Book Review: 2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson.

Kim Stanley Robinson is an American science fiction author best known for his Mars trilogy (Mars Red, Mars Green and Mars Blue) about the colonization of and terraforming of Mars. “2312” is a recent novel but Robinson is such a prolific writer that he already has a new novel “Aurora” just coming out so you’ll have to forgive me for being a bit behind.

As you can guess “2312” takes place three hundred years from now when the human race is well on its way to the complete colonization of the Solar System. Mars has been terraformed and the terraforming of Venus is underway. Meanwhile Mercury and Earth’s Moon along with three of Jupiter’s and two of Saturn’s moons all have substantial population. Not only that but numerous asteroids have been hollowed out and turned into small worldlets, each with its own particular ecosystem. The image below is an artists impression of the interior of such an asteroid.

Swan Er Hong is a citizen of Mercury, an artist and designer of some of the asteroid / worldlets whose grandmother Alex has recently died. In her grandmother’s will Swan is tasked with taking some vital information to several of Alex’s confidants out at Saturn. The information is very sensitive in nature and cannot be trusted to transmission by radio. In carrying out this task Swan becomes involved in a secret organization trying to defend humanity against a conspiracy that threatens the lives of millions.

It’s the actual fight against this conspiracy that is the weakest part of “2312”. Aside from an attack on Mercury’s only city, most of the population manages to escape; the bad guys don’t really do much. In fact it isn’t until you’re 7/8ths of the way through the novel that you can point at someone and say, he’s a bad guy. There’s a lot of theorizing about who the bad guys could be and what their motives are but nothing concrete until near the very end. In fact the motives of the bad guys are never made really clear. And the final defeat of the bad guys itself is rather anti-climatic, the interplanetary police just round them all up in about two pages.

The reason for reading “2312” is all of the descriptions, they are wondrous. In “2312” you get to visit every planet, yes even Pluto, and every one of them is a unique world unto itself. Between Sunwalking on Mercury or surfing the “F” ring of Saturn you’ll read about things you never imagined.

In fact some of the most interesting things are the asteroid / worldlets that I should also mention have been given engines so traveling from one planet to another usually involves jumping on an asteroid that’s going your way. Many of these asteroid / worldlets have ecologies that preserve one of Earth’s damaged ecosystems (Earth is in kinda bad shape). There are other, more interesting worldlets as well however, let’s just say Jurassic Asteroid! The image below shows what such an asteroid could look like from the outside.

The people of the early 24th century are also very different as humanity adapts to life in space. Although it’s not mentioned explicitly there must be some kind of gene editing going on. There certainly is with the dinosaurs and woolly mammoths.

Kim Stanley Robinson is a writer best known for his interests in ecology, culture and politics and that’s certainly what you get in “2312”. O’k the plot may be a little thin but think of “2312” as a roller coaster ride, you have a lot of fun so does it really matter if you don’t get very far?

“2312” is like a visit to the early 24th century, that’s something that it does very well.