Subject: ANTARCTICA by Kim Stanley Robinson

From: "Evelyn C Leeper" <[email-masked]>
Date: 27 Jul 1998 15:34:11 -0400

ANTARCTICA by Kim Stanley Robinson
           Bantam, ISBN 0-553-10063-7, 1998, 508pp, US$24.95
                   A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper
		    Copyright 1998 Evelyn C. Leeper

     Robinson is certainly best known for his "Mars" series (RED MARS,
GREEN MARS, BLUE MARS).  ANTARTICA reads like WHITE MARS.  It has what
seemed like even more expository lumps, nay, expository *mountains*, about
geology et al.  The only hint that this attempt to get us all to live a
more ecologically sustainable lifestyle might not be paradisical is a
passing reference to three attempts at single-child families in China, a
plan that sounds good in theory but has turned out to be quite otherwise
in practice.  Robinson's character who refers to this seems to think it
was a good thing; Robinson's opinion is of course unknown.

     If Robinson is not the leading "ecological science fiction" writer
these days, I must be really out of touch with the field.  But even though
I agree with his goals, or what I think his goals are, I am starting to
find his didacticism wearing.  To be fair, he does not draw obvious
villains, intent on killing all the whales or some such and hang the
consequences.  But the parade of scientists and just plain folks who get
to stand up and "speechify" about their philosophies is not what I am
looking for in a novel.

     The most interesting part of ANTARTICA, in fact, was the recounting
of the early exploration of the continent and the people involved in that.
Here Robinson's long expository passages didn't bother me, maybe because
the explorers had more personality than mountains and glaciers.  At least
with them I felt I was reading a story rather than a textbook.

     If you liked the "Mars" trilogy, you will almost definitely like
ANTARTICA.  But if you preferred the sparser, earlier Robinson, and were
hoping for a return to that style, this will be a disappointment.

     [Though the copyright date listed in the book is 1998, the book was
actually published in Britain in 1997.]

%T      Antarctica
%A      Kim Stanley Robinson
%C      New York
%D      July 1998
%I      Bantam
%O      hardback, US$24.95
%G      ISBN 0-553-10063-7
%P      508pp

Evelyn C. Leeper    |  [email-masked]
+1 732 957 2070     |  http://www.geocities.com/Athens/4824
"That's how things are--you open the door to a possibility and the next
thing you know, an actuality has you by the throat."  --Russell Hoban