From the Bookshelf of The Great Hugo Read…

2312

Kim Stanley Robinson

Start date: July 1, 2013

Finish date: July 30, 2013

Discussion: 2013 Nominees

Why we're reading this: 2013 Nominee
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2013 Nominees

Hugo Winners
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last updated Sep 03, 2013 09:41AM

Hypothetical Ballot
By D.L. · 3 posts · 4 views

last updated Aug 30, 2013 09:08AM

What Members Thought

Mar 26, 2013 Bradley rated it it was amazing

Shelves: sci-fi, worldbuilding-sf

This was a slightly more difficult book than is usual, but no less satisfying for having read it.

I remember the Mars Trilogy with great fondness but I also remember it being stuffed full of invention and depth that most tales have no more than a gloss. This novel is very much like his previous novels in this regard. I am at once in awe and fully satisfied with the tale as I am also annoyed at how long it took to have the human aspect developed.

If anyone had told me during the first 300 pages t ...more

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Apr 01, 2013 Jeff Stockett rated it liked it

Shelves: science-fiction, 2013-hugo-nominees

There's so much I really like about this book. There's also so much I really didn't like.

The plot is somewhat thin and unravels very slowly. There is someone performing terrorist attacks throughout the solar system. What their motive is, or even how they are able to perform the attacks is a mystery. Much of the book is spent travelling throughout the solar system to investigate.

That's where the good stuff comes in. The slow and fairly weak plot was just an excuse to travel throughout the solar s There's so much I really like about this book. There's also so much I really didn't like.

The plot is somewhat thin and unravels very slowly. There is someone performing terrorist attacks throughout the solar system. What their motive is, or even how they are able to perform the attacks is a mystery. Much of the book is spent travelling throughout the solar system to investigate.

That's where the good stuff comes in. The slow and fairly weak plot was just an excuse to travel throughout the solar system, to see the various landscapes and discover, in detail, how humanity came to be flung throughout the system, from the white hot surface of mercury to the far flung moons of Saturn.

I have to admit, I loved every page as it described the various settlements. It made me want to live in the future.

I wanted to be there, walking the surface of mercury, ever fleeing the slow rotation of the planet and the danger that would accompany sunrise for those who couldn't move fast enough. Or living in the covered domes of Venus, with the giant sun shield that eclipses the sun and makes survival possible.

I marveled at the thought of terrariums inside of hollowed out asteroids. I experienced the terror of open space, floating in a suit with no other life for hundreds of thousands of miles, or the elation of riding the gravity waves in the rings of Saturn.

That part of the book was masterful, there was obviously great thought that went into how to terraform the planets and survive their harsh conditions. I'm no physicist, but the science did seem plausible, at least from my limited understanding.

Unfortunately, as the story was drawing to a close, and it was wrapping up the terrorist plots and the love story, I began to realize that I didn't care that much about the story itself. I had a passing curiosity about the motives of the terrorists, but when I realized it was done describing fabulous new worlds, I wasn't super excited to finish.

That being said, the exploration of the solar system was sufficiently awesome to make this a worthwhile read. It just seems that, with that as the focus, the plot definitely suffered. ...more

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Jun 09, 2013 MD rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

Wow, what an imagination, even for science fiction. Even though I found some of them annoying (a graphic explanation of sex where both participants have both male and female sex organs was neither sexy nor necessary) the sheer volume of ideas represented in this book blew me away. And yet I have to admit I didn't really enjoy it that much. Maybe the inventiveness of the settings got in the way of plotting.

I definitely could have done without the odds and ends of stuff between the chapters. Yes ...more

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