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Kim Stanley Robinson: New York 2140
Apr. 19th, 2018 09:30 amKim Stanley Robinson is kind of a hit-or-miss author for me. Some of the books that I’ve read, I’ve quite enjoyed; others, I bounce off hard. New York 2140, which is a finalist for this year’s Hugo awards, is unfortunately one of those that I bounce off. Nonetheless, because it is a finalist, I’ve done my best to set aside the fact that it doesn’t really interest me, and forge through.
If you asked me why I had trouble engaging with the book, I’m not sure I could tell you why. Some of it is that, because I’m not American, New York is not an icon for me. This is a book that depends on the city’s mythology and mystique, to some extent. The careful work that Robinson has done in envisioning this particular city, adapted to a 50 foot rise in sea level, is probably a solid hook for anyone with a strong sense of the place, whether real or imagined. Me, I can’t tell Brooklyn from the Bronx, so the changes in either that such a submergence might bring don’t mean a lot to me. Then, too, there’s a lot of high finance and day trading and such, and the games of capitalism bore and annoy me. Robinson isn’t all that fond of capitalism either, but just because we agree on that point doesn’t mean I want to read about his characters making imaginary money on imaginary mortgage bundles.
There are some characters who are more interesting, such as the two coders who try to hack the global system and end up disappearing, and the woman who sets out to discover what happened to them, and some folks who are just trying to survive in a half-drowned and very broken world, but it’s not quite enough. Somehow, Robinson seems to have put more effort into the characters I don’t much give a damn about, leaving the others, the ones that might have gotten me hooked, not fully fleshed.
And there are a lot of viewpoint characters and plotlines in this novel, linked by the fact that they all live in (or in some cases squat in, which is a distinction worth noting) the same building, the Met Life tower, with one exception. There’s Mutt and Jeff, two temporarily homeless coders; Franklin the day trader, who soecialises in trading submerged real estate futures; Inspector Gen, a police official conducting a casual investigation into the disappearance of Mutt and Jeff; Amelia, an activist on behalf of endangered species and media star; Charlotte, an advocate for the poor and undocumented immigrants; Stefan and Roberto, two very young homeless entrepreneurs who live in the boat they moor at the Met; Vlade, the superintendant of the Met Life building; and an unnamed ‘citizen’ who speaks directly to the reader, acting as a kind of chorus and providing history, context, and general, somewhat sardonically toned infodumps. While each character or set of characters, with the exception of the citizen chorus, have their own story line, the disappearance if Mutt and Jeff is a major throughline, as is a mysterious offer to purchase the building from the residents co-op that currently owns it. As the novel progresses, various linkages arise between the multiple protagonists, from accidental encounters to developing relationships, and the individual plotlines begin to intertwine and converge. And when they do, just as a massive natural disaster strikes the city, the bubbling sense of discontent that Robinson has been slowly nurturing in his characters and the people around them erupts into a revolt of the commons that is really quite satisfying. Although it may or may not last, and may or may not bring about real change, for as the cynical citizen chorus reminds us:
“So no, no, no, no! Don’t be naïve! There are no happy endings! Because there are no endings! And possibly there is no happiness either! Except perhaps in some odd chance moment, dawn in the clean washed street, midnight out on the river, or more likely in the regarding of some past time, some moment encased in a cyst of nostalgia, glimpsed in the rearview mirror as you fly away from it. Could be happiness is always retrospective and probably therefore made up and even factually wrong. Who knows. Who the fuck knows. Meanwhile get over your childlike Rocky Mountain desire for a happy ending, because it doesn’t exist. Because down there in Antarctica—or in other realms of being far more dangerous—the next buttress of the buttress could go at any time.”
It’s an ambitious novel, a complex novel, a well-crafted novel - indeed, in lesser hands the multiple plotlines might have been confusing, but Robinson keeps everything clear and comprehensible - a novel with important things to say. It’s just not quite my kind of novel.
If you asked me why I had trouble engaging with the book, I’m not sure I could tell you why. Some of it is that, because I’m not American, New York is not an icon for me. This is a book that depends on the city’s mythology and mystique, to some extent. The careful work that Robinson has done in envisioning this particular city, adapted to a 50 foot rise in sea level, is probably a solid hook for anyone with a strong sense of the place, whether real or imagined. Me, I can’t tell Brooklyn from the Bronx, so the changes in either that such a submergence might bring don’t mean a lot to me. Then, too, there’s a lot of high finance and day trading and such, and the games of capitalism bore and annoy me. Robinson isn’t all that fond of capitalism either, but just because we agree on that point doesn’t mean I want to read about his characters making imaginary money on imaginary mortgage bundles.
There are some characters who are more interesting, such as the two coders who try to hack the global system and end up disappearing, and the woman who sets out to discover what happened to them, and some folks who are just trying to survive in a half-drowned and very broken world, but it’s not quite enough. Somehow, Robinson seems to have put more effort into the characters I don’t much give a damn about, leaving the others, the ones that might have gotten me hooked, not fully fleshed.
And there are a lot of viewpoint characters and plotlines in this novel, linked by the fact that they all live in (or in some cases squat in, which is a distinction worth noting) the same building, the Met Life tower, with one exception. There’s Mutt and Jeff, two temporarily homeless coders; Franklin the day trader, who soecialises in trading submerged real estate futures; Inspector Gen, a police official conducting a casual investigation into the disappearance of Mutt and Jeff; Amelia, an activist on behalf of endangered species and media star; Charlotte, an advocate for the poor and undocumented immigrants; Stefan and Roberto, two very young homeless entrepreneurs who live in the boat they moor at the Met; Vlade, the superintendant of the Met Life building; and an unnamed ‘citizen’ who speaks directly to the reader, acting as a kind of chorus and providing history, context, and general, somewhat sardonically toned infodumps. While each character or set of characters, with the exception of the citizen chorus, have their own story line, the disappearance if Mutt and Jeff is a major throughline, as is a mysterious offer to purchase the building from the residents co-op that currently owns it. As the novel progresses, various linkages arise between the multiple protagonists, from accidental encounters to developing relationships, and the individual plotlines begin to intertwine and converge. And when they do, just as a massive natural disaster strikes the city, the bubbling sense of discontent that Robinson has been slowly nurturing in his characters and the people around them erupts into a revolt of the commons that is really quite satisfying. Although it may or may not last, and may or may not bring about real change, for as the cynical citizen chorus reminds us:
“So no, no, no, no! Don’t be naïve! There are no happy endings! Because there are no endings! And possibly there is no happiness either! Except perhaps in some odd chance moment, dawn in the clean washed street, midnight out on the river, or more likely in the regarding of some past time, some moment encased in a cyst of nostalgia, glimpsed in the rearview mirror as you fly away from it. Could be happiness is always retrospective and probably therefore made up and even factually wrong. Who knows. Who the fuck knows. Meanwhile get over your childlike Rocky Mountain desire for a happy ending, because it doesn’t exist. Because down there in Antarctica—or in other realms of being far more dangerous—the next buttress of the buttress could go at any time.”
It’s an ambitious novel, a complex novel, a well-crafted novel - indeed, in lesser hands the multiple plotlines might have been confusing, but Robinson keeps everything clear and comprehensible - a novel with important things to say. It’s just not quite my kind of novel.
