One of these books I picked after seeing so many people recommend it. I had a huge apprehension picking it up as Kim Stanley Robinson wrote the Mars Trilogy and I hated this book with such a passion, I didn’t read sci-fi books for years after that….

A solarpunk summary

Having read Termination Shock by Neal Stephenson a few years (what, is it years already) back, the content was nothing new. Environmental crisis, what can we do.

Except this time, instead of focusing on a bunch of unlikeable rich characters, KSR started focusing on everyday people to make the story more griping.

Is it though

Started is the main word here. The main story revolves around Mary, the director of a UN agency established right after a catastrophic heatstroke in India.

And that’s pretty much it. Of course there are other characters but always in the background, always perceived in their relation with Mary.

Or, unnamed. If the chapters are supposed to show how everyone’s life is impacted all around the world, how come they are not worthy of a name ? Especially given that some (or at least I can only guess) make recurrent apparitions in dedicated chapters.

Let’s talk about style

Some of the chapters feel like filler. Like they have no connection with the story. Don’t contribute to the plot, ambiance, setting or anything. As if KSR saw his 500+ pages manuscript and decided it needed a few more chapters in poetic prose from the view points of physics particles or celestial bodies or a herd of reindeers.

Reading the final 5 chapters felt like a chore. The main plots were finished but KSR wanted to close his character lines ? Or realised after 550 pages that he hadn’t really described what life was like beyond the office and the implementation projects ?

Top-down techno-solutionism

But I think the main issue I have is the main approach of the book.

In a way, the book is a fictional description / application of the concepts described in books like How to blow up a pipeline, Half-Earth Socialism or Red Plenty. It’s not even hidden, the books are mentioned quite a few times.

That said, it mostly focuses on the technical applications of said books. What technologies to use. How implementation projects go.

And for all the lip service it gives to left wing politics, auto-organisation and determination etc, everything it showcases it top-down, imposed through some half-assed arm-wrangling with the old world powers unelected representatives by unelected technocrats.

As part of the lack of representation of non-technocrats, I am astonished at the lack of opposition to the whole thing. If the Covid pandemic taught us anything, it’s that conspiracy theories and opposition for the sake of opposition to any cross-national project will occur and be the main problem in such projects.

Sure, there are some attacks from time to time and some underground BUT their goals are always aligned with the book’s main plot line. No real divergent voices.

I mean, the main character basically designate the Chinese Finance Minister as her successor while a few chapters later, acknowledging that the Chinese system is a mess, taking Hong Kong as an example and basically saying that the HK activists should just do sitting protests to get their demands. I was wondering if the role given to the Chinese representative was decided in order to get the book translated in Chinese while having an extremely tame, indépendant chapter on HK was meant as a way to not rustle too many feathers, or, should that be too much for Chinese censors, the chapter itself could be excised with no impact.

I won’t even say a word about the whole kink KSR seems to have for blockchain.

Representation, again

And damn, you can feel it has been written by an American writer.

From the Irish main characters referring to US animals to describe animals which are common knowledge in Europe to the omnipresence of Fahrenheit in situation with no American characters around. To the whole… vibe of the book. Sure, it states that the US is an hegemonic colonialist power, which is the main problem to push the projects forward, but still.

It also feels like KSR, having decided to give some India-background to some of his plot and characters, did some research and discovered that their was some Indian-English idioms and decided to make use of that knowledge. More precisely, he overuses « do the needful » and this only. And he did this only for his Indian characters. No British- or Irish English. No Russian intonations for his Russian character, just plain old American English because, you know, for a book 80% based in Switzerland, with an international cast of characters, it just makes sense it seems. Insert Captain Picard facepalm gif here.

Looking back, I might have been a bit harsh earlier saying there was no grassroot actions. There’s a chapter which is basically a long list of organisation names. Yep, that’s it. A list. Have I already mentioned how much the style sucks and some chapters feel like fillers?

Final word

At best, meh.

More readable than the Mars Trilogy but I didn’t like neither content nor style, even though a few chapters are good.

Later complement : Having read / listened to a lot of interviews following the publication of the french edition of the book, I now understand that his main target audience is the actual public workers who are the main drivers of the story. Make a story with characters they can identify with so that things start moving ?