Forty signs of rain
author of the classic Mars trilogy and The Years of Rice and Salt returns with a riveting new trilogy of cutting-edge science, international politics, and the real-life ramifications of global warming as they are played out in our nation's capital--and in the daily lives of those at the center of the action. Hauntingly realistic, here is a novel of the near future that is inspired by scientific facts already making headlines.When the Arctic ice pack was first measured in the 1950s, it averaged thirty feet thick in midwinter. By the end of the century it was down to fifteen. One August the ice broke. The next year the breakup started in July. The third year it began in May. That was last year.It's an increasingly steamy summer in the nation's capital as Senate environmental staffer Charlie Quibler cares for his young son and deals with the frustrating politics of global warming. Charlie must find a way to get a skeptical administration to act before it's too late--and his progeny find themselves living in Swamp World. But the political climate poses almost as great a challenge as the environmental crisis when it comes to putting the public good ahead of private gain. While Charlie struggles to play politics, his wife, Anna, takes a more rational approach to the looming crisis in her work at the National Science Foundation. There a proposal has come in for a revolutionary process that could solve the problem of global warming--if it can be recognized in time.
Stats for nerds
1recommend
5mentions
4people
2010–2024years
40% recommend60% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Recommended reading: Forty Signs of Rain by Kim Stanley Robinson, plus the two other books in that trilogy: Fifty Degrees Below; Sixty Days and Counting.
- Forty Signs of Rain, by Kim Stanley Robinson
Fifty Degrees Below
Sixty Days and Counting
- Just finished the 'Forty Signs of Rain' series of books that explores Atlantic stream cessation, or at least the ocean circulatory part of that. No spoilers, but I thought it was a little too optimistic in how humanity would respond in a giant collective effort. We are on a road with the pedal to the metal, and big business only wants us to don the peril sensitive sunglasses.
- It is more about sea rise than about climate change (that involves far more than just the rise of oceans).
Kim Stanley Robinson's Forty Signs of Rain feels more down to the ground, but I suppose that there are plenty of other recent science fiction books about climate change.
And Paolo Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl present a more complex world where there was an important sea rise due to climate change, but a lot of other things happened in different areas, in different ways. Is not as accurate as the previous one, but is more entertaining as fiction book.
- I've just finished Hamilton's Commonwealth Saga and it's definitely one of the best books I've read in a long time.
The first three Dune novels are particularly good. Dune has a tendency to get more philosophical in the later volumes (plans within plans within plans).
If I had to choose an all time favorite I would probably go with Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy (Red/Green/Blue Mars). An extremely well researched view of how Mars colonization and terraforming might proceed in a realistic way.
He also has a trilogy on the possible/likely consequences of runaway global warming (Forty Signs of Rain, Fifty Degrees Below, Sixty Days and Counting) but RGB Mars is definitely better.
Edit: "The content of Green Mars and the cover artwork for Red Mars are included on the Phoenix DVD, carried onboard Phoenix, a NASA lander that successfully touched down on Mars in May 2008. The First Interplanetary Library is intended to be a sort of time capsule for future Mars explorers and colonists." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_trilogy#On_Phoenix_spacecr...
