REVIEW: New York 2140 by Kim Stanley Robinson

I have a hard time not finishing books. It somehow feels like being irresponsible, like not finishing a job. I can only think of one book I stopped reading because it was so bad (I shall leave it unnamed).

I loved Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy and considered those novels some of the best I’d ever read. All the more disappointing is the fact that I almost quit reading New York 2140 three times.

The concept and setting are good, if not original. The world has heated up, and the ice caps have melted, raising the level of the seas (far more than any model predicts, but this is fiction). While many books and movies have used this idea, Robinson sets his entirely in New York, a city he knows well. Much of the city is now underwater, with many buildings partially submerged, but continuing to be used. Building managers and city services constantly monitor the soggy roots, reinforcing and waterproofing where necessary. Reading about how the people and society have adjusted to this “new” New York is the best part of the book.

However, the narrative suffers from a number of serious flaws. The plot meanders and never really resolves anything. There is no climax, it just trails off. A major hurricane about 2/3 of the way through the book sets up some of the best action, as the characters prepare, survive, and recover. But there are other subplots and character arcs that are not connected in any way, except that the characters eventually meet up with each other. They do coalesce around a political and economic idea, but they also gather together to find a sunken treasure and become rich from it—but the two have nothing to do with each other.

The characters are stock and flat and experience little or no growth. The tough black female NYPD officer; the building manager; two rapscallion boys with good hearts; two nerdy programmers; a sort of reality-show woman who appears shallow and ditzy but cares deeply and his smarter than people think; a hedge funds trader (who has the potential to show the most growth and then virtually disappears halfway through the book.)

Themes throughout the story are just as flat as the characters, with no tension or real depth. Rich people are all evil and greedy; politicians are all corrupt, inept, and shallow (sure, we all say that, but most of us know that not all are that way). Capitalism is a disaster, and socialism is the answer to all of society’s troubles, with no downsides, and if only the traditional politicians could see that, all would be well (never mind that history has shown the opposite is usually true.) One wonders if the entire novel is a riff on Bernie Sanders-style politics, without true engagement or study of the issues. Which would be fine if that presentation was not so much like a cardboard cutout without any tension or depth.

Worse still, there are chapters interspersed throughout that are screeds on the evils of human-caused global warming, capitalism, wealth, and democratic republicanism. In these chapters, the author (or narrator) speaks directly to the reader, telling him how terrible the humans of the 20th and 21st century were, how their short-sightedness caused all the problems that exist in 2140, and how socialist economic theory is the best for society if only the rich and powerful weren’t so greedy and unfeeling. Robinson did apparently do research, for he ha the terminology of the theories down pat, but again, he presents all theories (both the ones he prefers and the ones he dislikes) in a shallow manner that belies his lack of understanding. In a number of places, his use of some terms or historical events are flat wrong (or perhaps the flaw is that he is overly-biased and cannot see another side—it is hard to tell). This is disappointing because his novels that focused on science and deep characters were excellent.

These chapters violate the “show-don’t-tell” rule for writing good fiction. Of course, that doesn’t mean a writer should never just “tell” instead of “showing,” but these are long, long sections telling us what happened and then shouting his outrage at the reader. (He even does this too much in the narrative section at times). Moreover, the chapters are completely unnecessary to the plot. The narrator even tells the reader to skip them if she or he would like! Everyone doesn’t have to write like Hemingway, but if you have written large sections of your book that you know are unnecessary—leave them out and don’t waste the reader’s time!

The flat characters, undeveloped themes, wandering plot without resolution, and the structural and content elements that are plain bad writing, leave me wondering what happened to Kim Stanley Robinson. As I mentioned in a previous post, Hemingway once wrote that “Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. Organizations for writers palliate the writer’s loneliness but I doubt if they improve his writing. He grows in public stature as he sheds his loneliness and often his work deteriorates.” I hope this book is not a sign of deterioration of Robinson, but an outlier, a lazy book written and published because he could get away with it due to his stature.
It is stunning to me that it was a finalist for the 2018 Hugo Award, and forces the conclusion that the political and social themes matched the judges so well that they ignored its literary flaws.

If you lived or have lived in New York, or know the city well, you’ll enjoy seeing it in this state, and how the characters embody the New York attitudes. If you enjoy deep characters, character arcs, well-crafted plots, rich themes, and complexity, you will probably want to put this 656-page book down halfway through or avoid it all together. Go read his Mars trilogy.