The Novels of Kim Stanley Robinson
Richard Horton
In my opinion Kim Stanley Robinson, like many SF writers, is at his
best at the novella length. Most of my favorite KSR stories, then,
such as "Black Air", "The Lucky Strike", and "Green Mars", are
novellas. In addition, many of the novels I list below are either
fixups of novellas, expansions of novellas, include as their best part
novella-length sections, or can be seen to consist of series of
novellas.
Icehenge (1984)
His first published novel (unless _The Wild Shore_ edged it out),
fixup of three novellas, the first and third of which, "To Leave a
Mark" and "On the North Pole of Pluto", were published separately.
I'm pretty sure "To Leave a Mark" is the first story by KSR that made
an impression on me, in its 1982 F&SF publication. I think it's a
wonderful story, with a typical KSR hero: noble but vaguely clueless.
The middle section is one of his first workings out of his Martian
ideas, in this case featuring a noble Socialist Mars. The final
section qualifies the novel as one of the relatively few significant
SF novels set in part on Pluto. (_Have Space Ship Will Travel_ is
another, of course. Other nominations?)
The Memory of Whiteness (1985)
Based on an earlier Orbit novella, "In Pierson's Orchestra". It's
pretty much a travelogue, featuring a genius future musician visiting
much of the solar system. Enjoyable but not really very good. I seem
to recall Algis Budrys claiming in his review that it was a first
novel that didn't get published until later novels (particularly _The
Wild Shore_) enhanced his reputation.
THREE CALIFORNIAS TRILOGY
The Wild Shore (1984)
The Gold Coast (1988)
Pacific Edge (1990)
This is three novels set in different alternate futures, the first
somewhat dystopian (post-Nuclear holocaust, anyway), the second pretty
much the present of the 1980s writ large, the third a very Green
utopia. The main characters and some subsidiary characters are
apparently versions of each other, as well. I enjoyed all three
books, though _Pacific Edge_ is the weakest for typical Utopian
reasons -- you sense that the author has not tested his fuzzy but nice
nice ideas hard enough against real human nature, not to mention, Pete
will doubtless remind me, the laws of economics. The best part of the
first book is a long -- well, novella length -- paean/screed/lament to
the U.S. by an old man who remembers it before the bombs. The second
features a major character in the defense industry. I read it on the
plane, travelling to a meeting with subcontractors while trying to
work up a proposal for one of the projects I was working on -- I
realized then that my job in 20 years (were I to choose that career
path - I didn't) could be similar to the protagonist's Dad's job. Dad
was by far the best, smartest, most real, character in _The Gold
Coast_, and I thought his character and his job were really well done.
By and large these three books haven't dated well. They were pretty
hot stuff when they came out. (Indeed, _The Wild Shore_ was famously
the "humanist" candidate for that year's novel awards, with the
"cyberpunk" candidate, _Neuromancer_, beating it out.) But to my mind
they read now as very much books of the 80s. Still worth a look,
though.
Escape From Kathmandu (1989)
Fixup of four novellas about yetis and Nepal and Mount Everest. (KSR
is a rock climber, and his stories, like but unlike M. John
Harrison's, often feature mountain climbing or rock climbing.) These
stories are comic, and pretty successful madcap fun. Three of them
first appeared in Asimov's, the fourth ("The Kingdom Underground")
appears only in this book, as far as I know.
A Short Sharp Shock (1990)
Really a very long novella, but it shows up on list list because it
has been published as a book, both by Mark V. Ziesing, and by Bantam
when they were doing those cool lower-price slimline paperbacks. It
was also in Asimov's, and it was part of a Tor Double. Pretty good
experimentalish thing about a guy who comes to on a planet featuring a
single equator circling continent.
RGB MARS TRILOGY
Red Mars (1992)
Green Mars (1994)
Blue Mars (1996)
I am apparently one of the few people on rasfw who will admit to
liking these books. They get regularly bashed for two main reasons --
some silly science, and some silly politics and economics. Fair
enough on both counts, but in my opinion the successes of the books
outweight the shortcomings. The third complaint is that they are
talky and sometimes boring. They are talky -- either you like that
sort of thing or you don't. And they do get boring -- they are three
long books, there are longeurs -- as I've said before, I'd be very
happy if he had cut every single section with that silly French guy,
Michel Duval. But with all those reservations, they also display a
wonderfully ambitious, and ultimately successful and utopian
technological future; a glorious new world in the terraformed Mars
(and I am unreservedly Green in my political sentiments relative to
this book); and there is in amongst the talk some really neat action
and setpieces.
Oh and by the way this can easily be regarded as a very long series of
novellas, as the books are divided into fairly self-contained novella
length sections, alternated POV characters. A couple of these
sections were separately published in Asimov's.
Each novel won a major award: _Green_ and _Blue_ won Hugos, _Red_ the
Nebula. (Red also won the BSFA Award, and Green and Blue each won
Locus Awards.) I'm pretty sure no other series has managed this.
There is a sort of coda to the series, a story collection called _The
Martians_, which includes stories that might be set in the Mars of the
trilogy, as well as some set in alternate versions of that Mars,
including a sad one in which the terraforming doesn't take. This book
includes a couple of precursor stories, sort of beta-versions, related
much in the way Vinge's "The Blabber" is related to _A Fire Upon the
Deep_. The best of these by far is "Green Mars", still probably my
favorite of all KSR's stories, another mountain-climbing story, this
one about climbing Olympus Mons, natch. (Has anyone thought of doing
an anthology of "climbing Olympus Mons" stories? It'd be easy to fill
a book.)
Antartica (1997)
Wags immediately suggested that this book should be called _White
Mars_, though Brian Aldiss and Roger Penrose soon appropriated that
title. For some reason I've never got around to this book. Reviews
were mixed.
The Years of Rice and Salt (2002)
Brand new. I haven't seen a copy, but I have seen reviews, mostly
ecstatic so far. Looks pretty interesting. Alternate History,
apparently, and also apparently composed of a series of novellas. <g>
--
Rich Horton | Stable Email: mailto://richard...@sff.net
Home Page: http://www.sff.net/people/richard.horton
Also visit SF Site (http://www.sfsite.com) and Tangent Online (http://www.tangentonline.com)
Jaquandor
>Red Mars (1992)
>Green Mars (1994)
>Blue Mars (1996)
>
>I am apparently one of the few people on rasfw who will admit to
>liking these books.
I'll admit it too. I loved them and have been hankering to reread them sometime
soon (it's been five years). My politics are left-leaning, so that helps, but I
loved the epic sweep of the books, and they really gave me that "sense of
wonder". (I must confess to skipping over some of the longer infodumps,
though.)
--
-Jaquandor
"Those who dance are considered insane by those who can't hear the music."
--George Carlin
Martin Lewis
news:M9jb8.4616$d16.76...@newssvr17.news.prodigy.com...
> Antartica (1997)
>
> Wags immediately suggested that this book should be called _White
> Mars_, though Brian Aldiss and Roger Penrose soon appropriated that
> title. For some reason I've never got around to this book. Reviews
> were mixed.
I think White Mars its an accurate tagline, it does read like one of the
Mars novels what with the hostile environment and the isolated communities.
Its a better book than the real White Mars which is hamstrung by the dual
authorship, specifically Penrose. The cutting edge physics isn't intergrated
very well and its a lot more conservative than it thinks.
Martin
James Nicoll
Richard Horton <rrho...@prodigy.net> wrote:
>Icehenge (1984)
>
>His first published novel (unless _The Wild Shore_ edged it out),
>fixup of three novellas, the first and third of which, "To Leave a
>Mark" and "On the North Pole of Pluto", were published separately.
>I'm pretty sure "To Leave a Mark" is the first story by KSR that made
>an impression on me, in its 1982 F&SF publication. I think it's a
>wonderful story, with a typical KSR hero: noble but vaguely clueless.
>The middle section is one of his first workings out of his Martian
>ideas, in this case featuring a noble Socialist Mars. The final
>section qualifies the novel as one of the relatively few significant
>SF novels set in part on Pluto. (_Have Space Ship Will Travel_ is
>another, of course. Other nominations?)
_The Secret of the Ninth Planet_ by Donald Wolheim? Not very
good, of course, but the image of Callisto's polar continent being
destroyed by the nuclear device the humans set off still is with me,
even though a continent that frigile should have been destroyed by
tidal flexing.
>The Memory of Whiteness (1985)
>
>Based on an earlier Orbit novella, "In Pierson's Orchestra". It's
>pretty much a travelogue, featuring a genius future musician visiting
>much of the solar system. Enjoyable but not really very good. I seem
>to recall Algis Budrys claiming in his review that it was a first
>novel that didn't get published until later novels (particularly _The
>Wild Shore_) enhanced his reputation.
Thought the story was dull but liked the setting. Disliked the
truimph of determinism.
>THREE CALIFORNIAS TRILOGY
>The Wild Shore (1984)
>The Gold Coast (1988)
>Pacific Edge (1990)
>
>This is three novels set in different alternate futures, the first
>somewhat dystopian (post-Nuclear holocaust, anyway), the second pretty
>much the present of the 1980s writ large, the third a very Green
>utopia. The main characters and some subsidiary characters are
>apparently versions of each other, as well. I enjoyed all three
>books, though _Pacific Edge_ is the weakest for typical Utopian
>reasons
snip
Huh. I thought TGC was weakest because it was just the 1980s
played at 11 and not in as entertaining a manner as, oh, Pohl and
Kornbluth's satires.
>RGB MARS TRILOGY
>Red Mars (1992)
>Green Mars (1994)
>Blue Mars (1996)
>
>I am apparently one of the few people on rasfw who will admit to
>liking these books. They get regularly bashed for two main reasons --
>some silly science, and some silly politics and economics.
Don't forget the unlikable characters and use of broad ethnic
stereotypes. And the hideous math error. Lots to dislike here.
>The Years of Rice and Salt (2002)
>
>Brand new. I haven't seen a copy, but I have seen reviews, mostly
>ecstatic so far. Looks pretty interesting. Alternate History,
>apparently, and also apparently composed of a series of novellas. <g>
The Point of Departure is apparently fairly silly, judging
by the kicking around it is getting on shwi: the Black Death kills
99% of Europe, without similar effects elsewhere. Diseases that
lethal and as fast as BD would have a hard time spreading before
their virulence killed the hosts off. Ah, well, nobody reads KSR
for the science.
--
"[...] it's been about 12 years now that I've been singing this dumb song. You
know, it's amazing that that someone could get away with singing a song this
dumb for that long. [...] What's more amazing is that someone could make a
living singing a song this dumb for that many years. But, that's America." AG
Nyrath the nearly wise
> The final
> section qualifies the novel as one of the relatively few significant
> SF novels set in part on Pluto. (_Have Space Ship Will Travel_ is
> another, of course. Other nominations?)
I remember one but cannot recall the title.
I believe it was a juvenile.
It was set on a large space station. The owner was
trying to hold some kind of world's fair on the station,
and sends an expedition to pluto to find some kind
of plutonian life for an exibit. They discover some
kind of creature shaped like turtles, paddling around
in pools of liquid helium.
James Nicoll
Robert Silverberg's _World's Fair 1992_. Reprinted by Ace
in 1982, but first published well before that.
James Nicoll
Simon
> The Novels of Kim Stanley Robinson
>
> RGB MARS TRILOGY
> Red Mars (1992)
> Green Mars (1994)
> Blue Mars (1996)
>
> I am apparently one of the few people on rasfw who will admit to
> liking these books. They get regularly bashed for two main reasons --
> some silly science, and some silly politics and economics.
I quite liked them, especially book 1, but some LONG stretches dod read
like the unedited minutes of a local council meeting, endless bickering,
and most of the main characters were fairly unlikely and unlikable by the
end. Well, I say 'the end', I actually stopped about 30 pages from the end
of BLUE, just too tired of it all to continue, so what the ultimate pay-
off was, I have no idea. I think I left them rowing a boat...
Simon
--
Micole Sudberg
>
>Icehenge (1984)
>
It's been a while, but I remember thinking the conceptual cleverness about
unreliable narration in history overcame some relatively weak writing. Like
*The Fifth Head of Cerberus* (although *Icehenge* isn't as clever or as
melancholy), it's a novel disguised as a collection.
>The Memory of Whiteness (1985)
>
>Based on an earlier Orbit novella, "In Pierson's Orchestra". It's
>pretty much a travelogue, featuring a genius future musician visiting
>much of the solar system. Enjoyable but not really very good. I seem
>to recall Algis Budrys claiming in his review that it was a first
>novel that didn't get published until later novels (particularly _The
>Wild Shore_) enhanced his reputation.
Was anyone else really upset by the gevhzcu bs qrgrezvavfz in the end? It was
so ... anti-sfnal.
>THREE CALIFORNIAS TRILOGY
>The Wild Shore (1984)
>The Gold Coast (1988)
>Pacific Edge (1990)
<snipped description>
>By and large these three books haven't dated well. They were pretty
>hot stuff when they came out. (Indeed, _The Wild Shore_ was famously
>the "humanist" candidate for that year's novel awards, with the
>"cyberpunk" candidate, _Neuromancer_, beating it out.) But to my mind
>they read now as very much books of the 80s. Still worth a look,
>though.
I haven't read them since the early nineties, when they read well. I was
mostly surprised (as I often am with Robinson) but how much genuine
hopefulness he managed to find in really awful conditions.
I think I'd probably like *Pacific Edge* better if I knew anything about
baseball. But maybe not.
>A Short Sharp Shock (1990)
>
>Really a very long novella, but it shows up on list list because it
>has been published as a book, both by Mark V. Ziesing, and by Bantam
>when they were doing those cool lower-price slimline paperbacks. It
>was also in Asimov's, and it was part of a Tor Double. Pretty good
>experimentalish thing about a guy who comes to on a planet featuring a
>single equator circling continent.
It really did a wonderful job at creating a dreamlike feeling: surreal
imagery, intense not-quite-logical upsurges of emotion. I wouldn't have
thought he was a lyrical enough writer to pull it off, but this ended up being
my favorite of his novels. It's just so *weird*.
>RGB MARS TRILOGY
>Red Mars (1992)
>Green Mars (1994)
>Blue Mars (1996)
>
>I am apparently one of the few people on rasfw who will admit to
>liking these books. They get regularly bashed for two main reasons --
>some silly science, and some silly politics and economics. Fair
>enough on both counts, but in my opinion the successes of the books
>outweight the shortcomings. The third complaint is that they are
>talky and sometimes boring. They are talky -- either you like that
>sort of thing or you don't. And they do get boring -- they are three
>long books, there are longeurs -- as I've said before, I'd be very
>happy if he had cut every single section with that silly French guy,
>Michel Duval. But with all those reservations, they also display a
>wonderfully ambitious, and ultimately successful and utopian
>technological future; a glorious new world in the terraformed Mars
>(and I am unreservedly Green in my political sentiments relative to
>this book); and there is in amongst the talk some really neat action
>and setpieces.
Hmm. I adore them and I am Red, with reservations. I thought *Red Mars* was
so terrific I went back and read other Robinson I'd bounced off before; I'd
had him categorized as "worthy but dull." I can see why other people get
bored, and there are lots of sections I can do without, and the scientific
advances necessary for Robinson to maintain the cast over the timespan he
needed strike me as so convenient they're just silly; but in the end, the
books just overwhelm. They have some of the most *sensual* evocations of an
alien landscape I've ever read.
>Antartica (1997)
>
>Wags immediately suggested that this book should be called _White
>Mars_, though Brian Aldiss and Roger Penrose soon appropriated that
>title. For some reason I've never got around to this book. Reviews
>were mixed.
It has a terrific opening passage, but it lost me after that. *White Mars*
isn't inappropriate; it tries to cover some of the same thematic and political
ground as the Mars trilogy, in much less space, and I don't think he chooses
the right things to compress.
--m.
Tom Scudder
> The Novels of Kim Stanley Robinson
> Icehenge (1984)
> The final
> section qualifies the novel as one of the relatively few significant
> SF novels set in part on Pluto. (_Have Space Ship Will Travel_ is
> another, of course. Other nominations?)
THE FOREVER WAR. Particularly the
big-fun-walking-around-on-frozen-gases part.
> RGB MARS TRILOGY
> Red Mars (1992)
> Green Mars (1994)
> Blue Mars (1996)
>
> I am apparently one of the few people on rasfw who will admit to
> liking these books.
I liked "Green Mars" a great deal, but have been dissuaded from
seeking out the trilogy by the reception here.
On the other hand, I was badly missteered toward Ken MacLeod, so maybe
it would be worth giving them a look.
Justin Fang
Richard Horton <rrho...@prodigy.net> wrote:
>
>Wags immediately suggested that this book should be called _White
>Mars_, though Brian Aldiss and Roger Penrose soon appropriated that
>title. For some reason I've never got around to this book. Reviews
>were mixed.
My problem with this book was that I found the most interesting parts to be
the various stories of real-life Antarctic exploration that get related
along the way. Compared with Shackleton and the voyage of the Endurance, or
the "Worst Journey in the World", or Scott's doomed polar expedition,
Robinson's characters and plot just come up short.
--
Justin Fang (jus...@panix.com)
Niall McAuley
> section qualifies the novel as one of the relatively few significant
> SF novels set in part on Pluto. (_Have Space Ship Will Travel_ is
> another, of course. Other nominations?)
Larry Niven blows it up in _World Of Ptavvs_.
> I am apparently one of the few people on rasfw who will admit to
> liking these books. They get regularly bashed for two main reasons --
> some silly science, and some silly politics and economics.
And annoying characters, and silly dialogue, and tedious infodumps.
--
Niall [real address ends in se, not es.invalid]
Justin Fang
>On 17-Feb-2002, jus...@panix.com (Justin Fang) wrote:
[KSR's _Antartica_]
>> My problem with this book was that I found the most interesting parts to
>> be the various stories of real-life Antarctic exploration that get related
>> along the way. Compared with Shackleton and the voyage of the Endurance,
>> or the "Worst Journey in the World", or Scott's doomed polar expedition,
>> Robinson's characters and plot just come up short.
>Compared to Shackleton who DOESN'T come up short?
Well, yeah.
"For scientific leadership, give me Scott; for swift and efficient
travel, Amundsen; but when you are in a hopeless situation, when there
seems to be no way out, get on your knees and pray for Shackleton." -
Sir Raymond Priestley
Makes it kind of a problem to have him show up as only a bit character in
your novel. Hmm. I wonder if anyone's tried to recycle his story as sf?
--
Justin Fang (jus...@panix.com)
Nyrath the nearly wise
> The final
> section qualifies the novel as one of the relatively few significant
> SF novels set in part on Pluto. (_Have Space Ship Will Travel_ is
> another, of course. Other nominations?)
Virgil Samms visits the Palainian colony on Pluto
in E.E."Doc" Smith's FIRST LENSMAN.
Jim Cambias
Fang) wrote:
The trouble is, nobody would believe it. "So the ship gets wrecked, the
men seek refuge on an uninhabitable island, the commander goes off in an
open boat across the most dangerous seas on Earth, crosses an unexplored
mountain range on foot, and gets the crew back safely. Yeah, right."
Cambias
Bill & Sue Miller
Justin Fang wrote:
>
> Makes it kind of a problem to have him show up as only a bit character in
> your novel. Hmm. I wonder if anyone's tried to recycle his story as sf?
Maybe "Brightside Crossing" by ?Nourse?. I remember this story fondly from
school days, but haven't actually seen it in decades.
Bill
--
Home: wbmi...@ghg.net
Work: william....@jsc.nasa.gov
Homepage: http://www.ghg.net/wbmiller3
Richard Horton
<wbmi...@ghg.net> wrote:
>
>Justin Fang wrote:
>
>>
>> Makes it kind of a problem to have him show up as only a bit character in
>> your novel. Hmm. I wonder if anyone's tried to recycle his story as sf?
>
>Maybe "Brightside Crossing" by ?Nourse?. I remember this story fondly from
>school days, but haven't actually seen it in decades.
>
It is by Nourse, from Galaxy in the mid-50s. Nice story -- though
it's one of those obsoleted by new astronomical knowledge about
Mercury (obviously). An anthology of "Bright and Dark Side of Mercury
Stories" might be cute.
Aaron Brezenski
Richard Horton <rrho...@prodigy.net> wrote:
>section qualifies the novel as one of the relatively few significant
>SF novels set in part on Pluto. (_Have Space Ship Will Travel_ is
>another, of course. Other nominations?)
"Ring of Charon" by Roger MacBride Allen. "World of Ptavvs", Larry
Niven.
--
Aaron Brezenski
Not speaking for my employer in any way.
D. Barrington
: In article <M9jb8.4616$d16.76...@newssvr17.news.prodigy.com>, Richard Horton <rrho...@prodigy.net> wrote:
:>THREE CALIFORNIAS TRILOGY
:>The Wild Shore (1984)
:>The Gold Coast (1988)
:>Pacific Edge (1990)
: <snipped description>
:>By and large these three books haven't dated well. They were pretty
: I think I'd probably like *Pacific Edge* better if I knew anything about
: baseball. But maybe not.
Probably not -- what Our Hero plays is "softball", anyway, the variant
of baseball played by recreational leagues in the USA (and at a competitive
level by women, but that's another story). The point of the softball
stuff is that the civilization is so idyllic that the otherwise trivial
matter of whether he succeeds in getting a hit every chance for the whole
season in his town softball league is a major plot element.
I really liked _Pacific Edge_, particularly after I theorized that it's
essentially a resetting of George Eliot's _Adam Bede_ -- a young man, a
pillar of his pastoral community, is a rival in love with a member of the
power structure. Eliot wrote a valentine to 18th-century rural England,
Robinson to his imagined ecotopian future. I have no idea whether the
parallel was at all intentional, though it's reasonable to assume that
Robinson had read _Adam Bede_ in that he has a Ph.D. in English literature.
Dave MB
Joe Bernstein
Richard Horton <rrho...@prodigy.net> wrote:
> THREE CALIFORNIAS TRILOGY
> The Wild Shore (1984)
> The Gold Coast (1988)
> Pacific Edge (1990)
> By and large these three books haven't dated well. They were pretty
> hot stuff when they came out. (Indeed, _The Wild Shore_ was famously
> the "humanist" candidate for that year's novel awards, with the
> "cyberpunk" candidate, _Neuromancer_, beating it out.) But to my mind
> they read now as very much books of the 80s. Still worth a look,
> though.
I haven't tried to reread them but wonder how I'd react. In general,
I'm fond of post-holocaust stories, and predictably enough I liked
<The Wild Shore>, respected but disliked <The Gold Coast>, and had
little use for <Pacific Edge> on either count.
You don't mention the fact that each book has the same person in it,
born before the timelines diverge, although he isn't a major character
in each.
> Escape From Kathmandu (1989)
>
> These stories are comic, and pretty successful madcap fun.
To each his own, I guess. I found the stories readable but not
delightful in <Asimov's>, and found the whole book of them tedious.
> A Short Sharp Shock (1990)
I remember thinking "Wow!".
> RGB MARS TRILOGY
> Red Mars (1992)
> Green Mars (1994)
> Blue Mars (1996)
>
> I am apparently one of the few people on rasfw who will admit to
> liking these books.
Gee, I oughta get out more, then.
Except that I never actually managed to read <Blue Mars>. (The failed
attempt was an early sign of the changes in what I've been able to get
myself to read in recent years that force me to qualify much of what I
say here. I normally read series by reading each book available in
sequence at the time I read any book, so in cases like this where I read
the books individually this means I read <Red>, then <Red> followed
by <Green>. And tried to read <Red> followed by <Green> followed by
<Blue>, but not only couldn't read <Blue>, couldn't even reread <Red>;
and couldn't push myself through <Blue> on trying separately. The
same thing happened to me with the third volume of John Crowley's
<Aegypt>.)
> But with all those reservations, they also display a
> wonderfully ambitious, and ultimately successful and utopian
> technological future; a glorious new world in the terraformed Mars
> (and I am unreservedly Green in my political sentiments relative to
> this book); and there is in amongst the talk some really neat action
> and setpieces.
I thought of the first two books that they were a serious attempt to
find a new paradigm for being leftist, something of which I strongly
approved. I also thought they were lyrical in places (though on the
attempt to reread I saw that there were fewer of these than I'd
imagined) and I was fascinated by the setting and character interactions.
I think my main problem with rereading them is the unlikability of some
of the main characters; that combined with length has become a problem
for me, to my detriment.
> Antartica (1997)
>
> Wags immediately suggested that this book should be called _White
> Mars_, though Brian Aldiss and Roger Penrose soon appropriated that
> title. For some reason I've never got around to this book. Reviews
> were mixed.
It didn't work for me, for reasons similar to those already given in
this thread.
Joe Bernstein
--
Joe Bernstein, writer j...@sfbooks.com
<http://these-survive.postilion.org/>
Richard Horton
>In article <M9jb8.4616$d16.76...@newssvr17.news.prodigy.com>,
>Richard Horton <rrho...@prodigy.net> wrote:
>
>> THREE CALIFORNIAS TRILOGY
>> The Wild Shore (1984)
>> The Gold Coast (1988)
>> Pacific Edge (1990)
>
>> By and large these three books haven't dated well. They were pretty
>> hot stuff when they came out. (Indeed, _The Wild Shore_ was famously
>> the "humanist" candidate for that year's novel awards, with the
>> "cyberpunk" candidate, _Neuromancer_, beating it out.) But to my mind
>> they read now as very much books of the 80s. Still worth a look,
>> though.
>
>I haven't tried to reread them but wonder how I'd react. In general,
>I'm fond of post-holocaust stories, and predictably enough I liked
><The Wild Shore>, respected but disliked <The Gold Coast>, and had
>little use for <Pacific Edge> on either count.
>
>You don't mention the fact that each book has the same person in it,
>born before the timelines diverge, although he isn't a major character
>in each.
>
Indeed I didn't, which is slightly annoying because it was in my head
to mention it when I sat down to write.
>> Escape From Kathmandu (1989)
>>
>> These stories are comic, and pretty successful madcap fun.
>
>To each his own, I guess. I found the stories readable but not
>delightful in <Asimov's>, and found the whole book of them tedious.
>
Well, I can readily imagine that the book read as a whole could become
tedious. I read the stories that first appeared in Asimov's there,
and didn't reread those ones when I bought the book.