Any book has to have some relevance to its reader, whether it be the vicarious experiences of its characters or, as in a lot of science fiction, the displacement of current issues into another time and place.Īs I read the book I was reminded of the housing shortage here, in Sydney, for instance. One test of good science fiction is relevance. While the life of the poor is marginal, even dangerous given the possibility of building collapse, the rich enjoy their mega-expensive buildings in peace, maybe once or twice a year, while the rest of the time holding them only as investments, since they spend most of their lives in other places away from the flooding, like Denver. Poor people continue to live in the intertidal zone in buildings awash with the rising sea, while the rich now enjoy super-scrapers, buildings now reaching as high as three hundred storeys, thanks to advancements in building materials. Added to this, sunken New York has become a topographical metaphor for the class distinctions and economic stratification of capitalism.

New York, and of course the rest of the world, has suffered two inundations caused by the melting of the polar caps, and now sea levels sit fifty feet higher than they did at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

This future New York is beset by emergent problems of our own time primarily, the effects of global warming due to the release of carbon, as well as the failures of the capitalist system. Finally, there’s the citizen, or sometimes it’s the city, with an historic perspective on the political and economic landscape of New York 2140.Īs Kim Stanley Robinson’s title suggests, this is futuristic New York. Also, Vlade, her superintendent, Franklin, a speculator on the stock market and real estate who specialises in the intertidal areas of drowned New York Stefan and Roberto, two orphan boys who stumble upon a fortune in gold from a sunken treasure and Amelia, young and beautiful with an internet show of her own, flying the world in her air ship to rescue animals. There’s Charlotte Armstrong, head of the Household Union for the building in which they all live. There’s Inspector Gen, a tall African-American police chief who is tasked with investigating their mysterious disappearance. There’re two guys, Mutt and Jeff, quants, meaning they are advanced computer programmers, who see the corruption of the system and attempt an ill-conceived hack to change things.

2140 kim stanley robinson