps a "greatest hits" compendium from all his prior work. The first clue that Robinson was more interested in re-hashing prior work than introducing something new came when he started gratuitously recycling major character names like "Frank" and "Spencer" from the Mars series. But it turns out that nearly everything is recycled. We see again an uncontrolled experiment involving genetically modified lichen (as from Red Mars), a sexually loaded look at women's softball (as from Pacific Edge), home-made designer drugs (as from Gold Coast), primitivist living in an urban environment (as from Blue Mars), accounts of the Bardo (as from Rice and Salt), and of course all the themes from Forty Signs and Fifty Degrees, pounded endlessly.

Deemed by Robinson his "Science in the Capital" series, this book might originally have been intended to explore the possibility that the world would be better if scientists took over politics. Sixty Days is the culmination of this fantasy, in which scientists fill the White House, are amply funded, and drive all the key policies. However, a serious look at the potential pros and cons of a scientocracy this book is not.

Missing from Sixty Days is plot. The narratives carefully built in the prior books, such as election fraud and violence emanating from secret government programs, simply murmur in the background of Sixty Days, until suddenly resolved in a few pages (pp. 353-356, don't blink), without much detail about what was actually happening or how it was ended. The book's other conflicts are resolved as easily -- without giving away too much, the boy gets the girl, nobody dies, and everyone lives happily ever after. Robinson appears impatient to get to the movie-like ending, which features scene after scene of teary reconciliation.

Sometimes the passion comes through. What Robinson really wants to talk about is why primitivism is the best way of life, why outdoorsy people are the only completely realized humans, why rock climbing is so interesting, and why Californians should be infinitely more snobby about their state than New Yorkers could ever be about New York. These themes interrupt Sixty Days so frequently, and at such length, that they essentially hijack whatever the book was trying to be.

I would like Robinson to go back to his word processor and give Sixty Days a fair shot, dispensing with the kayaking, backpacking, rock climbing, and feral life. That book would be more like a novel -- but unsatisfying, I suspect, to Robinson. And thus we are left with this question: if Kim Stanley Robinson's main priority is to preach primitivism and impress upon us the virtues of the California landscape and outdoor sports, does he really want to be in the business of writing novels, or is there a better way to communicate this?

Robinson's books have always had strong ecological themes, and this, the final volume of his look at the global warming crisis, is no exception. Unlike so many other books that try and delve in this area, Robinson provides not only a look at what we might expect to happen to our world if our current production and consumption habits don't change, but what we can reasonably do about it.

This is, in fact, the strong point of this work, as Robinson envisions both a group of dedicated scientists who actively try to handle a myriad of different types of technological fixes and a newly elected President who gives far more than lip service to their plans. Many of the things Robinson describes here are both good science and show a good grasp of what is possible in the world of politics when the voting population can actually see and feel the detrimental effects (most of this was detailed in the prior two books). The economic costs of massive programs of this nature (such as pumping huge quantities of seawater into basins and back to the top of the eastern Antarctic) are not ignored, either, though I did feel that expecting a massive shift of dollars from military defense to ecological programs was expecting a little too much.

Unfortunately, the novel that above is wrapped in isn't much of a novel. We are presented with the continuing story of Frank in search of his briefly met mysterious love while still trying to live a feral life inside the city confines, and Charlie and his concerns about his youngest son. The whole incident of the potential election-rigging that formed a prime part of the last book is still here, but muted and almost buried under a somewhat far-fetched attempt to find and root out the super-black intelligence agency responsible for the plan. Now there may be little doubt that there may be intelligence-gathering agencies that have too much unsupervised power, and that current laws do not do enough to safeguard individual's liberties and rights, but Robinson's depiction crosses the line into James Bondian fantasy. Robinson also lets his own political biases show far too much, at one point making an unqualified statement that the people in the current administration are criminals.

The trouble with all of this is there is very little action, and almost no suspense. Frank and Charlie's stories just don't have much emotional grabbing power, so that in the end I felt I was reading more of a treatise (even if a good, well reasoned, and scientifically sound one) than a novel. The other plot threads that were started in the first two books are given conclusions, but almost in a back-handed manner, and with far too much of `everything ends well'. What would have helped this book considerably would have been a look at the world and the political maneuvering from the eyes of Phil Chase, the new President, but we are only given short glimpses of this. By the end of the book, everything just kind of sputters out, leaving me quite disappointed. I expect much better from this author.

--- Reviewed by Patrick Shepherd (hyperpat)

I agree with other reviewers that this is among Robinson's weakest and was quite a disappointment. Plot is weak. I am a big fan, thinking the three California's is his best work and the Mars trilogy is outstanding. But Robinson seems to be paying less attention to the things that placed him on my pedestal -- thoughtful review of possible futures, interesting characters, good hard science, understanding of alternative styles of leadership. I liked the first volume in this trilogy quite a lot -- Frank was not exactly a likable character, but he is an interesting loon, not unlike other academics I have known (I am an academic Economist myself). The second volume was not as good, and this volume was pretty terrible. All of Frank's eccentricities from the first volume (but one -- his like for the outdoors and primitive lifestyle) have disappeared or been trivialized. For example, an injury affects his brain function. He does nothing interesting as a consequence of his injury, then an operation fixes it. This is not the stuff that makes Robinson great.

Instead of crafting this like a literary exercise, objectively pondering the possibilities and lyrically leading the reader onward, this feels like an angry blue-stater releasing his frustrations through abstract wish-fulfillment. I am a very angry blue-stater, but the idea that everything would be better if only the right man were president does nothing to assuage my anger.

Finally, as an economist, I have to say it bothered me that Robinson wrote so extensively and ignorantly about the subject of economics. OK, you may think I am an apologist for capitalism, offended by his epiphany for socialism. No, that would be confusing MBAs with economists. I am offended that a hard-science advocate gets the science of economics wrong in most every detail, taking an ideological stance against a straw-man version of capitalism and an equally ideological stance in favor of socialism. Economics properly taught covers market failure extensively -- reasons why markets systematically can be predicted to be *in*efficient with respect to externalities, and ways that public policy can restore (social) efficiency such as carbon taxes or cap and trade systems. The problem that causes pollution, global warming, and other externalities is not the private ownership of capital -- it is (in some sense) the lack of ownership of commonly consumed biosphere. Not that I am advocating private ownership of the biosphere -- just pointing out that if a good environment could be bought and sold, capitalism would provide us with a great environment. Social ownership of capital, the defining characteristic of socialism, could be used to fix market failures, but when everyone owns something nobody owns it and it is also quite possible (as we have seen in the Soviet Union and China when they were closer to the socialistic pole)that the environment will get worse.

Those of you who read the previous two books in this series will remember that, at the end of the previous book, Fifty Degrees Below, Senator Phil Chase was elected President of the United States. Chase was elected, thanks to the combined efforts of NSF scientist, Frank Vanderwal, his spook girlfriend, Caroline Barr, and a number of Frank's clandestine colleagues around the country -- all of whom joined forces to prevent the right-wingers, including Caroline's (ex?) husband, from yet again stealing the presidency for their own personal gain and evil ends (but the author never clarifies what exactly are the goals of these evil people, I guess he assumes we all are privy to this information, although I certainly am not).

By the time Chase is elected president, it is clear that the planet's climate is going to hell in a handbasket. Not only is the weather in Washington DC wildly unpredictable -- warm one day, freezing the next -- but there are other daily indications that things are not going well, such as widespread housing and food shortages, flooding, drought, loss of biodiversity and numerous other problems. However, there is some reason for optimism: scientists have at least managed to restart the Gulf Stream, for example.

Because Chase was elected President, his principle advisor, Charlie Quibler, must go to work full-time at the White House instead of spending his days yelling advice into his cell phone while running through the city's parks, chasing after his toddler son, Joe -- a proposition that Charlie hates. But he finally does give up his mister mom role by entrusting his precious younger child to the White House daycare staff, and works down the hall from the President himself, helping Chase make key appointments to his cabinet.

One of those choices was appointing NSF head, Diane, to the role of Presidential Science Advisor. Diane, of course, asks Frank and Anna Quibler to join her, but Anna refuses, wisely preferring to stay at the NSF. Frank is suffering from a brain injury that renders him indecisive, and further, he is also in love with Diane, so he accepts her invitation, although he'd rather return to his previous job in California.

The novel mostly focuses on Frank, once again, although why it does, I do not know -- so would it be trite of me to mention at this point that even though he is working at the White House, Frank is still officially homeless? Hello?? Has the author ever heard of Homeland Security? Okay, it's true that Frank often stays with the expat Khembalese on their estate in Maryland instead of in his van or in his treehouse in a downtown park in Washington DC, and that he rarely hangs out with his homeless friends anymore and only tracks escaped zoo animals when he has spare time, instead of every evening as he did in the second book when he was working at NSF. I should also point out that when Frank stays with the Khembalese, he is properly nourished too, instead of living on refuse retrieved from dumpsters throughout the greater Metro area.

Anyway, after this idiosyncratic beginning, the novel rapidly devolves into a silly 500-plus page cat-and-mouse political spy thriller where poor, indecisive Frank is stuck in the middle of two women (neither of them knows about the other, of course), unable to decide who he is really in love with; the powerful, articulate and intelligent Diane, or the nearly invisible and flighty, but occasionally sexually available Caroline? Of course, there is Caroline's (ex?) husband to consider, too. He's the man who gave Frank his little brain injury in the second book by smashing him in the face with a tire iron.

The book occasionally comes up for air from the contrived Frank-Diane-Caroline emotional menage a trois to examine other topics that were introduced in the two previous books, such as the effect that the Khembalese ah, "exorcism" had on Joe's personality. Basically, in the second book, the Khembalese perform a so-called "exorcism" ritual that transforms the toddler from a complete brat into a more affable kid. But his parents, Charlie and Anna, are troubled by this sudden docility, realizing that they prefer their little Joe to be banging innocent playmates on the head with steel dump trucks that are the size of footballs. So by the end of this book, poof, the Quiblers get their wish: the Khembalese undo their hocus-pocus and little Joe is once again happily terrorizing his parents, their friends and all the children within city blocks of where he is located.

Additionally, this book includes a brief but nonetheless unsatisfying glimpse at the so-called "ferals" and homeless people (mostly men, mostly mentally ill) whom Frank spent so much time with in book two, giving me the impression that these people were not very important to Frank (nor to the story, and definitely not to the author). Further, I was especially disappointed with the thoughtlessly casual way that the author dealt "the problem" of the homeless teenager, Chessman: the author hinted that Chessman might have an important role in the development of the story as early as the middle of the second book, since Frank repeatedly wondered about Chessman's mysterious disappearance from that point onwards. But Chessman's disappearance had nothing whatsoever to do with the story's development or resolution, making it appear that the author didn't know what to do with this particular character, which makes me wonder why Chessman was introduced into the story in the first place.

In addition to all those little quibbles, I have a few other things I'd like to mention: I thought that Frank's brain injury, which made him unable to think clearly and to make decisions, was an absolutely ridiculous plot device. Ditto for Frank's entire lifestyle as a homeless, tree-dwelling, dumpster-diving, frisbee-flicking, animal-tracking primate who happened to be employed as a scientist at NSF. I mean, really, this was such an overt insult to all those truly hard-working scientists out there who actually do work at NSF or elsewhere!

I also thought the "exorcism" (and its subsequent reversal) of Joe Quibler by the Khembalese was beyond stupid: It was an overt insult to the author's main characters, most of whom were scientists -- people who are steeped in rationality and logic, who are not about to believe in that sort of mumbo-jumbo. He thoughtlessly betrayed so many of his characters, beginning with the cooly rational Anna Quibler, with this truly ridiculous and dead-end story line.

Further, I was astonished at the audacity and lack of ethics displayed by the scientists who released an untested, genetically-engineered lichen that would supposedly reverse global warming by absorbing carbon [yes, there was a wee bit of science in this book, although you did have to look hard to find it]. And finally, I admit that I laughed out loud when the author suggested that nearly all (or was it all?) of the US military's funds be shifted to ecological programs -- puhleeze. I thought the author was writing a "hyper-realistic science-fiction novel" not a comic fantasy.

Okay, this is my last complaint: I didn't like ANY of the characters. After spending 1500 pages with all of the characters in this story, I ended up wanting to slap every one of them for various reasons, starting with Frank, because they were so annoying, so stupid, so out-of-character! Well, except for Diane and Phil Chase, but we, the readers, never get to know either of them because the author is too busy regaling us with yawn-inspiring anecdotes about how women look sexy when throwing softballs or rock-climbing or kayaking up dangerous waterfalls.

Oddly, after taking more than one thousand pages to develop the story, the author casually wraps up most of his plotline's wacky loose ends in only a few pages (three or four, to be exact), none of which are even remotely interesting or logical. In short, Sixty Days doesn't end with a bang, as I had expected, instead, it ends with a barely audible whimper, accompanied by a stinky sulfurous cloud as it quietly slides past the author's sphincter muscles and out of his bowels and onto thousands of dead trees that these stupid books were printed on.

I cannot believe that I continued to read this overwrought "biblio-bloviosity". Robinson certainly has technique and writing prowess, but he cannot tell a story. The novel(s) keep plodding on, with no end in sight , suspense, or about Robinson's purpose for the writing novel.

Just like the Mars Trilogy(and after reading those books, I should have known that a leopard doesn't change it's spots) the story line doesn't go anywhere. This global warming trilogy seems mostly about the internal ruminations of ordinary people doing ordinary things.

I felt cheated and just glad that it was over, so I could engage in some honest intellectual activity.

This book is going to going to rub some people the wrong way. More than the others in the series, it attacks current political dogma and demands a change. It does, in fact, ask why when the US government is doing so much to stabilize the economy, the world, and help people in general, why we still think that government help is bad. New Orleans needed more help, and Texas couldn't wait for the federal government. So this level of the book is going to be liked or disliked based on personal political beliefs. I think we have seen that from past reviews.

However, this book like the others is only tangentially about politics. Like mant works of science fiction it is a way for to think of how out technology will effect the world and how we might preemptively prevent negative consequences. When it thought we would have robots wandering around the street, the three laws of robotics were proposed. Star Trek proposed the Prime Directive for dealing with new cultures. The list goes on. This series presupposes a traumatized world that has not happened yet, and may not happen, and proposes some alternatives. It may not be the best idea to expend government funds to pump and mine every bit of fossil fuel and burn it for energy. It may be better to spend money on Solar. The same goes for accounting methods that do include ancillary costs of acquiring that oil, such as the $1 trillion for the war in iraq. Who knows if any of this will transpire, or if any of this work? This is science fiction.

Even this technological consequence thing is secondary to the real crux of the story, which is what Robinson, like so many other science fiction writers, excel in. That is people and relationships. Each character in the story is certain archtype, and each represents a specific manner of interacting with the world. Charlie is the domestic political, feeding ideas to those in charge in hopes of making a change, while at the same time knowing that family is what makes a country. Ann is the dedicated scientist, looking for a silver bullet to solve the problem. Diane is the scientist administrator who believes that world can be saved through science, a constant theme through most science fiction, and in the real world, politics is who one saves the world. Ergo, the thrust of all three books.

This is why I like this book the best. In the previous books it appeared that Robinson was going to take the traditional trajectory and claim that science would allow to live at our current standard of living, or even better, and still save the world. While it is a nice fantasy, I did not think it fit in with overall tone of the book, which was more reality based. However, in this last book with the increasing focus on the refugees from Khembalung and Frank, and the freegans, it is clear that he does realize, and is trying to promote, a change in relationship to our planet. This is another reason why some may find it to be their most hated book. Even Ann, the absolute scientist, has moments where she realizes that science alone cannot help us.

Which we see in the allegory of Frank dropping off the grid, people leading decent lives by eating what others waste, and an entire village raising Joe to become not what his father desperately wants, a son he can call his own, as Nick is definitely his Mother's son, but whatever Joe is. And this may be the lesson of book. We cannot, science cannot, religion cannot, make something that which it is not. The world happens. We can change it for a while, but at some point we just have to adapt.

The final book in this trilogy is just plain awful. I can't remember the last time I read a book that was almost akin to having a root canal. Since I read the first two and thought they were interesting I was curious to see how he would wrap it up. Do yourself a favor and stop wondering. Spend the time you will waste on this book on anything more productive.

These are very wonderful in almost all ways.

The presentation of science and scientists, their points of view, passion, ... is the best I have ever seen.

The characters are strong, consistent. The very many social settings he puts them into are amazing in their detail, and all seem very real to me.

The systems aspects of ecology and the weather are explained very well, the inter-relatedness of everything is a central feature of the novels. The 'failure modes' of the systems are part of the dynamic that pushes the novel forward.

The interactions of the political system with the external events are also very well done. If you want to understand the political world of Washington DC and its interaction with the scientific establishment, this is the book. All of the descriptions of the National Science Foundation and the funding are real, at least as I saw them (from the outside), some years ago.

However, Robinson fails to continue his systems analysis into the political arena, so his political response to the "Global warming" crisis is the standard progressive fantasy : elect the right people and give them more power. This despite all of the detail he presents on how FDR's progressive reforms are now part of the problem, how all of the regulatory agencies are taken over by the regulatees. He doesn't even mention how all of the farming practices that contribute to global warming are driven by the federal subsidies, ditto forest management, ... Nor how all nations with progressive policies have stagnant economies, 20% unemployment, and don't produce enough jobs for the young people.

If you need your science fiction to have a rocket ship on the front cover, to begin with adolescent melodrama/action and to close with snappy moralistic conclusions, don't read Kim Stanley Robinson's books. There are better authors around who do that.

If, on the other hand, you prefer sci-fi so close to the present it is poignantly modernist, so artfully written it is powerfully literary, so full of wise reason, kind feeling, and down to earth body-pleasures that only mature adults, able to prefer good things over merely pleasant things, can appreciate it - well, you have met your match with Kim's marvellous 'Sixty Days and Counting".

I won't review the plot or characters. Others have summarized this part of the book.

But I would like to point out that the entire Science in the Capitol trilogy is charged with considerable ethical and psychological sophistication. Robinson knows that science fiction is a sub-genre of history, a genre where fact and fancy must blend, and he does this by mining the transcendentialist and federalist traditions of American culture. That's the new aspect of these books. Now for the old aspects:

Constantly we must refer back to Robinson's previous books - for example, we see in Frank's brain injury the brain injury of Sax Russell in "Green Mars", and again the brain and the mind collide over moral dilemmas. The images of nature also resonate back to the Mars books constantly by poetic contrast. Anyone who has read Virgil's Aeneid and compared it with Homer's Illiad will understand the deep emotional and moral resonances the Science in the Capitol books share with the Mars trilogy and the three Californias.

What to say about the politics and economics? Well, first I want to congratulate Robinson on his courage in including speculative political and economic thinking in his work. Science fiction is richer for the effort. And may I suggest that criticisms of Robinson's books based on political and economic views fail to be adequate to the novel form - that is to say, if you cannot integrate your ideology into a novel, don't bother trying to critique how Robinson works it into his; you're not qualified to an informed opinion. Most importantly, the critics fail to see that Robinson uses economics and politics as poetic and figurative tropes, not as academic dissertations - they are fancy, not fact. Criticism of Robinson's sophisticated imagining in politics and economics is simply a failure of the grasp of the critics' imagination.

Robinson is surely the boldest American SF writer. The trilogy takes risks and they pay off. But the limitations of the Robinson's writing are more obvious than in the Mars trilogy because the book deals with the present day, not with mythical and epic events on another planet. Yes, sometimes the dialog is too dry and flat - but the nature writing is superb. Sometimes Robinson's female characters are two-dimensional - but as novels for men, about the experience of being a man and developing masculinity alone, with women and with other men, his work is the best fiction I know. The piece on the Sierra with the group of men hiking in silence are so fine, they show just how it is with guys.

Oddly enough, the ending reminded me of Shakespeare's As You Like It. I cannot go into detail, but count the number of civil unions that occur and you will see what I mean. The fourfold marriage in the conclusion As You Like It is an archetypal and alchemical symbol of completion, unity and establishment in the four elements of fire, earth, water and air. It symbolises complete restoration to wholeness and sanity. I cannot imagine Robinson dreamt this up consciously, but nevertheless it is there: a successful depiction of a modern utopia, messy human bits included. His depiction of Shambala is just flat out wonderful - a synthesis of realistic and idealistic, human and mythical. The Khembalung passages are so deeply moving.

Robinson explores subcultures in a fascinating way; no other science fiction writer depicts the shattering of consensus culture into a thousand youth cultures more successfully than him. Freegans, ravers, geeks and wonks - the sheer bulk of anthropological detail is really cool.

I think the frustrating thing for science fiction readers is that this book is by far Robinson's most realistic writing. Nothing is concluded, everything is open to second interpretations - but that's life for you. Joe and Charlie are a marvellously mad unfolding relationship, and Robinson fills the incidents between characters with a sly indirection; you have to work to understand the characters, just like in real life. The book takes time and contemplation, just like in real life. It follows that if readers cannot be reasonable in real life will also lack the skills to enjoy this most reasonable of novels.

I also like how completely Robinson ignores the streak of teenage narcissism inherent in science fiction, and gives us a mature and whole work, that includes body and heart and mind in the action of the story. "Sixty Days and Counting" is not escapist literature; a reading of it engages you deeply with reality.

My suggestion to purchasers: if you want real, powerful, and sophisticated science fiction, get this book; if you want escapist sci-fi then buy a secondhand Heinlein.

My suggestion to readers: for greatest enjoyment I suggest you lay aside politics and a weekend and treat Robinson's book as a kind of cheesecake for the mind. Enjoy!

I have been ticking off stars as I have worked my way through this series of books--started out thinking that I understood exactly what Robinson was trying to say with the slow progression of these novels: that destructive climate change is encroaching upon us with the relentlessness of sunbelt suburbs, that we are assimilating and adapting to these climate changes as they occur, and that too many people will not accept the fact of destructive climate change until their own homes and ways of life are flooded, burned, or blown away. These are important themes to communicate, but Robinson has succeeded in making sure that many readers will never learn these themes because they may never finish the books.

The books are boring.

This doesn't mean that the books are not good. That's not it at all. It's just that considering the magnitude of the subject and the previously-documented skill of the writer, it was not unreasonable to expect a heck of a lot more--perhaps some better character development and a more compelling plot. What we do get is the journey of the character, Frank, as he moves through his mid-life crisis. Frank leaves a job, leaves a girl, relocates, finds a new job, finds a new girl, is dissatisfied with his way of life, struggles to change that, pursues new girl, has carnal knowledge of new girl, returns home and comes full circle, and does all of this through bizarre changes in the weather. That just about sums it up. It's all about Frank. Take out the weather phenomena and these books would still work as contemporary fiction, shelved somewhere between Annie Proulx and Jane Smiley, and perhaps should be read as contemporary fiction rather than science fiction.