The Wild Shore

by
Kim Stanley Robinson

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The Wild Shore (Three Californias Triptych)

by Kim Stanley Robinson

3.8 of 5 stars 3.80 · rating details · 961 ratings · 60 reviews

2047: For the small Pacific Coast community of San Onofre, life in the aftermath of a devastating nuclear attack is a matter of survival, a day-to-day struggle to stay alive. But young Hank Fletcher dreams of the world that might have been, and might yet beand dreams of playing a crucial role in America's rebirth.

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Published September 15th 1984 by Ace (first published March 1984)

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Apr 05, 2012 Carl rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

My first read by the author.
I've been a huge a fan ever since.

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Apr 10, 2012 Beth Cato rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: in, 2011, science, fiction, dystopia

In the year 2047, humanity struggles to survive in the ruins of coastal California. Almost 50 years before, nuclear blasts decimated thousands of cities across the United States. However, this is the only world teenaged Henry knows: a world revolving around harvests, fishing, the howl of the Santa Ana, and the danger of wild-eyed scavengers in Orange County. His ancient mentor, Tom, taught him how to read and of the way things used to be. Henry's world shifts when strangers from the outside arri...more

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Jan 08, 2012 Steve rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: post-apocalypse, disaster, future, science, fiction

This is the first in Kim Stanley Robinson's Trio of Orange County novels, each depicting life in an alternate California, 50 years in the future.[return][return]In this novel, America was ravaged half a century ago by thousands of nuclear bombs going off. More than 95% of the population were killed, and technology was destroyed, electric power gone, and most of the survivors mad. The rest of the world was relatively unscathed however. 50 years later, small communities across America have survive...more

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Mar 24, 2009 Glee rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I had already read his Mars trilogy (Red Mars, Green Mars, and Blue Mars) and had liked them but had trouble at times with his didactic style/approach, even when I agreed with his point of view (which I don't always).

However, this book was his first novel and I really liked it. It has a simplicity but is as powerful as anything else he has done. It is an interesting post-apocalyptic coming of age story about a group of teenagers and an old man who are part of a small fishing community eking out...more

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Jan 13, 2013 Michael rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, sci-fi-fantasy-horror

Here is the premise: in 2047, America is gone. Having suffered a sneak attack at the hands of the Russians forty years earlier, America no long exists as a political entity, and has been isolated by the United Nations. On the West Coast, in a small village in what was once Orange County, a young man writes down a narrative history of his life during an eventual summer when survivors in nearby San Diego try to begin knitting California, and the United States, back together again.

I can't say that...more

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Sep 03, 2012 John rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Kim Stanley Robinson is one of my favorite authors. However, I am glad that this, the first book he wrote, was not the first of his I read. I don’t think I would have read more. Playing peek-a-boo within a poor story that lacked consistency were glimpses of the wonder writer Robinson become though.

Robinson’s novels tend to be character driven, the plot is usually secondary to the characters and their interactions. Although there may be episodes of high action, they tend to plod on. This book ha...more Kim Stanley Robinson is one of my favorite authors. However, I am glad that this, the first book he wrote, was not the first of his I read. I don’t think I would have read more. Playing peek-a-boo within a poor story that lacked consistency were glimpses of the wonder writer Robinson become though.

Robinson’s novels tend to be character driven, the plot is usually secondary to the characters and their interactions. Although there may be episodes of high action, they tend to plod on. This book had perhaps the cleanest plot arc of any of his books I have read. But I don’t know if that was a strength or not. I found his characters failing to hold my interest. I did not connect with Henry, and therefore I did not connect with the book.

Robinson is great at imagining other realities. The Mars Triology is a vibrant realization of what colonizing the planet could be like. The Years of Rice & Salt is breathtaking in its reimaging of world history without Europe. He casts a very interesting world here too, though I found it much harder to believe it as possible. Perhaps the almost 30 years that have passed might have much to do with that. I bought it like I did in his other books.

Robinson frequently has scenes of man battling the elements, mainly the cold. I have found his descriptions vivid and invigorating. But Henry’s escape from the boat and subsequent battle with the cold was a bridge too far for me. Being wet in the snow with almost no clothing would leave a person very little time until hypothermia crippled them. Henry is already cold from the swim, but then goes on much too long surviving the elements.

Robinson is an optimist, that is part of what I like about his writing. He champions the cause of meaningful progress in society, even if that progress is small. That came out strongly again towards the end of the book. He also comes back time and again in his books to the ideal that decisions should be made in a society through open, tough discourse through where everyone has a say. This happens frequently in the Mars Trilogy and to a lesser extent in the Science in the Capital Trilogy. It was nice to see it begin here. The scene of the town meeting foreshadowed many other great scenes in his writing. Disagreements make us human, and often there is no obvious choice. But that does not mean there would not be meaningful discourse to weigh the pros and cons of the options.

Another reoccurring scene I chuckled at was the bathhouse. Everyone is naked and together and there is no shame or judgment. It is a true bonding experience among members of the community. It is not at all sexual, but that does not mean sexual encounters can not rise from it. I think I even liked it here more than in the Mars Trilogy.

I still look forward to reading the other two California books and seeing Robinson’s writing mature
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Aug 22, 2011 Masha Toit rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The Wild Shore it one of the best books I've read in years. Fantastic story, compelling characters, interesting issues, vivid writing - I just loved it.

It is set in America "after the bombing". The United States is no more. America has suffered a severe nuclear attack. Millions died in the initial attack, and millions more in the aftermath, struggling to survive in the new pre-industrial world. Getting food by growing and hunting it, avoiding the "scavengers" - the people who live from the loote...more

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May 15, 2012 Tim rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Another post apocalyptic story set on the coast of California. Well done - a small village of interesting characters pulling themselves together over the course of several decades after a nuclear war.

America's population has been decimated by fusion bombs, so radioactivity is not the major legacy, just ruin by explosions, death, and a strange coalition of nations charged to keep America from rebuilding. (Apparently Russia or some nation was able to pin the blame on the US for the conflict and ot...more

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Jul 02, 2010 Jess Ray rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A post-apocalyptic coming of age story; part of a trilogy spanning from the "old time" (1980s) to a generation after America is bombed by the U.N/Russia. We never really find out what happened. I assume it is covered in the other two books, which I won't be reading.

The book follows Hank Fletcher through a year of his life with friends in a small southern cali village. The elder in the village, one of the few survivors from before the bombing teaches him to read and write and when they go on a tr...more

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Jan 08, 2012 Daniel Burton-Rose added it · review of another edition

Shelves: california, apocalyptica, anarchism

Less impressive than many of his later efforts, but still a convincing depiction of human relations and a lyrical description of coastal ecology (though the latter is unconvincingly flourishing sixty years after the detonation of 2000 nuclear warheads in the US!). There is some pointed pontificating on the ambiguous legacy of America and debate over decentralization versus federation, but the novel is marred by anti-Japanese sentiment: considering Robinson's progressive credentials, I was drop-j...more

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Mar 18, 2010 Rob rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: random-comments-review

....Although the concept is a bit outdated The Wild Shore is absolutely worth reading. It's definitely not the most likely future for California, even if at one time it was certainly possible. Being published right before the first cracks start to appear (to the outside world at least) in the Soviet Union, the timing of this novel probably was a bit unlucky for Robinson. The prospect of nuclear war would be receding fast in the years after publication. The story itself is interesting and skilful...more

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Dec 07, 2009 Val Wilkerson rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I am half way thru this book. Its very interesting to me, as it takes place close to where I grew up, San Onofre only its the year 2047 and a small group of people have survived a nuclear attack and are struggling now to stay alive. It really makes you think.....its just a little bit to real....this is a trilogy series and I am hoping to find the next to books!
Loved The writing style of Kim Robinson....and found the 2nd book in the Trilogy today at our own Caballo Blanco bookstore here in Loreto...more

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Apr 10, 2011 Angela rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: bookcrossed-or-otherwise-set-free, 2006

Cover blurb: 2047. For the small Pacific Coast community of San Onofre, life in the aftermath of a devastating nuclear attack is a matter of survival, a day-to-day struggle to stay alive. But young Hank Fletcher dreams of the world that might have been, and might yet be -- and dreams of playing a crucial role in America's rebirth.

Nicely done post-apocalypse story, part of a trilogy known as the Three Californias Triptych. The other two are The Gold Coast and Pacific Edge. I have yet to find them...more

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Dec 09, 2012 Ilya rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

In 1984, somebody sets off 2,000 or 3,000 (different characters give different numbers) neutron bombs hidden inside vans all over the United States, destroying the country. This makes no sense, since a neutron bomb is basically an anti-tank weapon, not a city-destroying weapon, but let us forgive Robinson this error. Although the attacker does not name itself, it is clear that no nation other than the Soviet Union possesses this many nuclear weapons. Yet the President does not retaliate, unwilli...more

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Jan 10, 2012 Zach rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: post-apocalyptic

It’s 60 years after the US was blown up by thousands of neutron bombs hidden in all of its major cities by an unknown enemy. The rest of the world, unaffected except for climactic shifts, decided to quarantine the States for 100 years, leaving the survivors to make their own way - aside from using satellites to blow up their bigger attempts at re-modernization. Americans are somewhat bitter about this.

The novel takes place in San Onofre, a sleepy-ish valley community featuring one Tom Barnard, a...more

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Feb 16, 2012 Mike rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

One of those books I should have read a long time ago, but didn't for some reason. It boggles the mind that this book and ~~Bruce Sterling's~~ William Gibson's Neuromancer were both selected and published by Ace's veteran editor Terry Carr at the same time, as part of same series of novels showcasing fresh new authors.

I still love the steely, hard edges of Neuromancer with the same furious passion of the 14-year-old me that first picked it up and loved it in 1984. But I find that the middle-aged ad...more

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Nov 30, 2008 Judy rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: anyone

Shelves: desert-island, sci-fi-fantasy

I recommend reading this one first, then Gold Coast, and then Pacific Edge. Wonderful stories, all three.

This book is the post-apocalyptic story of some folks living near San Onofre, in southern Orange County or north San Diego County; anyway, not far from where I live. I like the simplicity of the story and the shear believability of the situation and characters.

The 2nd story in the triptych, Gold Coast, is also amazing but probably my least favorite of the three. It shows Orange County so comp...more

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Apr 03, 2008 Chadwick rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: sf, utopian-anarchist

I tend to go on binges when I discover a writer I really like, taking down as many of their works as I possibly can voraciously for the first few months of my acquaintanceship with their works. Hell, I read really fast, so it's not like I don't have time. So I'm kind of in that stage with Kim Stanley Robinson.

I've read science fiction pretty regularly since I was pretty young, devouring my father's and uncles' collections indiscriminately. When I was about 14, I decided I was more interested in...more I tend to go on binges when I discover a writer I really like, taking down as many of their works as I possibly can voraciously for the first few months of my acquaintanceship with their works. Hell, I read really fast, so it's not like I don't have time. So I'm kind of in that stage with Kim Stanley Robinson.

I've read science fiction pretty regularly since I was pretty young, devouring my father's and uncles' collections indiscriminately. When I was about 14, I decided I was more interested in grown up SF, and read more of the experimental New Wavers, Dick, Delany, Sturgeon and Ellison. Later I discovered the wonder that is Gene Wolfe. They wrote better than the bulk of the hard SF writers that filled the shelves at the used bookstores I frequented, they were more "literary." But in the past year or so, I started rereading some of the authors that I had discarded before high school, and I rediscovered the wonder and joy of great imaginative storytelling. This lead me somehow to the works of Kim Stanley Robinson.

I should say first that Robinson is a stylist of the first order, and the texture of his prose is a beautiful thing. The characters he creates are rich and believable. And I think that that is sort of the miracle of the Mars trilogy, as well as the promise of the Three Californias: these are novels of Big Ideas, for sure, but the narrative is never sacrificed for the sake of lumbering speculative exposition. Sure, the Mars books regularly feature capsule lectures about the possible effects of terraforming on Martian weather patterns, or the psychological effects of long interplanetary voyages, but they feel perfectly balanced by the furtherance of the rich tapestry of narrative and character development.

Such digressions do not make up the fabric of The Wild Shore. It's a tightly constructed, fairly simple narrative set on the West Coast after the United States has been largely destroyed by a nuclear assault. This is a very well traveled sf conceit, but the simple, narrative-oriented approach makes it much different from Alas, Babylon or A Canticle for Leibowitz. The focus here is not so much survivalist porn or the extrapolation of how society would crawl out of the ruins, although both themes are present. It focuses more on how normal people balance the necessities of survival with the dream of a return to an almost mythical lost civilization. In Robinson's scenario, America was destroyed in a terrorist-style attack by an unknown enemy, and there was no time for retribution. The rest of the world, mediated by the UN has elected to quarantine the United States, rather than escalate into war over who controls the blasted territory.

America exists for the postbellum characters in this novel only through fragmented reading and the stories of a handful of survivors, crystallized in the character of Tom Barnard, who is the memory of the fishing village of San Onofre and the teacher to its youth. He has tried to instill a knowledge of the past in the young people of the village so that the ideas of civilization and learning don't vanish in the slide back into primitive subsistence-based existence. This creates a sense of having had something stolen from them from them in the younger characters, and after making a trip south to the relatively-civilized metropolis of San Diego, it ignites the hope that they might be able to strike back at their oppressors. This leads to predictably tragic consequences.

The Three Californias is not a trilogy in the traditional SF sense. Rather than each novel moving forward in time, each novel covers the same period in a different possible future, with characters and themes recurring. In The Wild Shore Robinson plays with mirror structures that indicate the approach of the books to come. This is really a minor detail, but I think that it's good to note that with Robinson, the book doesn't end with the pages. His writing is the sort that bleeds into the rest of our realities, and that's really the best kind, isn't it?(less)

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May 22, 2010 Mark rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A nice little coming-of-age-in-post-Apocalytic-America story. The Wild Shore is a slice of the California coastline north of San Diego, south of LA, and 80 years after an unknown country set off 3000 neutron bombs in American cities. The Apocalypse, though, is not that central to the story. It's really about a boy deciding who he wants to be and how he wants to live. I'm looking forward to the other two, which now sit on my bedside table.

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Jul 13, 2010 Sooz rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

i was not over whelmed with this book. i'm not sure, but i think this may be his first and if so, it explains some of my criticism. it was too long. the plot wasn't bad, and i liked how the story ends - the repercusions that are the result of the actions that take place.

there was nothing that was unbelievable - no deux ex machina, no ridiculous heroics, none of the black and white ideals (good and evil) that some post-apocalyptic tales take. it is a simple story. completely believable. i just f...more

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Feb 22, 2012 Elaine rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I must have liked it more when I first read it, or I wouldn't have kept the book, I don't think. Very slow starting, and it was easy to put the book down when I had to do something else. Still, in the latter third of the book, there were some eloquent and moving passages. I'm not that tempted to look up the second and third book of this series, though, unless they're already somewhere in one my plastic storage tubs...

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Dec 30, 2012 gilmae rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I enjoyed this so much more than The Gold Coast. This one leaves me wondering what next, and even what happened before, while The Gold Coast just seemed kind of meh.

What I look for in a Kim Stanley Robinson novel are much the same as those I look for in a Neal Stephenson novel, the long geeky digressions. KSRs are more geography, geology, political, or socioeconomic than the kind of comp sci nerdery than I might find with Stephenson. Three Californias and the Mars Trilogy are steeped in it; Mars...more

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Apr 03, 2013 Jeff Rowe rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is the first in my dystopian novel series but this is also a decent post-apocalyptic novel. The nice twist here is that the USA lost a nuclear war in a very bad way. The author vaguely suggests that the US President or some other official refused to launch the ICBM arsenal on behalf of humanity. The question faced by the survivors 75 years after the fact is how much happiness does an individual derive from being a part of a functioning nation, and how much from the simple pleasures of being...more

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Aug 21, 2010 Sara rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I tend to process the places I've moved away from by reading books that take place in them. This was a sweet coming of age tale in an Orange County that apocalypse aside, is in many ways more palatable and friendly than the real one, so there was some therapy in there as well.
Looking forward to reading the rest of the series.

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Jun 26, 2012 Jordan Anderson rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

As I recall, this was a bleak but well-rendered atmospheric post-nuclear novel, and the second-best of the Three Californias series. Gold Coast, set in an indulgent, late-period capitalist near-future, was the best. Pacific Edge, set in a utopian future, was unreadably boring.

Interesting utopias are hard to write!

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Jun 11, 2010 Nancy rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: post-apocalyptic

I really loved this book! Due to a nuclear attack from an unknown source, America is incapacited, isolated and quarantined. People become aware of this, and the struggle begins of trying to come out from under the thumb of the world. It appealed to me because the people weren't totally primitive, they still functioned as a ssociety, people still had skills. The writing really gave you a good descriptive picture of how they lived, so I really felt invested in the people.

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Dec 04, 2009 Garnett rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: endoftheworld

In my opinion, the best written of the post-apocalyptic nightmare world stories. The characters are engaging and the story really brings them to life in 3-D. At times the story meanders leaving one confused about where the plot is headed. The is good sci-fi that challenges the reader more than most such books.

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Aug 09, 2009 David rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

All of the books in the Three California series are setting pieces first and foremost, and then (maybe) character studies. There's a plot, but not much of one, and the back story -- thorough nuclear attack on the US -- is more a sketch than anything else. But if you like KSR's writing style, it's still one to read.

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Mar 15, 2011 James Blatter rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

One of the best Post-Apocalyptic novels of all time, but that is just the setting and the background, which give the novel a rich atmosphere, however what drives the book, as it does all books I supose, is the real emotions between characters, relationships that are transient or not, fear, shame, hope

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Dec 11, 2009 Paco Nathan rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: green

What if, following a neutron bombing of the US, the Orange County area became a center for re-emmerging tribes?

Parts are beautiful, like the love scene on tree swing... Other parts are starkly horrific, by intention, reminding the captivated reader this is not a happy outcome to wish.

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About Kim Stanley Robinson

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

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