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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   3193 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 15, 2023

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This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

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Just started Kim Stanley Robinson's The Wild Shore. I don't know anything about Robinson other than that someone told me he was good and I don't know anything about the book other than it was on the library shelf and seemed like the kind of thing I'd like. After one chapter, I can say that I enjoy the setting and first-person storytelling.

Not to be snarky, but if you keep reading his work I can pretty much guarantee his politics will drive you up the wall. Red Mars and 2312 are sublime, I also enjoyed the gold coast quite a bit. You may get some mileage out of the years of rice and salt. The rest will probably not be enjoyable.

I just wrote yet another long comment pleading with the reader not to read Aurora by the same author, and a completely unnecessary refresh ate it.

I'll rehash the argument if anyone cares, but TLDR:

Moronic Author

Moronic depiction of AI or the challenges of interstellar travel

A literally moronic protagonist

Moronic characters who don't have the excuse of having a certified neurological deficit

Self flagellating environmentalism steadfastly refusing to accept that it's redundant given the tech level of the setting (itself barely better than today)

An authorial tract strictly devoted to showing "oh nos, instead of abandoning the cradle of civilization, it's turned out to be indispensable, we must stuff ourselves back in and turn on the lights, the night is cold and full of terrors"

Just read his other books, most of them are fine.

Seconded on every point. (I can't think of a way to make me hate a book and its protagonist any faster than the text spelling out that you're supposed to like the protagonist and that only bad people dislike them.) Red Mars + Green Mars (Blue Mars was not terrible, but felt a bit like an overgrown appendix of the former) and The Years of Rice and Salt are wonderful, though.

I think Aurora is the only book of his I read after enjoying the RGB Mars trilogy (+ The Martians short story collection in that universe). Those books go a bit off the deep end into the environmentalism and Marxism towards the end... but basically just I recommend skipping Blue Mars or noping out of when you've had enough. I also thought Aurora was overly preachy (and mind, this is coming from someone who literally goes by "token progressive" on this forum; I may disagree with him less you than you do, but it's still not fun to read), so it's good to hear most of his other books are good.

Err, it seems I was misremembering, I haven't actually read any other books by him, it was Aurora being so terrible that likely put me off the Mars trilogy, but if you think it's bearable I'll take a look! So far he's been batting 0/1 as far as I'm concerned.

KSR is a sort of utopian Marxist, and so he very much thinks that technological advancement is married inextricably with social and cultural change (similar to another sci-fi great, Iain Banks). This makes for some very interesting science fiction because his future societies are not merely the 21st century, but in spaaaaaaace. He's an interesting author to read through the decades because the futures he writes about shift as the technology and culture of his own time shifts. I might write a short thing in the culture war thread about one specific element of this

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