2312

By: Kim Stanley Robinson

Narrated by: Sarah Zimmerman

Length: 19 hrs and 11 mins

Publisher's summary

The year is 2312. Scientific and technological advances have opened gateways to an extraordinary future. Earth is no longer humanity's only home; new habitats have been created throughout the solar system on moons, planets, and in between. But in this year, 2312, a sequence of events will force humanity to confront its past, its present, and its future.

The first event takes place on Mercury, on the city of Terminator, itself a miracle of engineering on an unprecedented scale. It is an unexpected death, but one that might have been foreseen. For Swan Er Hong, it is an event that will change her life. Swan was once a woman who designed worlds. Now she will be led into a plot to destroy them.

©2012 Kim Stanley Robinson (P)2012 Hachette Audio

some good things seem together

the story had some good ideas. however, I felt like I was reading a bunch of short stories about each of the characters attached to each other.

Hard Science without pseudoscience please

The hard science concepts are geeat, such as terminator, asteroid habitats, elevators, and terraforming Venus. The trans concepts are pseudo. If that was left out, the story would be better. Robinson's previous stories are great. This one feels luke a scolding at times.

My favorite book of the past 5 years.

I can't even begin to say how much I loved this book. The entire world is so well thought and imagined. Its completely immersive and beyond interesting. If you enjoy understanding an entire world in a highly detailed way this book is for you. I tend to get bored easily when two pages are devoted to describing a planet but in this book you want never what the details to end. KSR has created a completely unique, strange and cool solar system that includes bird implants that allow people to whistle and think in different ways, hollowed out asteroids that people develop into unique societies that act almost like cruise ships in space, physical alteration of the body from gender neutral characters to incredibly tall and very small people and that is just the beginning. This book is really just beyond cool and interesting... I read it about two years ago and I'm on the hunt for something that inspires me just as much to no avail.

The narrator got a lot of flack in the reviews here but I really thought she was absolutely amazing- she has this icy semi-robotic way about her that fits the story and main character perfectly. It seems the author embraced that quite a bit as in his next space/sci-fi book the narrator actually has a robotic voice. I am actually desperate for their to be a follow up to this book.

You will not regret reading this book! It's the best.

Disappointing

As a huge fan of The Mars Trilogy, I was very excited to find out this book takes place in the same universe, so to speak. The sample first chapter really caught my interest, as it takes place on Terminator, Mercury--the city where one of the most memorable scenes in Blue Mars takes place. But in the end, the book did not captivate me even remotely as much as those previous books.

Partly it may be because of erroneous expectation on my part--I expected another epic story with complex multiple characters. 2312, instead of being a multiple protagonist story, is focused mainly on one character, Swan Er Hong. And therein lies the first problem: she's just not very interesting. In the Mars Trilogy, Robinson created some smashing female characters, very complex, very flawed. Swan is no comparison to Nadia, Maya, Hiroko, Anne, Jackie and Zo. Instead of being complex and flawed, she comes off as a bit of a pill.

The other characters are also not very interesting. Supposedly, there's a love story here, but it didn't resonate with me.

The tone of 2312 is far more pessimistic than the Mars Trilogy, perhaps because we're living in a more pessimistic time than when the Mars Trilogy was written. The story is not entirely hopeless, but it's still kind of a drag to think that even 300 years into the future, Terrans will be just as short-sighted as many are now. Especially since Blue Mars left us with a more hopeful vision of the future.

As usual, Robinson includes a ton of science that is very interesting, but without amazing characters and story, it comes off as very dry. There are some amazing moments, such as the description of Manhattan post-flood, and the reintroduction on Earth of extinct animals that have been bred in space. However, for the most part, it is a bit of a slog.

The performance is adequate (she's at least a better reader than the fellow who narrates the Mars Trilogy) but nothing special.

Amazing feat of imagination and knowledge

Any additional comments?

This was an amazing book in many, many ways. First, I am in awe of Kim Stanley Robinson's ranging imagination from depicting life on Mercury and a cult of sun walkers who follow the sun around the planet, always keeping in the shade, to the body surfing in the rings of Saturn. This book reminded more more in its scope and character depth of Years of Rice and Salt, though the setting and premise of both books are very, very different. Robinson has a range that I think most writers dream about achieving but he moves with confidence and intelligence between realms of space travel to botany to genetics.

The character Swan is flawed but also wonderful in her naive embracing of people and of the different worlds. She is an adventurer, trying anything and everything, going to extremes, and it takes the death of her beloved grandmother to bring her life more into focus. She gets involved in her grandmother's work although her grandmother had not trusted her enough to tell her what it is. The messenger of information that she doesn't understand, Swan becomes wrapped up in an inter-planetary conspiracy involving quantum computers, revolution, and the fate of several cities on different planets.

I don't think a review can do justice to this book--there are just too many beautiful layers to explore within in it to capture in any summary. If you want to travel to other worlds and imagine a future where humans populate much of our solar system while still trying to work our political differences and fights over resources, settle in for an amazing journey.

you tried

Nice imagery and an interesting overall plot. Disappointing to see so much effort put into complex sex and gender with such a poor result. Gender and sex are said to be nuanced but are still defined by physical attributes, and intersex people by birth are not represented. Also people only use he or she pronouns in practice even though they are said to be fluid as well. And so much damn heteronormativity. The mediocrity of the gender politics really got in the way of the positives for me. Good narrating though.

2312: too much: fiction, book length and side bars

Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?

The book is just too long with too many "side stories and scientific guesses"

Would you be willing to try another book from Kim Stanley Robinson? Why or why not?

Unless confined to solitary confinement in prison - unlikely

What do you think the narrator could have done better?

Narrator was very montotone on EVERYTHING...Some realy spicy sections and yet monotone

Could you see 2312 being made into a movie or a TV series? Who should the stars be?

Never be a movie

Personal

Longevity, gender melding, terraforming asteroids, colonies on the planets, difficulties healing the earth, quantum computers, enhancements to homophobia sapiens

Future history at its best

If you could sum up 2312 in three words, what would they be?

A good listen.
Kim Stanley Robinson writes enjoyable books.

Would you listen to another book narrated by Sarah Zimmerman?

Not my favorite narrator but she does the job.

Any additional comments?

If you enjoy future histories this is a book for you.

Good story but hard to listen to

Is there anything you would change about this book?

The author does a great job thinking through and researching the logistics of having humans live elsewhere in our solar system. Lots of very interesting concepts and unusual but logical visions of a possible future, but the characters come across as flat due to the performance. I almost stopped listening early on because the lack of variation in the characters. But then I reminded myself that Kim Stanley Robinson has written other books that facinated me and I should stick it out a while longer. The performance never improved, but the story did build so I was able to listen through to the end.