In Paperback: 2312

In Paperback2312by Kim Stanley RobinsonOrbit, 2012Readers of Kim Stanley Robinson’s hyper-intelligent science fiction are accustomed to his fascination with world-building (his justly-revered Mars trilogy) and with sprawling narrative landscapes (particularly his masterpiece, The Years of Rice and Salt), and his latest, now in paperback (one of those slightly-taller-than-normal rack paperbacks that feel so curiously comfortable in the hand and fits neatly in absolutely no type of bag or satchel ever invented), 2312, beautifully combines the two elements on a scale the author has never before achieved. This is an enormous book, a challenging one, an unerringly personal one – in both its often unconventional form and its quirky reach, it's an antidote to the lock-step stylistic somnolence of so much contemporary mainstream science fiction.The story is set in the fictional world of the Mars books, but in the eponymous year 2312, when the human race (mostly represented by its genetically modified super-progeny) has colonized virtually every inch of its home solar system, from the terraformed Mars to the work-in-progress Venus to the large orbital bodies of the system's various asteroid fields (in a nod to Alfred Bester's The Stars My Destination, several of these worlds have been engineered to cater to specific themes). Even Mercury, in so many ways the least hospitable of the inner worlds, hosts an advanced marvel of a city, one that constantly travels to avoid the terrific punishment of the sun's proximity - a proximity which can draw its own tourists: "Looking at it in the apocalypse of the Mercurial dawn, it's impossible to believe it's not alive. It roars in your ears, it speaks to you." Although as is almost always the case in Robinson's fiction, exultation can carry a high price: "And so people stay too long. Some have their retinas burned; some are blinded; others are killed outright, betrayed by an overwhelmed spacesuit. Some are cooked in groups of a dozen or more."Although, also typically, even rash ecstasies get some eloquent defense:

Do you imagine they must have been fools? Do you think you would never make such a mistake? Don't you be so sure. Really you have no idea. It's like nothing you've ever seen. You may think you are inured, that nothing outside the mind can really interest you anymore, as sophisticated and knowledgeable as you are. But you would be wrong. You are a creature of the sun. The beauty and terror of it seen from so close can empty any mind, thrust anyone into a trance. It's like seeing the face of God, some people say, and it is true that the sun powers all living creatures in the solar system, and in that sense it is our god. The sight of it can strike thought clean out of your head. People seek it out precisely for that.

(Readers new to Robinson will notice at once the almost Tolstoyan expansiveness of pace, and they won't be mistaken: 2312 has a great deal to say, and it takes its time saying it)One of the most brilliant designers of those custom-made asteroid worlds is an abrasive but brilliant woman named Swan Er Hong, and in time the novel's multifaceted plot tangles her in the intrigues of her dead grandmother and bring her face to face with a hidden counter-culture fighting a secret war against the powers that control mankind's progress. Robinson has a generous amount of fun deploying and sometimes gently lampooning the conventions of not only his own genre but others as well, from murder mysteries to romance novels. Through it all, Swan encounters a bewildering array of modified humans and gaudy creatures who've forgotten most of whatever humanity they once had. It's exactly the kind of disheveled almost-plot that best suits Robinson's tendency to flesh out his obsessions on the go. The book bristles with topics and ideas, and at all turns Swan's patient, persistent confusion reflects the reader's state of wonder, as when three very strange, possibly artificial young women accept her invitation to go swimming (the better for Swan's scientific curiosity to observe them naked, of course):

Into the water then. Swan saw that they swam well, almost floated; seemed to have the same specific gravity as human beings. Probably not steel bones, then. Probably not a completely machine interior, covered by a layer of grown flesh and skin. Taking a deep breath floated them, almost, just like it did her. Their eyes too - their eyes blinked, stared, glanced sidelong, were wet. Could you make every part of a human, put it all together, and have it work? Print up a composite? It seemed unlikely. Nature itself was not that good at it, she thought as her bad knee twinged. To make a simulacrum ... well, maybe you could focus on just the functional aspects. But wasn't that what the brain did too?

2312 had its share of vocal detractors when it first appeared, and their central complaint was built on the same kinds of questions Swan asks: if a long novel seems to focus on first this subject then that one, without ever pulling it all together, can it possibly work? Or is it a not-quite-convincing simulacrum of an 'idea' novel? Such readers - perhaps lulled into a slight torpor by the less ambitious and better-mannered science fiction novels that tend to be represented at their nearest evil chain bookstore - should gird themselves for a careful re-read. A book like this deserves it.