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
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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.
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Review: The Collapsing Empire

The Collapsing Empire by John Scalzi
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a 4-star review. A 3.5 star rating represents my experience with this book.

I read this book in preparation for voting for the 2018 Hugo Awards.

John Scalzi once again tells an entertaining and serviceable tale. The book relates the story of an empire that is about to collapse; hence the book's title, natch. The empire in question is based on human travel through the "Flow" to reach solar systems that would otherwise take decades to millennia at sub-FTL speeds. Human habitation in those many systems trade among one another for various goods necessary for their mutual survival.

The empire is threatened when access to those systems is about to end as the Flow undergoes a periodic but unpredictable shift. Those habitations are about to be cut off from one another as the Flow will presently shift in a way that stops all trade between those systems.

That ability to trade is controlled/regulated by the monarchy-based Interdependency, ruled by an Emperox, that controls who can access the Flow at the central hub, or Hub, world.

If you don't think about it too much, the story is quite a satisfying little romp. The characters engage the reader by being sufficiently complex in their motivations and experiences. There is political intrigue between the ruling house of Wu, the various other trading families or houses, and the religion that ties the worlds together.

When you consider some of the details, large and small, the story begins to unravel a bit.

Spoilers
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The Interdependency is made of of many human habitations (47, I think) that are located in remote solar systems. Almost all of those outposts are in solar systems where humans cannot live on the surface of a planet. Instead, humans have fabricated massive structures to live in. Alternatively, they have bored into a couple of planets so they can live below the surface; effectively converting a subsurface location into a "massive structure" where they can live, grow food, fabricate "stuff", etc.

Each such habitation houses hundreds of millions of people. Yet none of them are self-sustaining. They all require goods acquired in trade with other systems. Those goods can take months or even years to arrive via ships that travel in the Flow.

Are goods that take years to arrive really necessary to sustain human life?

Some of the goods are produced via a "license" from the nobility. So the means of producing a given "good" is developed in one habitation and is then "licensed" for production on other habitations. When the Flow begins to shift and cut off these habitations, wouldn't the most expedient solution be to do away with the licensing scheme so that all of the habitations will have all of the knowledge needed to survive without the trade? Alternatively, with hundreds of millions of people living in each habitation, wouldn't they have the ability to develop the necessary goods on their own? If those habits are designed to allow hundreds of millions of people to live for months or years without goods coming in from other planets, the they probably have the ability to survive for millennia without those imported goods.

[Mr. Scalzi might be making a bit of an allegory between the nobility of the Interdependency and modern global corporations. The problem with that allegory is that the places with the greatest poverty are places where the local government prevents trade and free market economics. It isn't a problem of corporations licensing trade so much as a problem of governments interfering with trade.]

Consider how much of our Earth simply isn't dedicated to directly sustaining human life. How much "excess" air do we have? How much water is there on the planet? The large volume of both resources allow the by-products of human existence to be diluted and processed without building up to poisonous levels. That condition simply wouldn't exist in artificial habitats.

Only one of the 47 habitations in the empire is a planet that is a viable for human living on the surface. For some reason it is the least desirable "world" where all of the ne'er-do-wells are sent. Wouldn't a planet capable of sustaining human life be at least the second most influential habitation with this empire? Wouldn't that planet be the largest producer of goods that are needed to support life in those constructed habitations? So again, why isn't the one life sustaining planet a more important part of this Empire?

Some of the lesser details:

Mr. Scalzi's use of "The Interdependency" as a name for the empire is a ham-fisted attempt to hammer home the idea that we are dependent on one another for things that we cannot individual produce. It detracts from an otherwise entertaining story. One might almost call it a love-letter to free markets. But it is a ham-fisted love-letter at best.

One woman uses her position of privilege to repeatedly force subordinates into having sex. She is considered to be a bit of a protagonist. Her behavior isn't simply implied as it is with some of the male characters. It is laid out in intricate detail. If it were a male character, I have no doubt that readers would (correctly) be questioning that authorial choice.

Lastly, all the ships seem to be named for mid-20th century songs. The naming convention is a bit quirky given that human contact with Earth was cut off thousands of years ago. It would be more likely that they would use the names of past Emperoxs, heads of guilds, or influential members of the clergy. The naming of ships is a minor detail that removes some of the gravitas from an otherwise decent story.
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As long as you don't put a lot of thought into the mechanics of the world building, this is an engaging and entertaining story. Be entertained and then move on.

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2018 Hugo Novel

This is where I will review and rate the nominees in the novel category for the 2018 Hugo awards.

I make a point of purchasing all of the nominees in the novel category.  Authors should get paid whenever possible.

• The Stone Sky by N.K. Jemisin - More later.  Very well written while being disturbingly negative in outlook.
• Raven Strategem by Yoon Ha Lee - This is the second book in a series.  The first book was also nominated.  I believe this book benefitted from literary inertia; people that enjoy the first book in a series are likely to find and read the second book in the same series.  I read this year's installment as a fantasy novel wrapped in a sci-fi cloak and had a much better time.
• Six Wakes by Mur Lafferty - More later.  Almost certainly not making it to the top of my ballot due to some plot holes.
• No Award
• The Collapsing Empire by John Scalzi - longer thoughts to come soon.  The short version is that while it is enjoyable, it is not one of the five best books of 2017.  It isn't even close.  The longer version is that the world building was poorly executed, there were problematic characters, and there were features in the storytelling that undercut a more serious reading experience.  While reading this book was an enjoyable experience, it was not of the stellar quality that one associates with being a Hugo Award-winning book.  [For the record, I have found other works by Mr. Scalzi to be definitely worthy of such recognition.  This book is just not in that category.]
• Provenance by Ann Leckie - I made it through about a third of the book before I gave up.  The main character was uninteresting and not terribly inspiring.  She was essentially flailing about in pursuit of some way of lowering the status of her adoptive brother.  She had no plan, she just jumped from one "idea" to the next.  Add to that the incidents where characters were confessing their crimes to her for no valid reason whatsoever.  
• New York 2140 by Kim Stanley Robinson - The level of utter nonsense in this book made it a Do Did Not Finish tome worthy of Dorothy Parker's best.

This was a disappointing group of nominees.  Just off the top of my head, the following are easily as good as (if not better than) the works that I put below "No Award".

• Tyrant's Throne by Sebastien de Castell
• The Core by Peter V. Brett
• All Good Things by Emma Newman
• Kings of the Wyld by Nicholas Eames