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138th out of 210 books
—
1,247 voters
Fifty Degrees Below (Science in the Capitol #2)
Bestselling, award-winning, author Kim Stanley Robinson continues his groundbreaking trilogy of eco-thrillers–and propels us deeper into the awesome whirlwind of climatic change. Set in our nation’s capital, here is a chillingly realistic tale of people caught in the collision of science, technology, and the consequences of global warming–which could trigger another phenom...more
Paperback, 640 pages
Published
January 30th 2007
by Bantam
(first published 2005)
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Global warming has become a reality. Washington DC experience severe flooding, the Atlantic Gulf Stream has stalled and the Antarctic ice sheet is breaking up. These are the calamities that Kim Stanley Robinson has unveiled in his 2006 novel Fifty Degrees Below. In light of Hurricane Sandy a few weeks back, this story line doesn't seem too far fetched at all.
Scientist Frank Vanderwal is working with the NSF (National Science Foundation) to brainstorm and implement workable solutions the the glob...more
Scientist Frank Vanderwal is working with the NSF (National Science Foundation) to brainstorm and implement workable solutions the the glob...more
Elmore Leonard once said "Never start a book with weather." Hard to avoid, I suppose, when writing about abrupt climate change. And maybe it's the one time you could set this maxim on its head in a compelling way. I think the point of this maxim, though, is to get to the action and consequences of your topic sooner rather than later. Much like the first book in this trilogy, however, KSR heads in the opposite direction: there is lots of talk about the science behind the weather, lots of lunchtim...more
If not for the quirky behavior of some of the characters which struck me as distracting from an otherwise compelling story, I'd have rated this a 5-star book that ought to be read by everyone. It's science fiction, but it contains a lot of horrifying science fact. And horrifying is definitely the right description, more so than anything I've seen classified as "Horror".
The 2004 film "The Day After Tomorrow" projected an apocalyptic view of the consequences of global warming. it was great theater...more
The 2004 film "The Day After Tomorrow" projected an apocalyptic view of the consequences of global warming. it was great theater...more
This is a science fiction novel. The main storyline involves a scientist working for DARPA, studying and fighting climate change, but as with most of Kim Stanley Robinson's book, the heart of the matter is not the action of the story, but the reactions of the characters. It's also the middle book of a trilogy, although I didn't realize that when I started reading it (and I didn't feel as though I missed much by skipping the first one).
I picked up this book early on a Sunday when I had a little b...more
I picked up this book early on a Sunday when I had a little b...more
2nd in a trilogy. ".... that must suffer a sea change". excellent, though like his father i kinda miss the not-yet-2 year old Joe of the first book, an amazingly sharp character. Frank comes to the fore here, a complex, flawed character in the throes of changing himself utterly, looking to the past for paradigms that might prepare him for living in the immediate future of a new Ice Age. meanwhile the almost-mythical Khembalis are suffering (and driving) extreme change as their environment change...more
The second in Robinson's climate change trilogy. I liked it more than the first book which is why the higher rating, though this book is probably more a 2.5 star. You could probably skip over Forty signs of rain with out missing a whole lot.
All that being said, it still moves very slowly for a scientific thriller. There are lots of meetings at NSF and lots of characters musing over their decisions. The story focuses more on Frank, who I didn't much care for through the first book. He becomes a b...more
All that being said, it still moves very slowly for a scientific thriller. There are lots of meetings at NSF and lots of characters musing over their decisions. The story focuses more on Frank, who I didn't much care for through the first book. He becomes a b...more
I admire Kim Stanley Robinson for writing this entertaining, polemical series about climate change and policy. Reading it is undeniably educational (in the sense of being pedantic, didactic; but also in an honorable stop-being-so-complacent-we-have-to-do-something-NOW way). The expository science writing seems accurate, but the story is told so earnestly it ends up sounding really dorky, and there was a young-adult novel coziness that was comforting but sometimes embarrassing to read. The narrat...more
Second in a series about climate change. Like the first one, this was long and not especially exciting to read. Not much happens. The Gulf stream conveyor shuts down. It gets incredibly cold in W. Europe and the eastern US. Scientist geo-engineer a fix. That's pretty much it.
While I wouldn't characterize this book as exciting, I did enjoy it because--at this point--I am pretty invested in the characters. The main character, Frank, is a scientist who decides to try and live as paleolithic man onc...more
While I wouldn't characterize this book as exciting, I did enjoy it because--at this point--I am pretty invested in the characters. The main character, Frank, is a scientist who decides to try and live as paleolithic man onc...more
Robinson, award-winning author of the Mars trilogy, turns his attention away from space and toward Earth. Critics weren't too sure what to make of the second of this eco-thriller series. If it was a plea to take action to combat global warming, few were certain that Robinson saw "big science" as the obvious answer and suspected that he had something else up his sleeve for the third book. But readers won't miss the obvious point about global warming, government, technology, and science__though a
...more
This author is highly underrated. And I think that his books are more current now than when he wrote them. He is a visionary - and also a humanist. The story is not exactly high-octane, however it takes a cataclysmic climate event and makes it believeable. And he then breaks it down in sections so that we see every move - every thought - that a man in this environment would have to make. I thoroughly enjoy his writing, and his realism. Juxtaposed are eastern religion, political intrigue, world c...more
I think, all three of the books in this series, should have been published as one. None of the three novels stand on their own. Except for never really buying the love story and not particularly liking Frank as a person, I really enjoyed these books. It made me want to look into Buddhism a little more carefully. I did however get a bit depressed about our current environmental situation. A lot of the solutions although perhaps technically achievable I'm afraid I just don't see the political will...more
Kim Stanley Robinson is probably my favorite writer right now so I was a bit disappointed with the first novel in this series (it just felt like nothing much happened). This one was an improvement but the whole novel feels very disjointed. The story has moved to following Frank more than the other characters and his story is strangely fragmented. We have the story of him living in the woods of Rock Creek Park (which could have carried a book on its own in fleshed out), his work as NSF, and and b...more
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What if global climate change really became obvious? Not the "global warming" previously envisaged but the flow-on ecological effects of industrialization played out and having wide ranging near catastrophic impacts on our environment. What would be going on as this ecological shift played out around us? This story set predominantly in the US is the middle of a trilogy exploring human interaction and relations and the politics of science. Frank, the character at the centre of this story, is a fa...more
wow this book just never took off for me. I have been reading it for 4 months and I actually have about 20 pages left to go and I am not even interested enough to read them. This is a sequel to 40 Signs of Rain which is also about the near-future and the impact of climate change. The focus in that first part on two very different characters--a researcher and her husband--was much more compelling to me. The single man who is the focus of this installment was wholly unappealing and way to into liv...more
I read KSR's Blue Mars series many years ago and remember them being interesting from a hard sci-fi perspective but oddly told. Still true, as this contemporary ecological disaster novel is just as oddly told. I couldn't really tell you who the main character was or if he even had an antagonist. It's not the disaster movie screenplay the cover says it is, but it was fun to read nonetheless. The ending came abruptly and didn't really seem like an ending. I'm kind of baffled by this author, but I...more
Mar 11, 2011
Richard
rated it
2 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommended to Richard by:
HardSF Group
I have a lot of respect for Kim Stanley Robinson the massive information dumps he produces. But affection? Not so much. I think his Mars trilogy was the first I read, and I note that I gave it four stars. At the time, I’m certain that I was overawed by his encyclopedic approach.
Where this is both a big win and a big loss is in the science. The action is centered at the top of the National Science Foundation and their efforts to get a grip on how the climate is changing and what mitigation strate...more
Where this is both a big win and a big loss is in the science. The action is centered at the top of the National Science Foundation and their efforts to get a grip on how the climate is changing and what mitigation strate...more
i read these out of order, i didn't realize it was a trilogy. but i loved them anyhow. i didn't want them to end. awesome, supersciency look at climate change vs. dc politics, buddhism vs. rising sea levels, scientists vs. spies, swimming tigers vs. floods, feral animals vs. feral humans, capilene undershirts vs. newspaper, living in treehouses vs. living in garden sheds, stay-at-home dads vs. the president of the united states, acheulian hand axes vs. frisbee golf and, of course, emersonforthed...more
The second installment of KSR's global warming trilogy is much more satisfying than the opener. A big weakness of the first book was its overreach in terms of characters, trying to develop too many at once (4 or 5), in alternating chapters, for me to become really invested in any of them. This book drops a couple characters completely and focuses much more intensely on Frank, an NSF researcher experimenting with a paleolithic lifestyle. It's his thoughts on the modern human condition and how far...more
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This is the sequel to Forty Signs of Rain, a story I felt didn't need a sequel. I liked it (a lot) but it wasn't as moving as the previous. It is a tale of times much like our own; it may, in fact, be 2004. The world is in deep shit, because the Gulf Stream has stopped due to large influxes of fresh water in the northern Atlantic. Without the Gulf Stream for warmth, Northern Europe is going to feel a lot more like Northern Canada, and in January, the coldest winter in ten thousand years hits the...more
After setting the near-future climactic calamity in Forty Days or Rain... KSR expands more on Frank, the nature-loving surfer/genomic scientist and deep-thinker from the first volume, getting some interesting movement in his plot-line... Charlie the Wonder Staffer/Mr. Mom for Senator Chase and his wife, Anna, co-worker to Frank at NSF deal with climate change as a post-modern single family (well... one that has both a Biomics doctorate and Senate technocrat policy wonk in the house)... and their...more
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The problem with Important books is often that they're not very Good. And Fifty Degrees Below tries very, very hard to be Important.
In the wake of the devastating flood that ended Forty Signs of Rain, global warming has stalled the Gulf Stream and ironically brought about global cooling: a winter that makes Washington D.C. feel like International Falls, Minnesota. Meanwhile, the Administration denies that anything is wrong and works to subvert science and the electorate.
Forty Signs of Rain too...more
In the wake of the devastating flood that ended Forty Signs of Rain, global warming has stalled the Gulf Stream and ironically brought about global cooling: a winter that makes Washington D.C. feel like International Falls, Minnesota. Meanwhile, the Administration denies that anything is wrong and works to subvert science and the electorate.
Forty Signs of Rain too...more
This was definetly not just another sequel, it picked up right where Forty Signs of Rain left off. And this book is amazing! My favorite character is Frank Vanderrwal, in the first book he was a pretty small character but he liked to rock climb and go on adventures- I felt an affinetly with him. Now he is the main character in this book. He takes his adventure seeking and sociobiologist mind set to a new level.
Frank is a sociobiologist and scientist who works at NSF (National Science Fondatio...more
Frank is a sociobiologist and scientist who works at NSF (National Science Fondatio...more
FIFTY DEGREES BELOW BY KIM STANLEY ROBINSON: Kim Stanley Robinson returns with the second in his trilogy on the current state of global warming and its possible ramifications. Robinson does a great job in making his world seem very much like our own, but his sequence of events are a lot more “down to earth” than The Day After Tomorrow.
Forty Signs of Rain ended with a flash flood drowning most of Washington DC and leaving the main characters to fend for themselves, having to travel around by boat...more
Forty Signs of Rain ended with a flash flood drowning most of Washington DC and leaving the main characters to fend for themselves, having to travel around by boat...more
The second in Robinson’s trilogy on abrupt global climate change, this book is based around the implications of the stall of the Gulf Stream and scientific attempts to restart it. The story picks up in the months immediately after Forty Signs of Rain, with all subplots further developed and the characters lives explored in more depth. There’s perhaps too much jargon (with much of the science/math coming across as extraneous and unnecessary to the plot) and Robinson is a bit too fond of some of h...more
I really enjoyed this book about about an NSF scientist with bizarre behavior who is facing global warming. This is the second book in a series of three. The first book goes into deep character development, and so is kind of slow in places, but I think the character development pays off in this, the second book. Two interesting large-scale plans are presented for saving the Earth. I am getting ready to read Book 3.
There aren’t any robots, ray guns or Martian colonists in Robinson’s newest novels, but the combination of science and fiction, along with Robinson’s previous works, put this and its predecessor (FORTY SIGNS OF RAIN) in the heart of sci-fi territory. It’s amazing that such dense, character intensive prose can be this enthralling.
More: http://www.bookgasm.com/reviews/sci-f...
More: http://www.bookgasm.com/reviews/sci-f...
What was I reading here? A story about devastating climate change, or an episode of Days of Our Lives or General Hospital? Awesome, so we know Frank works out, plays frisbee with homeless guys and chases secret agent women - oh, and he lives in a treehouse and has a thing for escaped zoo animals.
Yep, it was Days of our Lives.
Come on Stan, you can do better than this.
Yep, it was Days of our Lives.
Come on Stan, you can do better than this.
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Kim Stanley Robinson is an American science fiction writer, probably best known for his award-winning Mars trilogy.
His work delves into ecological and sociological themes regularly, and many of his novels appear to be the direct result of his own scientific fascinations, such as the 15 years of research and lifelong fascination with Mars which culminated in his most famous work. He has, due to his...more
More about Kim Stanley Robinson...
His work delves into ecological and sociological themes regularly, and many of his novels appear to be the direct result of his own scientific fascinations, such as the 15 years of research and lifelong fascination with Mars which culminated in his most famous work. He has, due to his...more
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