2312

I'm doing a vlog post on this book later, but to put a long story short, I feel that the travelogue part of the narrative and the conspiracy part of the narrative just didn't mesh, and ultimately made reading the book an unpleasant slog. Thus, I'm lemming this book.

bad reviews

I enjoyed many of the concepts but it feels like it could have been shorter.

This is my first time reading Robinson, and I was instantly floored by this man's skills as a writer. I have told my peers that if he didn't write genre fiction, he'd probably have a prestigious literary award to his name. His descriptions of the settings this story travel to alone are worth the read. At points, it felt like I was taking a guided tour of the solar system: riding the rings of Saturn, jogging along Mercury to stay ahead of the coming dawn, and my favourite part, public transit by way of hollowed out asteroids with man-made climates built inside. Just imagine the next time you travel being asked “on your way, would you like to experience the environment of an ice age expidition, safari, rain forest or rural France?”
The characters, philosophies and basically everything about this book is brilliant. In short, (cliche warning) it's a tour de force.
This book is about 15% plot, and the rest is concept, setting, and character, and that's the way I like it. But I hold back on 5 stars only because the lack of plot combined with the size of the book, and the long bouts of descriptive writing meant I had a hard time keeping momentum. When a side character's story came back to the fold, I would realize I'd forgotten what that character's part of the story was, and would get kind of lost. Maybe this is a 2020 problem as much as any (I was reading this when the second wave of COVID hit and the American election happened, and my attention was obviously strained) so maybe this is an unfair criticism. But such was my reading experience.
I recommend highly to any reader not afraid of a little detail, but not really for people who need a “page turner”.

In traditional KSR style, this book is full of grand sci-fi visions, experienced through the senses of a variety of characters with starkly contrasting personalities and modes of thinking. The world building is gorgeous and, just as Red Mars did, left me feeling like I had traveled to these remarkable places.

This was an extremely well done book. I admit KSR usually writes books that are a bit to slow, methodical, dense or obtuse for me. It took me a year to slog through Red Mars. So I am weary of most of his books but this one sounded too interesting to pass up and I was not disappointed.

Neither really good nor really bad. It had its moments and it had its passages of utter dullness. The story itself is really good and the idea behind too, but the execution is sadly lacking.

I honestly do not know if I would recommend this unless you are a hardcore KS Robinson fan or a hardcore sci-fi fan. There are better books, you can skip this one.

Man did I try to enjoy this. The world building was exquisite but what's a world without a story or worthwhile characters?

KSR can write, but I just don't agree with with this concept of weighing detail over characters or plot.

This book has one of the weirdest rating distributions I've ever seen on Amazon. Seriously, check it out. It's FLAT. An equal number of people for each star. How did that happen?

As I read this book, I can sort of see how it happened. It is, simultaneously, a 1-star book, a 2-star book... etc. Also a 5-star book.

I can't even put the 1-star and 5-star stuff into bins, because I just felt so gosh darn ambiguous about so much of it.

The plot: The solar system has been colonized by people. Earth is an eco-disaster, full of poverty and despair. “Spacers” are sometimes seen to be speciating because now, thanks to gravity and technology and the gender revolution, we have very very big people and very very small people and people who live to 200 and everyone is basically an indeterminate gender (both/neither/etc). Digital divide, writ large.

The protagonist is Swan, a sprightly 137-year old lady from Mercury whose grandma just died. Note 1: Note that I said “lady”. Despite the book proclaiming, about halfway through, that spacers are all genderless, our three main characters all have pretty clear genders. And, as another reviewer noted, things end in a very disappointing “lady loves rock monster” hetero romance. A WEDDING, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD. Seriously?! Let it be said, I loved Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars, but found myself similarly disappointed with the whole Maya/Frank/John love triangle nonsense. It just feels so weirdly regressive amidst all this progressive craziness.

Aaaaanyway. So Song's an artist, her grandma died, she's from Mercury. Her grandma, Alex, was this badass planet-hopping political lady, so I guess she was actually Paula Mendoza from Floating Worlds. There is much mysterious Machiavellian machinations behind the scenes, and now Song is pulled into the politics biz. This includes meeting Wahram, an ambassador and “large” from Saturn (rock monster man!), and Jean Genette, an Interpol-type inspector and “small” from Mars.

Note 2: While Wahram and Jean are pretty cool folks, Song is brutally unlikeable. This is semi-intentional on KSR's part (Song knows it, other characters know it), but I just had trouble not getting angry and annoyed at this obnoxious, tantrum-throwing lady. It certainly made the read much harder.

So: stuff happens. There is some stuff about re-wilding (cool) that is basically imposed on Earthpeople by enlightened-feeling spacers (not cool, way to give liberals a bad name, KSR!). There is some stuff reminiscent of Blade Runner (fine). There are some primary document-esque interludes, which I always enjoy.

I have to admire KSR, cuz he basically does what I wish I could do: he writes really dense, technically impressive (science things!) future fic that also touches on politics and international development and anthropology. It is fun. There's lots of capitalism critiquing and alternative economic systems, also fun. There's LOTS of fancy and wonderful-sounding tech stuff.

But I guess I found it - starting strong but losing steam? A bit disappointing? The last 200 pages or so really knocked off a couple stars; as the resolution felt inorganic and quick and don't get me started on the last chapter. Despite the disappointment, though, there were moments of great sci fi: like the “terrariums” (spinning, hollowed out asteroid cylinders peopled with animals and humans and ecosystems and fun!), and, oh wow, that scene where they decide to turn the big ship around super-fast and crush everyone against relentless 3 g? Cool. I also semi-admired the incredibly huge-scale scope of everyone's plans (“Let's just spin Venus faster, why not!”), though - as one reviewer noted - dude, it does feel totalitarian at times. Makes ya miss the good ol' Enterprise, and their whole hands-off Prime Directive.

Also, I am le tired of Beethoven refs, especially as signifiers of Big Thoughts. Wouldn't Charles Mingus do just as well? Or Kanye? (I appreciated the Philip Glass refs - but everyone knows they listen to him up there.) Just sayin'.

I ended up stopping about 75% of the way through since the pacing was very slow.

Overall: 5/10, Not worth the read.
2312 has a lot of really strong points. The diegesis (world) is extremely interesting, basically creating a very realistic look at colonizing our solar system and even its asteroids. All the politics and social challenges facing the solar system are clever and insightful, especially the socio-economic differences between the colonies and Earth. Lastly, intrapersonal identity is also explored, from gender to body modification and technological integration. However, all these brilliant components do not make engaging content.
The main problem with the book is its story and structure, making it mostly worthless. In fact, I would encourage the author to rewrite the entire thing. The story is a really boring account of a terrorist attack. 20% of the book is spent with two characters walking through a tunnel. The minor story arc about an Earthing the main character saves does not end up having enough relevance to justify its inclusion. The common scifi device of explaining facts about the world through quoted books from the period is used, but is also done so poorly that it makes all those pages worthless. In the end, a lot of good material is wasted and bad content is stuffed into a never-ending book.

Tough reading at times, I often got the nagging feeling that the author was trying to impress me with his (obviously deep and detailed) knowledge of a wide variety of topics above telling a story. This did lend to the feel of the book as a kind of fictional historical text (which I think was the intention), but I did put the book down once without the intention of picking it up again.

Despite this, an interesting take on the future of humanity (in 2312, surprise surprise) and quite the page turner, if only in spurts.

Overall interesting story, but it wraps way too quickly while some chapters drag on way too long. The inclusion of lists every few chapters gets very tired.

I wanted to love this book, as Robinson is a genius, and at times I found it brilliant. The characters are interesting and unfold in a truly intriguing manner. The historical sweep of the universe is really shown off in this book too and a love the bits of future science explaining terraforming and the like. I could have done without the lists personally although I see their poetic function. They just weren't my thing personally. But overall the story just never grabbed me. I wanted it to and I want to say it did because intellectually I admire this story greatly. But for some unfathomably reason likely due to a defect in my own situation or makeup I never found myself wanting to keep reading. I didn't dread it, mind you, I just didn't get that pull of excitement I get from other books. That said if you want good scifi with compelling characters this is an excellent place to find them.

Best known for his work with the Mars trilogy, and The Years of Rice and Salt, Kim Stanley Robinson is a visionary author whose works have challenged readers' views about nearly every aspect of society, from government, to business, to global warming and religion itself. His latest novel, 2312 takes place three hundred years in the future, and provides a glimpse at a very believable humanity that's spread to the other planets.

Synopsis for 2312:

The year is 2312. Scientific and technological advances have opened gateways to an extraordinary future. Earth is no longer humanity's only home; new habitats have been created throughout the solar system on moons, planets, and in between. But in this year, 2312, a sequence of events will force humanity to confront its past, its present, and its future.

The first event takes place on Mercury, on the city of Terminator, itself a miracle of engineering on an unprecedented scale. It is an unexpected death, but one that might have been foreseen. For Swan Er Hong, it is an event that will change her life. Swan was once a woman who designed worlds. Now she will be led into a plot to destroy them.

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