So I'm not actually done, but I couldn't make it through.I've tried to read Kim Stanley Robinson in the past, and I've managed to plow through. His world building is great, but something about the novels fail to grab me.This one though, ugh. I made it about 60% through before I could identify the problems. I don't care about the main protagonist AT ALL. She's a 140-something hermaphrodite of Chinese descent that grew up on Mercury (cool, right?), but at her age, she's completely self-absorbed, a [...]

I read maybe one sci-fi book a year. My barrier to entry is generally the writing itself. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I find that most contemporary sci-fi books - as with most "genre" books - tend to be poorly written, sacrificing craft in favor of the fascinating worlds, etc that they present. So, it's always a pleasant surprise when I encounter a work of sci-fi that's also really well written because I am a bit of a futurist at heart and love to delve into these worlds. (It's not for nothing that S [...]

This is one of the best books I have read in a long time. It has an extremely interesting structure that verges on the allegorical. There's an alchemical marriage of Mercury and Saturn, The dynamic of old and emerging structures embedded in the present, three prose styles,- all very clever. A duet of Swan and Frog.The lovers spin like Pluto and Charon, around the two plot Lagrange points of an endless walk beneath the surface of Mercury, and waiting to be rescued in the blackness of space- two p [...]

This book just made me happy. Wonderfully, giddily happy. That's the TL;DR version: if you like nearish future sf and you would consider yourself small-l liberal and enjoy a bit of adventure and politicking, oh this is awesome. Why?There's the gender aspects. Robinson goes beyond gender-bending and into gender-thwarting. I first really realised something was going on when a new character was introduced and for the entire interaction, there were no pronouns used. And it's a gender-neutral name. S [...]

I tried to read this book. I really tried. But after fighting to get halfway through this book without even being able to figure out what the plot was, I gave up.I had read a lot of positive reviews for this book, so I decided to give it a read. Now I wonder if these reviewers read the same book I tried to read. The plot, at least up to the point where I gave up, hadn't progressed (in fact, I don't even know what the plot was). And I really wasn't invested in the characters.Now this book did hav [...]

i'll be brief: a ton of info dumping, but what a world and what ideas and what atmosphere just wow. i LOVED this novel. i do with there had been a more focused plot, but whatever, that's a different novel that i can write myself, haha. but this i really enjoyed. i could just settle into it and be there and say wow and oh and ah and wtf? and noooooo, etc. this is the type of science fiction i can sink my teeth into and i wish i had found works like this when i was a teen or in my 20s. but better [...]

This was a slightly more difficult book than is usual, but no less satisfying for having read it. I remember the Mars Trilogy with great fondness but I also remember it being stuffed full of invention and depth that most tales have no more than a gloss. This novel is very much like his previous novels in this regard. I am at once in awe and fully satisfied with the tale as I am also annoyed at how long it took to have the human aspect developed. If anyone had told me during the first 300 pages t [...]

For the past three years, I’ve paid for the privilege of voting in the Hugo Awards. I do this not because I love voting in the Hugo Awards (though that’s cool) but because, for the past few years, they have made available a voter packet containing digital copies of most of the nominated works. All I need do is purchase a supporting membership at the year’s WorldCon, which is always cheaper than if I were to buy the various novels and anthologies in which these works might be found. (Also, [...]

So at 65% I finally just kicked this pig and stopped reading. This book is objectively terrible. The story is foolish and non existent, no one involved is sympathetic or even slightly interesting. The main character actually gets her way by threatening to scream, at one point. I was constantly reminded of the twilight books.The world is goodish, unless you have ever read any other trans humanist books. The only people I can recommend this book to are extreme liberals. Unwashed hippies, reeking o [...]

I was afraid for a long time that all the literary crap in this book was covering up what was really an overdone, boring plot.It turned out not to be true - the plot is cool - but the plot only inhabits about 100 pages of this monster 6 or 7 hundred pager of a capital-N Novel.Really, Kim Stanley Robinson, did we need random-ish, unfathomable "lists" between each chapter? Actually, I can answer that for you. No.And really, Kim Stanley Robinson, did you have to format your very cool, forgivably in [...]

2312’ye hoş geldiniz. Çevre felaketleri sonucu kaosa sürüklenen insanoğlu, güneş sistemine yayılmıştır artık. İnsanlar dünyalaştırma teknolojisinin imkânlarını zorlayarak en ölümcül koşullarda bile kendilerine yeni yuvalar edinebilmiştir. Asteroitler minik dünyalara dönüştürülerek çok amaçlı şekilde kullanılmaktadır; artık aynı anda yerleşim yeri, tarım alanı, eğlence merkezi, doğal yaşamı koruma alanları ve gezegenlerarası seyahat araçları olar [...]

I may be overdosing on this particular susgenre, since I read Blue Remembered Earth recently, and The Quiet War not long before that. They essentially tell the same story, but whats disturbing is that they essentially come to the same conclusion. All of this seems to come down to the Richard Florida version of the future. The 24th century for hipsters. They're liberal-geek amusement parks. A guided tour of one half of the western culture war. The roller coaster of exciting new urbanism. The merr [...]

Upuzun yorumun --> yaprakonur.wordpress/2017Kısaca:2312 benim çok çok beğendiğim bir kitap oldu ama bunun sebebi anlattığı hikaye değil; yarattığı evrenin bütünlüğü, değindiği konular ve yaptığı göndermelerdi. Okuması zor, herkesin kolay kolay beğenemeyeceği klasik eser yapısında bir kitap. Ufkunu geliştirmek isteyen, bilim ve bilimkurguyla arası iyi kişilere kesinlikle öneririm.

Abandoning this one at about the 50% mark. I gave it the ol' college try, but turns out this really ain't for me. Densely written, huge passages of world-building (and terraforming), but not enough of a propulsive plot or engaging characters to keep me turning the pages.

'Encyclopedic' is the word that comes to mind with 2312. Robinson set out for a broad brush look at our race 300 years ahead, and this is precisely what we get. The tale takes us to many locations in the future solar system --- Mercury and the city on the Terminator, Venus with its solar shield, Saturn and its multiple terraria, Earth and its old world colonialism. The only venue missing is Mars, but then, Robinson has written a boatload on Mars.There is an SF mystery that ties the story togethe [...]

Gerçek bilimkurgu budur.Robinson'ın bu romanı, katı bilimkurguya benzeyen bir tarza ait ki benim de en sevdiğim türdür zaten. O, genellikle ekolojik bir bilimkurgu yazıyor ve bu romanında Güneş Sisteminin dünyalaştırılma sürecinden küçük bir kesit sunmuş. Bunun yanı sıra okumaktan çok keyif aldığım sosyolojik ve psikolojik yorumlarla doldurmuş. Kitabın en sevdiğim kısımları bunlardı. Teknolojik öngörüler ve dünyalaştırılmanın nasıl yapılacağına dair à [...]

This book is huge in breadth and depth, covering everything from falling in love, the destruction of cities, the precise techniques required to recreate terran microbiomes, artificial intelligences integrating with human societySometimes I grew frustrated because the book spent fifty pages recounting two characters whistling to each other, and only a paragraph to enact and then dismiss a plan to provide affordable housing for all people on Earth. I wasn't always on board with the focus or the pa [...]

Genel olarak kitaba 7/10 veriyorum ama kitabı ikiye ayırmak lazım; bir kısım ana karakterlerin içine dahil olduğu öykü diğer kısım ise kitabın anlattığı evren hakkında bilgiler verilen bölümler. İlk kısma puanım 6/10, ikinci kısma ise 8/10.Aşağıda yazdıklarım SPOILER içeriyor. Spoilersız yazmaya çalıştım ama bazı şeyleri anlatabilmek için spoiler vermek zorundayım, kitabı bitirmediyseniz okumanızı tavsiye etmem.İlk olarak ana karakterlerin yaşadıkları [...]

2312 is actually quite interesting about 100 pages in, I just wish the author's style would me more on my taste; this way it is like reading a very dry proof but of a very interesting result so while I derive little emotional pleasure, it's intellectually satisfying; let's hope that continues as otherwise as fiction I would have no reason to continue with 2312 and i really wish to finish it. I finished 2312 and overall I wouldn't call it disappointing as I did not expect that much from it, but I [...]

I hate to rate this so low. The book was pretty ambitious and quite detailed. The story follows Swan, a 130 year old woman living on Mercury who finds herself in the middle of a terrorist plot.The world as imagined by Robinson is quite amazing. Humans now inhabit most of the planets and thousands of asteroids. Swan is expert at designing worlds and it is quite compelling to read about hollowed out asteroids with completely fabricated eco-systems inside them. My problem is probably not with the b [...]

I couldn't get through with this book. Unfortunately I had to DNF it. It took too long for me to process the whole sci-fi realm.

Originally reviewed on The Book SmugglersIn the year 2312, the solar system is a very different place. Humans have terraformed and colonized every inhabitable planet, moon and asteroid in the system; humanity has created thriving populations on the Jovian moons, hollowed out large space rocks and reconstituted them as terraria full of endangered animals and exotic life, and has even created a home on the impossibly hostile surface of Mercury. It is here, on Mercury's "Terminator" - a city that g [...]

I need to use the word "transcendent" to talk about a book with spaceships in it. I am fully aware that this is a silly thing to do, and I hope that one day you can forgive me. But really, 2312 is a transcendent work of science fiction. Let's start with the science fiction and work our way up to the transcendence. So. Three hundred years from now (q.v. the book's title), we've managed to colonize the solar system and we've started terraforming some likely planets, moons, and asteroids. The adven [...]

Have to mull. Enjoyed this, but I did find this a long book.

2/3 of the way through this one. Not as good as some of his previous works so far. Could do without the "lists" and other iterations, and some of the fragmented partial commentaries from fictitious future reference works. The usual KSR weirdness abounds, particularly his love of unconventional and experimental social arrangements (he truly is the contemporary science fiction author most like Robert Heinlein in this regard). This is yet another book about colonizing and/or terraforming planets in [...]

A finished copy was provided by the publisher for review.Three hundred years into the future where humans can freely travel to different planets and grow farms and forests to conserve endangered animals. Animals have been bred and live on farms in space. People aren't just male and female anymore. They have both sexual organs. Gender is no longer the greatest divide in humanity. "The double lock and key" seems to be a perfect match and experience since it contains all pleasures at once. It was a [...]

I've finished Kim Stanley Robinson's 2312, which in some ways I liked a lot and in others found a little frustrating. Mostly I didn't feel Swan's voice was much differentiated from previous KSR protagonists, though the other two major POV characters were reasonably different. I liked the development of the romance and the world, I liked many of the choices the characters made, I just sort of felt like I could switch Frank out for Swan and it wouldn't be significantly different. The other problem [...]

The world is so careful constructed, the colonized Solar System is so beautiful, the gender questions are so interesting that you can almost overlook the thinness of the characters and the unengaging story.

Hadisələrin gələcəkdə baş verdiyi bəzi kitablarda, gələcək dünya təsvirləri o qədər kasad və kasıb formada olur ki, bir çox oxucu kimi oxuyarkən mən də məyus oluram. "2312" kitabında yazar Kim Stanley Robinson bu baxımdan çox ciddi gələcək təsvirləri yaradıb. Kitabda ilk bəyəndiyim cəhət məhz bu oldu.Süjet cəhətdən isə bir xeyli zəif bir kitabdır. Yəni "normal sayılacaq süjetin yanında bu qədər gözəl təsvirlərin olması bu süjeti daha aşağ [...]

There is an astonishing setpiece in this book where Swan visits New York, which climate change and rising sea levels has turned into a kind of new Venice. Fresh from space, Swan's intoxication with the beauty of Earth and the wonder of New York's transformation is ravishing.So much SF these days focuses on the negative aspects of science and technology; KSR is quite old-fashioned in that he thinks we have enough of a technological base at the moment to get us through to a new level. What has hap [...]