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Pacific Edge

(Three Californias Triptych #3)

Kim Stanley Robinson

3.78 · Rating details · 1,470 ratings · 116 reviews

2065: In a world that has rediscovered harmony with nature, the village of El Modena, California, is an ecotopia in the making. Kevin Claiborne, a young builder who has grown up in this "green" world, now finds himself caught up in the struggle to preserve his community's idyllic way of life from the resurgent forces of greed and exploitation. ...more

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Paperback, 336 pages

Published May 15th 1995 by Orb Books (first published 1990)

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Start your review of Pacific Edge (Three Californias Triptych, #3)

Feb 04, 2013 Robert rated it really liked it

Shelves: sf

This is the second of the "Three Californias" series that I've read and it represents a huge improvement over the dull The Gold Coast, which probably would have put me off KSR forever if it had been the first book I'd read by him.

The Three Californias are really Three Orange Counties - three near future visions of what a place beloved to the author could turn out like. Gold Coast is an extrapolation of current trends toward money over everything, particularly environment. This is a "Utopia"; the ...more

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Aug 29, 2017 Tomislav rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction, read-2-times

second read - 15 October 2009 - ****. In the past two months, I re-read all three Orange County novels, and still like them quite a bit. They are related to each other, not sequentially, but as three alternate futures for the same Orange County (extensive suburban area of Los Angeles). The first time I read them, I was not aware of the extent to which subtle geographic references, a few plot events, and one character, were re-used in different ways in each. But watching for that now just added t second read - 15 October 2009 - ****. In the past two months, I re-read all three Orange County novels, and still like them quite a bit. They are related to each other, not sequentially, but as three alternate futures for the same Orange County (extensive suburban area of Los Angeles). The first time I read them, I was not aware of the extent to which subtle geographic references, a few plot events, and one character, were re-used in different ways in each. But watching for that now just added to my interest. They are - The Wild Shore - a post-apocalypse novel set in a world where the US was nuclear bombed, and then quarantined by the rest of the world for 100 years. A first-person narrative, and coming of age story. The Gold Coast - a future of overdevelopment and overpopulation where some individuals try to find meaning in their lives. A dystopia. Pacific Edge - a future where deliberate population reduction and choice of sustainable lifestyles has led to a technological but low key network of villages in Orange County. A utopia, but still with human drama.

A lot of the themes that Robinson later reworked in his Mars and Capitol Code series are present here - ecological sustainability, social justice, the politics of natural resources, and introspective interpersonal relationships. The descriptions of bicycle commuting, backpacking trips, gardening, and house remodeling are accurate in detail, and clearly something Robinson himself enjoys as much as I do. In fact, it's a little scary how much the quasi-utopia he invented here embodies my own values.

But what really made this novel for me was the characters. It is about some ordinary people who live in this future, whose issues are merely local. But just because this society has progressed somewhat, doesn't mean bad things don't happen. People are still people, each with good and bad in them. It felt so real, like maybe these characters live down the street from me, and some day I might draft behind one of them on my way to the office.

first read - 2 September 1991 - ****. I first read all three of Kim Stanley Robinson's Orange County novels a little after they came out, which was spread out over a few years in the late 1980s. ...more

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Mar 26, 2015 Enso rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Despite being a huge Robinson fan, I've never read two out of three books in his "California" trilogy, written back in the 1980s.

This book is full of what clearly became themes in his later works. Lots of detailed descriptions of landscape, hiking, and being out in the open, along with the strange (yet actually normal) interrelationships between normal people. There isn't a lot of overall plot in that it is an utopian novel set in a small town struggling with a legal zoning fight in the city co Despite being a huge Robinson fan, I've never read two out of three books in his "California" trilogy, written back in the 1980s.

This book is full of what clearly became themes in his later works. Lots of detailed descriptions of landscape, hiking, and being out in the open, along with the strange (yet actually normal) interrelationships between normal people. There isn't a lot of overall plot in that it is an utopian novel set in a small town struggling with a legal zoning fight in the city council. Our craftsman carpenter protagonist loves the last hill that is going to be developed if he doesn't win but he's also known most of the other characters, including his antagonist, since childhood. There is a love triangle between the woman that they both love and a bit about his grandfather, a depressed hermit, who is one of the architects of the legal framework of their society. In the sense of plot, there is not a lot of "there" there. It is a book about the people and a kind of dream of southern California life. As a resident of California for almost a decade now, I can kind of dig that and, as a utopia, it sounds like a great place to live, really. It isn't tense except on the interpersonal level though.

The book it not too badly dated. The parts from his grandfather's journal, many years in the past in 2012 (!) don't sound too out of place for our world except for the focus on the AIDS epidemic as a plot point (not surprising for writing in 1988). The 2065 "present" is quaint in ways without networking, outside of people using their TVs to videoconference, and no mobile computing or cell phones. All phones are wired and I feel like a relic just reading that.

I enjoyed it and I think Robinson fans would enjoy it. I'm not sure if this is a book, versus just going to the Mars trilogy, that I'd recommend to people that don't know Robinson. It definitely gives you the early stages of things that are very present in the Mars trilogy, his global warming trilogy, and various other later novels. ...more

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May 04, 2014 Jenny (Reading Envy) rated it liked it

Shelves: post-apocalypse-and-dystopia, read2015, sci-fi-fantasy, sff-audio, audiobook

Never reviewed this one but you can hear me discuss it on the SFF Audio Podcast. This one is a utopia. What happens when life is good? Well, not a lot. I do like the parallel future idea that KSR had for this triptych, but I haven't read the other two. ...more

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Jun 26, 2013 Chris Radcliff rated it really liked it

I started re-reading Pacific Edge with some trepidation; I worried it wouldn't stand up to my memory, that its utopian ideas would seem naive compared to my experience of the world. Luckily, the world Robinson builds is complex and nuanced, and the characters are so engaging I wouldn't have minded if it wasn't.

The main story is set in 2065, a time when many of our big problems – war, income inequality, fossil fuel dependence, corporatism – have been solved, not by technological breakthroughs, bu ...more

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May 02, 2019 Lena rated it liked it · review of another edition

Recommended to Lena by: Solarpunk BOM

Shelves: audio, solarpunk

“One of the worst signs of our danger is we can’t imagine the route from here to utopia. No way to get there.

Take the first step and you’re there.”

This book had many interesting things to say about utopias and you can feel the author’s desire to bring us forward to a better tomorrow.

I enjoy that sincerity in KSRs work.

Unlike his previous work I found myself caring deeply for the main character, Kevin. KSR pulled me into this emotionally rich young man who bravely follows his conscious an ...more

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May 21, 2017 Adam rated it really liked it

Shelves: utopias, science-fiction

Must redefine utopia. It isn’t the perfect end-product of our wishes, define it so and it deserves the scorn of those who sneer when they hear the word. No. Utopia is the process of making a better world, the name for one path history can take, a dynamic, tumultuous, agonizing process, with no end. Struggle forever.

Compare it to the present course of history. If you can.

Some brilliant moments that rise above, but still a lot of prosaic parts that characterize his early work (my fault for saving Must redefine utopia. It isn’t the perfect end-product of our wishes, define it so and it deserves the scorn of those who sneer when they hear the word. No. Utopia is the process of making a better world, the name for one path history can take, a dynamic, tumultuous, agonizing process, with no end. Struggle forever.

Compare it to the present course of history. If you can.

Some brilliant moments that rise above, but still a lot of prosaic parts that characterize his early work (my fault for saving this to near the end). There's a fantastic bit set on a futuristic cargo ship, and you think about a similar one in Aurora and about how he could write a whole book set on one, but it's one chapter that's just disconnected from the rest.

There's too much baseball. The water management stuff and Californian history is boring, and while I think we need to protect wilderness and biodiversity, etc, I can't really get in to this level of deep ecology. I just don't care about them saving the hill from a development. If they'd been fighting it to fight money laundering, sure, I guess. But I suppose that's part of the point: he's setting out to prove there are still underdogs and uphill struggles and chaos in utopia. As a prototype for his future work, it's a fine book.

My only other complaint is how he uses a lot of plain jane names that all run together (Kevin, Tom, Hank, etc). I get that it's a motif in his triptych, but it's a problem in a lot of his novels. Eventually the names just start running together.

I liked the near future elements, of course. And the predictions he gets wrong (the Soviet Union still being a concern, mostly consumer technology stuff like still using VHS tapes) are as interesting as the things he gets right (submarine lifeboats, sort of predicts Skype, solar panel ubiquity, etc). Really weird to think that the first book in the series was written only three years before I was born, and we've already surpassed much of his future stuff in some ways.

In his utopian elements he has an interesting maximum wage law. People top out at a certain point (they're referred to as hundreds, because they're making one hundred percent of what they're allowed, but it's unclear how much wealth they have, and I think the amount a hundred can receive varies regionally). The money they would have been making is (I think) paid to the government as tax, and they can decide how up to 20% of it is spent (one character thinks cynically that a hundred is directing his tax money into the military and biomedical industry, so his related businesses can continue to profit through government contracts). I prefer Jeremy Corbyn's simpler maximum wage proposal: legislate that companies can only pay their highest earning employee X times more than the amount their lowest worker is paid.

Good lines:

Really liked this paragraph on teachers, brought a new perspective: (view spoiler)
Living life versus telling your story: (view spoiler)
On diplomacy: (view spoiler)
On first loves: (view spoiler)
On near-term AI: (view spoiler) ...more

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Jun 04, 2020 Frederick Gault rated it really liked it

Shelves: fiction, sci-fi, political

Excellent character development, the third in a trilogy of imagined futures for Orange County CA. This is the utopian vision where world-wide conglomerates and capital flight to tax havens are illegal. What do people do in a Utopia? They drink, surf, play softball, have love affairs and have broken hearts just like now, however things are more fair and easier on the ecosystem.

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Sep 04, 2020 Gendou rated it liked it

Shelves: fiction

This book is about a contested zoning issue in town government. It wants to be something more, and it's pages are full of Kim Stanley Robinson's wonderful characters, poetry, love triangles, and even personal tragedy.

But it's not about anything interesting. And it doesn't have a satisfying ending. ...more

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Nov 09, 2018 Kars rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, sci-fi

"One of the worst signs of our danger is we can’t imagine the route from here to utopia."

In a review for Tor.com, Jo Walton writes: "Pacific Edge is the only utopian novel that works, that shows you the world, that feels like a nice place to live, and that works as a story."

And that is all you really need to know. It was a pleasure dipping back into KSR after last reading something by him, which must have been the Mars trilogy. This shares some of the ideas later explored at a larger scale in th ...more

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Feb 27, 2019 Jack Atherton rated it really liked it

Pretty good. There are many bittersweet moments in utopia. Life will not stop being life no matter where we go. These are lessons I am not sure I was ready for, but I sure got them here.

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Mar 09, 2010 Steev Hise rated it it was ok

Shelves: own-it, novels, after-the-fall

Of this book my judgment is mixed: the author is exploring something I think we need more of: visualizing a near-future where humanity actually gets its shit together and starts fixing some seriously broken stuff, like our abuse of nature and the out-of-control power of corporate capitalism.

But sadly, as with many science-fiction writers, the prose is sort of low-quality. Well, I'll say medium-quality. I started out reading SF exclusively as a kid, but I guess when you get used to reading top-no Of this book my judgment is mixed: the author is exploring something I think we need more of: visualizing a near-future where humanity actually gets its shit together and starts fixing some seriously broken stuff, like our abuse of nature and the out-of-control power of corporate capitalism.

But sadly, as with many science-fiction writers, the prose is sort of low-quality. Well, I'll say medium-quality. I started out reading SF exclusively as a kid, but I guess when you get used to reading top-notch contemporary literature like Lethem, Bolaño, Eggers, Vonnegut, etc, and then come back to SF, it can be disappointing. SF addresses some important subject matter but really skilled authors in the genre are few and far between... and the thing about that is that Robinson is considered one of the betters ones!

I actually found myself skimming and flipping through big stretches of this novel because they were so bad and uninteresting to me. A lot of the story revolves around a love triangle between the main character, Kevin, Ramona, and the man Ramona's been partners with for many years, Alfredo. Alfredo and Ramona break up and then Kevin moves in, and the author blows many many words describing the bliss Kevin feels when he's successful at getting it on with Ramona, and how it's his first real love ever, etc etc. It's so bad that it reads like a Harlequin Romance! I don't mind a little character driven storyline, but I'm mostly interested in the future vision here, Kim, please spare us!

Sadly, I also find his sort of overexplanatory omniscient style to be a little annoying. The viewpoint switches from one character (always one of the "good" ones) to another fluidly, which is good, but you have to sit and watch each person think through all the back story and personal history that they know in order to get up to speed. I guess the other thing is that maybe as a filmmaker and someone who's been reading s lot of scripts and thinking about "show don't tell" I am less and less interested in that kind of story. And if you're going to stick us inside somebody's head, make that head unique and interesting, maybe a little unreliable, maybe profoundly different from the last head we were just in! ok? Also, most of Robinson's male characters are thinly-veiled horndogs who spend a lot of time noticing the shiny skin and muscled legs of the women they're crushing out on in this way that the author thinks is subtle but isn't really. "Insert gradually rising romantic tension here"... sigh.

Finally, even the future vision that drew me to this book was ultimately disappointing. Part of this can be forgiven by the fact that the book was published way back in 1988, before the dire situation with climate change and peak oil was really understood. Robinson actually alludes to these issues but for the most part the change he posits has mostly to do with limiting the size of corporations and limiting the incomes of individuals. These legal changes were made sometime about a generation before the events of the book take place, but there are still some rogue companies that are trying to grow bigger than they're supposed to, and some people trying to get richer than is legal.

The environment is nodded to, and there's plenty of bike riding. But there are still cars, mostly used via car-share type arrangements, and there are still genetic engineering companies, and high-tech materials companies, and they're getting ready to divert water down a huge aquaduct from the Columbia River in order to provide for the entire West now that the Colorado River isn't enough. It's typical sci-fi crap where horrid technological solutions are posited to solve the horrid problems created by the last round of technology, and people's lifestyles are somewhat more "green" but everyone still talks comfortably over video phones and travels the world in computerized super sailing ships and re-roofs their hip homes with wacky wonder-substances like "cloud gel"...

I just don't buy it anymore. The future won't look like that, not in 2065 as this book says, and not even in 2025. If we're to save the planet and humanity, the change must be much more profound. Maybe, if we're lucky, we'll still have books and bikes, but we won't be diverting the Columbia or designing heart valves. Hopefully.
...more

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Feb 18, 2013 Marion Hill rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2020-reads, reading-again

3.5 Stars

Kim Stanley Robinson is one of the science fiction writers I have read throughout my reading life. He joins Octavia Butler, Greg Bear, and Robert Silverberg as the science fiction writers I have found interesting and thought provoking to read.

Pacific Edge is the third book of The Three Californias Trilogy and a book that can read as a standalone novel. I have read the Kim stanley robinson mars trilogy 3 books collection set and Aurora by Robinson. This novel is my second favorite Robin ...more

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Jul 25, 2008 Brian rated it liked it

Recommends it for: Kevin, Bryan, Jill, Melisa

Recommended to Brian by: Lee Hendricks

Recommended by dear friend Lee as one of his top-10 fave novels of all time, I was a bit disappointed with it. Certainly unique to imagine a (literal, not negative) utopia with intrusive government, heavy taxation, lots of lawyers and byzantine land-use zoning regulations. And also somewhat rewarding to find repeated characters/themes in the trilogy -- but not overwhelming in the end.

A lot more romance/sex/relationships than the first two, which caught me off-guard and seemed to distract from hi ...more

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Apr 06, 2008 Ben rated it liked it

I liked a lot about this book. How many novels do you read where the local Green Party stops developers and engages with local residents in heated political arguments that are fairly sane?

But, as sometimes happens with KSR, the characters are not as sharply defined as they could be and it's easy to lose track of who is doing what. Hence I didn't like it as much as the great left activist/teacher/writer Mike Davis did.

Of the three books in the "Wild Shore Triptych" I liked The Gold Coast best, I ...more

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Sep 10, 2015 Candace rated it liked it · review of another edition

I liked what KSR was doing with this, but was a bit mixed on a lot of the particulars. I'll be making a video review very soon! ...more

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Oct 17, 2019 Julie rated it really liked it

Shelves: fiction

I'm all about utopian stories set in the near future that explore how we got from here to there. “Pacific Edge” is set in 2065 and was published in 1990. In this story, 2012 is the date at which countries around the world began to change things for the better. Hmmm. We seem to have missed that deadline by about seven years. Maybe it's 2020?

This book is part of an inventive trilogy that explores three possible futures with the same characters in the same place, Southern California. It’s fundamen I'm all about utopian stories set in the near future that explore how we got from here to there. “Pacific Edge” is set in 2065 and was published in 1990. In this story, 2012 is the date at which countries around the world began to change things for the better. Hmmm. We seem to have missed that deadline by about seven years. Maybe it's 2020?

This book is part of an inventive trilogy that explores three possible futures with the same characters in the same place, Southern California. It’s fundamentally an issue book, not only the world-building of a utopia, but how people designed it and brought it about. I’m impressed by the research into economics, politics, law, philosophy, and science that must have gone into it.

The story begins with the setting, which is developed as lovingly and with as much realistic detail as the characters.

“Despair could never touch a morning like this.
The air was cool, and smelled of sage. It had the clarity that comes to southern California only after a Santa Ana wind has blown all haze and history out to sea—air like telescopic glass, so that the snowtopped San Gabriels seems near enough to touch, though they were forty miles away. The flanks of the blue foothills revealed the etching of every ravine, and beneath the foothills, stretching to the sea, the broad coastal plain seemed nothing but treetops: groves of orange, avocado, lemon, olive; windbreaks of eucalyptus and palm; ornamentals of a thousand different varieties, both natural and genetically engineered. It was as if the whole plain were a garden run riot, with the dawn sun flushing the landscape every shade of green.”

It’s a fitting way to open, as this very hilltop will be the focus of the story’s conflict. Yes, even in a utopia, there’s conflict.

The themes are rich enough for any novel: love of place, belonging, friendship, family, politics, striving. The utopian aspects are care of land, wonder for nature, engaged citizenry, and low-impact / conscious living. The action takes place in town council meetings, an ultralight airplane, softball games, house renovations, discussions of legal strategies and history, drunken debauchery, hiking and camping in the mountains, cooperatively fighting a wildfire, even drag racing and pro wrestling.

Robinson uses occasional passages from a journal being written in 2012 by a mysterious character (remember, this is set in 2065) to frame the idea of a “pocket utopia.” It’s penned by a young man with a scientist wife and young child, dreaming of a better world. We eventually meet him as a wise elder in the present-day of the story. These journal entries are a sort of alter-ego to speak the author’s thoughts about how to create a tidal wave of change world-wide. The young man asks into his own ability to influence such a massive shift as an activist and environmental lawyer. I recognized both his questions and his vision. It’s a bit disheartening that this book was written thirty years ago! That’s thirty years we could have been working towards this future, instead of wrangling about inequality, instability, and injustice in the present.

Robinson’s world-building is masterful. Staring around 2012, there was worldwide cooperation to rein in corporate size, power and wealth-hoarding. To return democratic rule for people and municipalities, they set limits on how much money any one individual can make. In this world, cars are rare. People bike everywhere. Ships are high-tech and powered by sail. Airplanes are pedal-driven gliders. People see themselves as part of an ecosystem. They live communally, in tribes of extended family units, groups of friends, intergenerational. Everyone has their privacy as well. They caretake the present and plan for the future. They interact with the natural world in appreciative ways. They experience themselves as the animals they are, playing and reveling in the beauty and abundance of nature.

The storytelling is well-crafted with poetic language. The descriptions of natural phenomena in particular are stunning—the light at the ocean on a summer day or a mountain trail by starlight. It’s plotted with love triangles and political scheming and activist pushbacks. It’s enough of a page-turner that I wanted to know what would happen next.

The main character, Kevin, is a designer-builder, which means he lives this question: How, then, shall we live? His work explores his answers. We would do well to follow his lead.
...more

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Feb 07, 2020 William Fricke rated it really liked it

Shelves: reviews

COUCH FACTOR (1-5): 🛋️🛋️🛋️🛋️

I bought Pacific Edge at Gene's Books on Sanibel Island. I put this on my to-read list on Goodreads when an old acquaintance of mine marked it as 4-stars. I had never heard of Kim Stanley Robinson before but knew the friend's tastes titled toward mine in the science fiction world.

Gene's Books is an amazing place. Books are piled everywhere from the floor to mid-chest. Just stacks and stacks of books that are in a slight resemblance of order. When I walked in I could o COUCH FACTOR (1-5): 🛋️🛋️🛋️🛋️

I bought Pacific Edge at Gene's Books on Sanibel Island. I put this on my to-read list on Goodreads when an old acquaintance of mine marked it as 4-stars. I had never heard of Kim Stanley Robinson before but knew the friend's tastes titled toward mine in the science fiction world.

Gene's Books is an amazing place. Books are piled everywhere from the floor to mid-chest. Just stacks and stacks of books that are in a slight resemblance of order. When I walked in I could only wander in wonder at all the books. It was a book lover's dream. As I looked around, I decided that I didn't want to get just any book, but an author I had never read before. A book that would truly be memorable - one way or another. That is when I decided to buy Kim Stanley Robinson's Pacific Edge.

I packed the book in my suitcase, telling myself that I would read it as soon as I finished whatever novel I was on at the time. Well, Pacific Edge sat in my TBR pile for nearly a year as I read around it, got pulled into a series, or just overlooked it. Then last week, I pulled it from the pile and set it out on my desk, away from the dusty confines of the TBR shelf.

What I thought was going to be a dystopian science fiction tour de force, turned out to be a utopian realistic fiction narrative that closely resembled our every day lives - except with much softball.

The world Robinson paints is so real, so mundane that I constantly overlooked that this was a science fiction story. We come to understand through bits and pieces interwoven narrative that there was a fall out of some sort in the world that made nations all across the world disallow capitalism and force people to live in near socialist communities, where people were given town shares and asked to ride bikes everywhere and grow most of their vegetables. Their houses were reconstructed to be a part of the landscape, not stand in contrast to it. And instead of everyone living in their own little homes, families lived with other families in order to connect with more lives, more humanity.

This reminded me of a Ted Talk I listened to once where the speaker described the main culprit of divorce as one person not being enough for another or too much for one another. The world, he said, needed more connection, so when your partner just wasn't enough at that moment you had a friend that could shoulder the burden for a bit. I think we all need real tangible others to rely on a little bit.

And this idea of sharing the burden of living with everyone is at the crux of Pacific Edge. The town shares the burden of supporting each other, the families share the burden of supporting each other, and the entire community shares the burden of supporting the environment. Written in 1988, the idea of the entire world taking care of our planet was not necessarily new, but we have much more to go before we are out of the woods.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
QUOTE:

I don't want to set-up this quote or try to summarize the plot leading up to it. I just want to lay it down for everyone to read, everyone has memories, good and bad, so everyone should understand this idea.

"Tom laughed ... "Time changes us in more ways than we can ever imagine. What happens in time . . . you become somebody else, do you understand?" His voice shook. "You don't forget, but how you feel about what you remember . . . that changes." . . . . "But it could be worse! You could forget! And that would be worse." "
...more

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Feb 07, 2016 Maynard Handley rated it it was ok

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. I'm not sure quite how to read this novel (and the entire triptych project) so I'll give an initial review (with spoilers), then some comments on an alternative reading.

So: the straight reading.
This is a deeply unsatisfying novel, clearly a very early effort. I'm not going to dwell on how it's unsatisfying as "literature", plenty of others have done that, but on how it's unsatisfying as a utopian novel. The basic problem is that such a novel has to explain how and why its society works, somethin I'm not sure quite how to read this novel (and the entire triptych project) so I'll give an initial review (with spoilers), then some comments on an alternative reading.

So: the straight reading.
This is a deeply unsatisfying novel, clearly a very early effort. I'm not going to dwell on how it's unsatisfying as "literature", plenty of others have done that, but on how it's unsatisfying as a utopian novel. The basic problem is that such a novel has to explain how and why its society works, something of a theory of human relations that allows the setup to work; even the most (literally) juvenile utopias, something like The Twenty-One Balloons, understand that this is an essential convention of the genre.

But KSR omits these details, making the story, what, an uninteresting soap opera? The mental model he seems to be working with is that "evil developers destroyed Orange County in the early 21st C because of the evil evilness of their hearts and the greedy greediness of their desires". There's no discussion, for example, of the issue of population pressures. In the real world, as opposed to his fantasy, if every couple wants four kids, then where are those kids going to live? It is THAT growth in population that leads to things like massive development of OC, and yet in his utopia he says nothing about what happened to the excess population, and what restrains it from again growing out of bounds.

There's a similar lack of interest in thinking about issues that actually matter vs issues of minor importance. The central focus of the book is some minor hill in an area that already has plenty of undeveloped land. What does it matter if it gets developed? OK, it's supposed to be a symbol of a slippery slope or whatever, but it's only a slippery slope if that development is not replaced by another empty hill. If the population is stable and small (as it has to be if the whole system is going to work) then there is no slippery slope; there's simply not going to be any indefinitely increasing demand for ever-more development. Once again we see a refusal to actually confront root issues.

The impression I got, I'm sorry to say, is not of someone who wants to take ecology seriously, but of, in fact, the worst sort of obsession with property right --- "I got mine, and tough for everyone else". There seems to be an expectation that if Kevin is enjoying "his" hill, it's thereby his and no-one else deserves to consider alternative ways to use it. We see a more striking version of this in the constant re-iteration of the Owens Valley/LA water business, with the implication that it is reasonable for a tiny number of people in the Owens Valley to use (or not use) as they wish, a resource that could otherwise benefit millions of people in Los Angeles. My point is not to choose sides, it is to point out the utterly muddled thinking throughout the book. Half the time KSR is complaining that property rights are too strong, that we should all be communal, should share, should look at the big picture; the other half of the time he is complaining that "the system" is taking stuff away from its "natural owners" to benefit other people who "don't deserve it".
(By the way, an obsession with Owens Valley, IMHO, shows too much time spent watching Chinatown and not enough time spent studying actual California water. The flows from the Colorado [to LA and the Imperial Valley irrigation], and from the Sacramento area to the Central Valley are just as interesting, and far larger and more important --- but they can't as easily be cast into some sort of moralizing mold.)

We see this same sort of muddled thinking throughout the triptych. The Gold Coast is supposed to show out of control development, but, what's actually so bad about it? Look at the whole LA/OC area in Apple Maps. You'll see plenty of mountain land that is not developed today, and seems unlikely to be developed in the next twenty years for very practical reasons. Even in the novel, the Sierra Nevada is still there, undeveloped. So what exactly is the complaint? There are real ecological complaints about development, to do with carrying capacity, with destroying species, with using up resources. But those are not the arguments of the book. The arguments of the book appear to be "I personally find a certain type of development ugly and I wish it would go away". OK, but other people disagree with you, they like living in this type of built environment -- and by the way, it's a big country. If you want to live a rural life, what's stopping you? Go move to the very north of CA, or central Oregon, or into the desert, or to Iowa? Once again, a muddled argument that seems to boil down to the worst sort of "Everyone must want what I want, and those who don't are evil".

OK, so that's reading it straight. There is an alternative reading, which is to say that the whole thing is a kind of elaborate, not joke exactly, but mockery of the idea of utopia, and in particular the sort of eco-utopia portrayed in Pacific Edge. Arguments you could make for this reading include the way in which there is (really!) not much difference between the first and third novels. One is supposed to be post-nuclear apocalypse, the other eco-utopia, but what the hell is the difference? They are both based on small farming communities, local is beautiful and all that. They both show that hell is other people, that we are most hurt by irreconcilable human differences (boy wants A, girl wants B) regardless of our environment.
Likewise the small arguments between engineer-father and impractical (and ignorant) author-son in The Gold Coast suggest that there's *some* sort of considering of the big picture by KSR; and these sorts of nods to the knowledgeable reader become more striking in Pacific Edge in the form of the weird short "diary entries" from 2012 that talk about things like the futility of writing about utopia, or showing how Oscar, the large lumbering lawyer, wants to achieve flourishing via means and in a direction very different from the priorities of the (let's face it) eternal teenagers of El Modena.
And of course there are the obvious literary flourishes like the openings of all three novels that are variations on a theme, or the old-timer named Tom in each novel.

So which of these is the correct reading? I honestly don't know. I lean towards the second because KSR (in his later work) seems to be a fairly self- and other-aware guy, and because it's the sort of thing you could imagine someone wanting to write SF (but with a degree in literature) might want to do: "I'm going to write what looks like a standard, somewhat cliched, set of SF novels; but there's going to be a second level to them that the rubes will miss but which I and my colleagues will know are there". But this sort of thing is a dangerous game to play --- I've read a number of reviews of the triptych, and they all seem to read them straight, to rave about how, for example, "Pacific Edge shows us such an idyllic world that could be, blah blah". You can't really change the world (and get it to think more sensibly about the big picture) if the message encoded in your writing is so deep that no-one can see it!
And i can't deny the fact that in the (few) interviews I'v seen with KSR on these three novels, I have to admit he hews to the straight reading all the way, without so much as a hint that there's anything deeper there.
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Aug 09, 2019 Jenny Chase rated it really liked it

This book is worthwhile - I went looking for this specifically because I was after the genre of plausible low-energy futures, and this fits the bill. The main plot, of a carpenter called Kevin being disappointed in love and trying to stop development in his backyard, is deliberately low-stakes; can't have a utopia with too much tension. I'm not sure how this could be overcome, in a plot sense, but it's a good stab at having a genuine utopia with a real plot.

I didn't really warm to protagonist K This book is worthwhile - I went looking for this specifically because I was after the genre of plausible low-energy futures, and this fits the bill. The main plot, of a carpenter called Kevin being disappointed in love and trying to stop development in his backyard, is deliberately low-stakes; can't have a utopia with too much tension. I'm not sure how this could be overcome, in a plot sense, but it's a good stab at having a genuine utopia with a real plot.

I didn't really warm to protagonist Kevin, it has to be said. He behaved well but most of his motivation was very selfish - perfectly realistic and sometimes nicely written, but meh. A few of the arc words, like "you can't have a pocket utopia" stayed with me.

Not sure how realistic this world really is - the author deliberately avoids going into much detail of how it works, but people do still drive (apparently internal combustion?) cars though they do not own them and mostly travel by bicycle, they eat meat, there isn't really anyone with a knowledgeable perspective on ecology to comment on the effect all this low-energy living is having. The sailing ships are cool, slightly ruined by their actual effect, and the idea of each communal living unit being linked by regular videocall to a number of others around the world is interesting but seems inessential. I suppose the idea is that mass media has disappeared and person-to-person connection is all the rage, but it seems like the technology level should support some good TV or films. (Possibly their disappearance is a result of the laws on how large corporations are allowed to be? Is mass media really incompatible with a low-carbon lifestyle? I guess I might have to read the rest of the triptych to find out the author's views on that, though I would have thought no).

There seemed to be interesting worldbuilding going on out of the frame, like the space programme beaming solar to earth. This looks increasingly implausible as ground-based solar gets cheaper, but I suppose this was written in 1995 so I should cut it slack there!

Also the softball is confusing, boring and meaningless. ...more

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Sep 18, 2020 Carl Mucho rated it liked it

Shelves: fiction, reviewed

Third in a trilogy about the author's different visions of the future, Pacific Edge hits the mark on its myriad speculations on how the world will be like in 2065 which eerily resembles what it is now in 2020. It gives a nod, though briefly and in spurts, to current problems that beset humanity: an out of control pandemic (HIV), climate change, corporate greed and its hijacking of government, social injustices and partisanship.

The story is set in an ecotopia (ecological utopia) where Green Party ...more

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Apr 14, 2018 A Reader rated it liked it

Shelves: science-fiction

3.5 stars

Utopia means 'no place' or 'nowhere'. You can't ignore this irony reading K.S.Robinson' s concluding book of Three Californias series about alternate futures seen from the perspective of Orange County, California. Pacific Edge (first published in 1990) is an ecofiction, it portrays a near-future utopian dreaming scenario that it is only slightly shifted from our own reality.

Most of the region has undergone hyper-development but citizen action has limited growth and the expansion of bi ...more

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Mar 02, 2020 Joshua rated it it was ok

When I read the first book in the triptych, I thought, "Not spectacular, but not bad, either." The second book wasn't as good as the first. This one was almost like watching paint dry.

So I enjoy Robinson for the most part, but I'm not sure I understand his mindset... All three books definitely have a Green/environmentalist angle. But if you are going to write about three alternate futures from the 1980s, I don't know why the third one was about a town's struggle to keep its last hilltop green an ...more

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Dec 07, 2020 Forrest rated it liked it

This book gets a conflicted review from me.

Don’t get me wrong—I loved it. The world Kim Stanley Robinson has envisioned is a true vision of ecosocialist ideals and is certainly an early work of the growing movement now known as solarpunk. There are incredible, imaginative ideas in here that got me really excited, and I loved the journal entries from the narrator who remains unknown for much of the book.

Then there are the characters. I don’t know what it was, but I never could connect with the ch ...more

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Aug 18, 2017 Katherine rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction, speculative-fiction

And the last of the Three Californias. Three variations of a future Orange County. Three different fates. This book describes the best possible fate -- a world that's brought unchecked capitalism under control, a world where we are able to live in harmony with the surroundings, a possible utopia.

And yet there's still conflict, there are still people doing bad things and being evil. It's funny that KSR's most recent book dealt with real estate drama, as this one does as well, and it's the main un ...more

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Mar 02, 2017 Phillip rated it it was amazing

This short, unassuming book wormed its way into my imagination and has become one of my favorite books. I can't tell you how many people I've recommended it to and told about its semi-utopian ideal of California. Of what the world could look like if environmental movements "won" and we redefined what efficiency meant, to mirror sustainability. And the fact that regardless of how just and environmental our system is, people are still people and life will still be a tricky maze of broken individua ...more

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Apr 16, 2020 Adam rated it liked it

Shelves: 2020

Picked this up because a review in Slate of the Three Californias Triptych made it sound interesting, and because I remember liking "Red Mars."

Similar to that book, this takes us into a different world, but easy to imagine as our future because, while life has changed -- do to a massive shift in values and laws, which are revealed gradually -- people still have their petty rivalries, their political battles, their loves and losses and eccentricities.

The characters are interesting enough, the p ...more

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Mar 02, 2018 Kim Clarke rated it liked it

Having finally finished the third book I can give a more complete review.

It is hard to say that these books are 'about' anything specific. We are shown three alternate futures for one particular area of California. One after a nuclear war, one a future which looks more like what we could actually get and a third with something of a utopian town.

There is one character is each story, an Elder man by the name of 'Uncle' Tom, who may or may not be supposed to be the same person. What you do have is ...more

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Jul 26, 2019 Graeme rated it really liked it

"And suddenly I was telling him about it, the heat, the barbed wire, the nights in the dorm, the presence of the hospital, the fear, the courage of all those inside. It's not fair, I said, my voice straining. They shouldn't be able to do that to them! I seized the newspaper, shook it. They shouldn't be able to do any of this!

I know, the lawyer said, sipping his coffee and looking at me. But people are afraid. They're afraid of what's happening, and they're afraid of the changes we would have to ...more

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Dec 13, 2020 Maria Beltrami rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: narrativa-nordamericana, fantascienza, utopia, solar-punk

The third and final volume in Robinson's California trilogy, it moves from the dystopia of the first two to a kind of utopia, a return to nature, not in the primitivist sense, but a nature from which the best can be obtained by applying technology, from renewable energies onwards. Of course, not all that glitters is gold, and the old methods of profit are always trying to peep through. The book's "ecotopist" pages alternate with those that record the memories of Tom, the protagonist's grandfathe ...more

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About Kim Stanley Robinson

Kim Stanley Robinson

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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

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Three Californias Triptych (4 books)

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Interview with Kim Stanley Robinson

Cast naked into the wilds of the Paleolithic Ice Age, a young apprentice braves the elements in Shaman, a prehistorical novel by the science...

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Quotes from Pacific Edge

“I grew up in a utopia, I did. California when I was a child was a child's paradise, I was healthy, well fed, well clothed, well housed. I went to school and there were libraries with all the world in them and after school I played in orange groves and in Little League and in the band and down at the beach and every day was an adventure. . . . I grew up in utopia.” — 18 likes

“Utopia is the process of making a better world, the name for one path history can take, a dynamic, tumultuous, agonizing process, with no end. Struggle forever.” — 18 likes

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