2312 is not only the name of Kim Stanley Robinson’s science fiction novel, it its the year that the story takes place. This future is where planets,moons and asteroids in our solar system have been “terra formed” for habitation. Gender and “human” has changed so drastically in the 300 years from now to then, evolution could not be the reason. Ah, it’s a scifi world where anything is possible.
The plot alternates between a mystery of who is sabotaging environments and a relationship story. I was a little surprised when there was a traditional “happy ending.”
There was one chapter where earth was repopulated by animals and the vehicle for this event was that animals were dropped from the sky in bubbles. I liked that imagery. The re-introduction of animals to earth caused joy, chaos, fear, danger. “A Colombian Village that suffered an aerial invasion of sloths and jaguars had already renamed itself Macondo, and clearly would live to tell the tale.” I liked the reference to the fictional town described in Gabriel García Márquez’s novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude.
Weighing in at 561 pages, it was a push for our book club to read. It was a fun trip into the future.
Here were some words to live by:
…you could not trust anything you thought between two and five a.m.
