The Wild Shore

The Three Californias Triptych, Book 1

By: Kim Stanley Robinson

Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki

Length: 13 hrs and 25 mins

Publisher's Summary

From the author of the award-winning Mars trilogy comes a vision of a radically different alternative future, where every day is a fight to survive.

North America, 2047. For the small Pacific Coast community of San Onofre, life in the aftermath of a devastating nuclear attack is a matter of survival, a day-to-day struggle to stay alive. But young Hank Fletcher dreams of the world that might have been, that might yet be - and dreams of playing a crucial role in America's rebirth.

Kim Stanley Robinson's first novel, The Wild Shore, is an epic tale that will appeal to adults and young adults alike.

©1984 Kim Stanley Robinson (P)2015 Blackstone Audio, Inc., and Skyboat Media, Inc.

Needs 6 stars

This book redefines great sci-fi, it is a great story and good literature. It has lots of ringing truths and it punches through similar books with a rich inner life expressed in terms of the New World lost in the ruins of the old.

Impressive Debut Novel

The Wild Shore is the impressive debut novel by Kim Stanley Robinson. It is part of the Three Californias Triptych, and all titles were free on Audible last time I checked. The Wild Shore is the dystopian novel of the three. The triptych covers three possible futures for California.

Written in 1984, it's not surprising then that the dystopian setting was caused by a nuclear war. The war takes place in 1987, and the book is set in 2047. The reader is never really sure what caused the war, rumor has it that neutron bombs were detonated in vehicles in the 2,000 largest cities in the USA as a surprise attack by the rest of the world who wanted to put the US in its place. The novel is set in Orange County, California and focuses on a village of about 60 people struggling to get by. The story is told through the eyes of a young man, Hank, who, like everyone else, isn't sure what is going on in the outside world (although rumors abound). Japan has blockaded the West Coast (and other countries guard the other borders) and no one is allowed in or out of the country. The Californians have no technology and any advancements, such as railroad track repair, are met with bombs from unseen satellites. Hank's friend Tom is the oldest person in their village, supposedly over 100, and tells stories of what life was like in the modern world before the bombs.

The plot involves re-establishing contact and rail travel with their southern neighbors in San Diego, and the ongoing debate in the village whether to try to fight back against the Japanese, who occupy Catalina Island and whose boats patrol up and down the coast.

The pace of the novel is slow and steady, and the tone is melancholic, which was right up my alley and why I liked it so much. Kim Stanley Robinson can really tell a story, and the characters are really well developed in this one. I'm looking forward to reading the next two books in the triptych.

Interesting

Worth a listen but probably not to everyone’s taste. I liked it, the descriptions were fabulous, characters were flushed out.

Racist

Couldn’t finish because it was so racist. Im a big fan of sci-fi but couldn’t get through this one. Not only is it racist but also boring.

Why is Amazon promoting this book by making it freely available with audible subscriptions? This is one that should be forgotten in favor of KSR’s better books.

Notable for its first person perspective

In fact, it reads much like a coming of age novel. The narrator is a young man who must learn to negotiate his provincial post-nuclear holocaust life with a nostalgic patriotic movement to restore American sovereignty. The question he must answer: is it worth it? Is the life they live now better than the America of old? And if so, can one still honor the past? It’s not a complicated plot, and as others note, it peters out towards the end. But KSR contributes a solid first person perspective, not terribly common in sci-fi, that breathes life into his book’s central theme: whether it is set in a dystopian future, or whether we are living in a dystopia now.

a child story

unlike other Kim Staniely Robinson books it seems this one is aimed at young readers.

Extremely boring...

I kept waiting for the story line to pick up the pace, but it never did. The plot is definitely interesting, but the characters and story telling is dry.

If u like this author you will enjoy this title

Story was Okay. Interesting characters. Narrator sounded slow from time to time, hard to understand, had to listen to the same parts 2 or 3 times. Will try next part.

good groundwork for a story that never takes off

I liked the main character and the world building but this was a story that never really went anywhere. maybe that was the point but taking 14 hours to say that people in this alternate future would live small lives was bit of a let down

Pretty darn great

An interesting and refreshing take on the post apocalypse. Very relatable coming of age story for young men.

Odd coming of age story. Talented writer but dated

This is an odd book to review. It is written by a very talented writer, who uses poetic language without becoming flowery. He is also fantastic at characterization. I honestly think I could love this book if the premise -what I thought it was when I started listening- had gone in a different direction.

So, I thought I was getting a futuristic novel about a community surviving after disaster (war) struck. What I got was a coming of age novel written from the perspective of a teenage boy. This teenage boy is infuriating in many ways, but also deeply sympathetic. He is very, very naïve and self-centered, and makes terrible decisions that cause the deaths of others. Other than feeling guilty about it he doesn't really get held accountable for that. He seems introspective and gets sympathy points for a lot of things. But after finishing the novel I don't think I liked him very much, even though he is clearly written as the person you are supposed to root for. So listening to an entire book from his perspective was not all that satisfying in the end. The other two main characters are another insufferable teenage boy, who is clearly bullying and dominating the main character, but is still written as his 'best friend'. The last is an old man, Tom. That one was he most interesting one. It's hard to explain why without spoilers. But all three characters have in common that they are written incredibly well. They really come alive. It is just too bad (for me) that two of them are insufferable in my eyes.

So in the end, even though I very much recognize the skill of the writer, I did not enjoy this novel all that much. I also suspect this novel reads very differently based on whether you are an American or not. I think in the end we are supposed to have sympathy for all the patriotic hoo-ha, but as an European that just reads like MAGA not realizing they lost. I think there could be parallels drawn between the North/South, civil war aftermath as well.

The narrator is a professional and has a very comforting, deep voice. I sped it up a little, but would absolutely listen to another book read by him.

One last word of caution:
This book was written in 1984 and has some racist and sexist tropes as well. They are not overt and I think it is easier to give two examples to explain what I mean. 01: There is for example a non-ironic description of the population of an island off the coast where a character ends up that goes like this: (quote) "There were Mexican faces, Asian faces, some Black, but I could see no American faces." Another one is that the only two women that feature more than a few lines in the book are 01: a conniving seductress who is a love interest for the protagonist and betrays him, and the girl next door who ends up as his other love interest. That's it. Plus the usual comments about how men are all cool and unproblematic (despite unleashing war and such), while women need to gossip and are all emotional. No LGBTQ representation at all, in any way. So yeah. I knew going in that this is an 80's book and I've read far worse, but this is clearly a white guy in the eighties perspective, when his existence was the default. I think if I had been that man, reading this book when it came out, I would have found it FANTASTIC. Because like I said, the storytelling skill is very clearly there. I may seek out more recent material of this writer to see if he has improved with the changing times.

Not a patch on the Mars Series

Very disappointed, didn’t even finish it! Wanted to believe it wasn’t more disaster movie than SF but gave up. Too political but at least the English aren’t the baddies for a change but I suppose it was written in 1984 when the Americans were still obsessed with the Reds!

A beautiful and hypnotic story

Stefan Rudniciki performs a beautiful melancholic poem of a story. Compelling from start to finish.

Of the three..

..this is best of the series. A low key post apocalyptic (at least for the USA) story that is both a coming of age and a reflection of the past.

Voice narration was good.