Review: New York 2140

New York 2140 by Kim Stanley Robinson
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This is a 2-Star review of a book that I DNF.

I read this book in preparation for voting in the 2018 Hugo awards. I'm familiar with KSR's general outlook on the world and have purposefully avoided reading his works as a result. But he's nominated this year and I try to give each author as much of an equal shot as possible.

The premise of the book is that global warming has melted the icecaps. The seas have risen. And New York is largely underwater. Or at least the water is high enough to cover the first couple of floors of most buildings. And then there is a story told within that milieu.

The book deviates from reality, science/economics, you-name-it so many times that is felt like the ghost of Dorothy Parker was reading over my shoulder.

Spoilers
(view spoiler)[
Early on we had the following passage:

"So look, the problem is capitalism. We've got good tech, we've got a nice planet, we're fucking it up by way of stupid laws. That's what capitalism is, a set of stupid laws."

This lovely gem came out of the mouth of a programmer that was employed and in demand, but apparently could not afford to pay rent and was living in a tent. It is the sort of usual semi-literate agitprop that pops out of the mouths of stoners that know nothing; that includes "college educated" stoners.

Capitalism is what happens when government gets out of the way. It isn't something established by law, it is what happens whenever humans form a community. Raise chickens for eggs? Need nails or lumber or anything else? Then that exchange of goods (or services) is basic capitalism. It is the naturally occurring mechanism by which we developed that "good tech". It creates wealth sufficient for people to begin caring about having a "nice planet".

A little later on, a character is reference: "...her assistant, Sergeant Olmstead. “Sean, quit it and come in.” Her mild-mannered young bulldog...".

So apparently dehumanizing people is OK now??

Further on we have a wealthy and influential investment trader with a nifty speed boat that features hydrofoils. Said trader gets up on the hydrofoils and is dashing in and out of the slower traffic. There are references to slower boats being cautious about how their wakes affect other boats. Yet this character is charging full speed down crowded, narrow canals. Speed differentials kill when automobiles travel at vastly different speeds. The same laws of physics apply to boats.

The same character pulls up to the building where he works. It has a covered area for storing boats. This is referred to as a "A nice perk, boathouse parking, if expensive." "Perks" are where you get something as part of your compensation package. You don't pay for it, but thus cost wasn't an issue for this character.

That leads to the insane method for storing boats. They are lifted out of the water and suspended. This in turn creates problems with people getting their boats in an out of the water. Given that the lower levels of these buildings are all below water, it makes no sense to continually pull them out of the water for short term parking/storage. If they are going to sailed through polluted waters, then they are going to get dirty. Storing them in the air does nothing significant to stop that process.

We should also pause to note that this is supposed to be something of a post-apocalyptic novel. Yet computerized international trading in stocks and commodities is still being conducted in a fashion that allows for the generation and accumulation of significant wealth. Everything is normal except for the excess water, because "reasons"....?

As the story develops, the city of New York has created their own laws against immigrating into New York. Why? Because people are flooding (pun intended) into the city for some reason.

We also learn that there are food shortages in the city. The one apartment building where most of the characters live has a common cafeteria. The characters know that the last ones in line will likely not get any food. People generally do not immigrate towards food shortages. Given the lack of space for growing food in a flooded New York and the abundance of room elsewhere in the country, it makes more sense for people to avoid a New York plagued by food shortages.

The one apartment building is packed with people because there aren't as many buildings available for people to live in. It is run as a collective with people inheriting apartments from relatives that die. This, presumably coupled with rent control, keeps rents low.

It also keeps the number of apartments low as developers have little incentive to use the new technologies (as indicated in the book) to build new places for people to live. Rent control is causing this same problem in New York right now without the problem of rising tides.

These apartment-based collectives feature farming in/on the buildings. Which makes sense. Residents "earn" a share of the food by working in the farms. Which makes a bit of sense until you remember the cafeterias that everyone goes to for food. No one cooks in their own apartment. So what is the use of earning a share of the food grown in the building's farms?

These same collectives also decided to create their own currency. It was noted that the collective-currency was experiencing large scale inflation relative to the dollar. Why? Presumably because they were attempting to control the value of the collective-currency by government policy instead of letting the value of the currency be determined by economics.

For a real world example of why letting the government establish a currency value by policy is a bad idea, just check the news coming out of Venezuela these days.

In summary, the city of New York lacks food and adequate housing yet has passed laws that prohibit people from immigrating from lower population areas that are not flooded, have better housing opportunities, and are better suited for producing food because people want to immigrate to New York. For "reasons"....?

There were a couple of other, lesser speed bumps that took me out of the book enough to allow Dorothy Parker to give it the appropriate treatment.

I have not yet used the following in a book review before. Mr. Robinson has pushed me into new territory.

This book represents the finest in vice signaling twaddle. That is because the leftist "virtues" being signaled in the book are more correctly labeled as vices: abnormal behavior patterns in a [an individual] detrimental to [their] health or usefulness.
(hide spoiler)]

View all my reviews