2065: In a world that has rediscovered harmony with nature, the village of El Modena, California, is an ecotopia in the making. Kevin Claiborne, a young builder who has grown up in this “green” world, now finds himself caught up in the struggle to preserve his community’s idyllic way of life from the resurgent forces of greed and exploitation.Pacific Edge is the third novel in Kim Stanley … Kim Stanley Robinson’s Three Californias Trilogy.
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Kim Stanley Robinson is one of the science fiction writers I have read throughout my reading life. He joins Octavia Butler, Greg Bear, and Robert Silverberg as the science fiction writers I have found interesting and thought provoking to read.
Pacific Edge is the third book of The Three Californias Trilogy and a book that can read as a standalone novel. I have read the Mars Trilogy (Red, Green, & Blue Mars) and Aurora by Robinson. This novel is my second favorite Robinson novel behind Aurora.
It is the story of El Modena, California, a minor city in 2065 trying to create an ecotopia. Kevin Claiborne has lived his entire in El Modena and wants to preserve the way of life that has been established for all of its citizens. However, the forces of hypercapitialism want to transform the city’s idyllic way of life.
Robinson has a strong liberal viewpoint that comes through the novel. But I found his storytelling trumps the political and social agenda transparent in the novel. Utopian fiction gets a bad rap for not having much conflict. He makes sure that conflict exists despite the attempts of making El Modena a model city in California that has been changed by the outside forces of politics.
I have read all three novels of the California Trilogy and liked them. Pacific Edge is the one book of the trilogy that I would re-read again and have kept on my bookshelf along with Aurora. This novel is more character driven than the usual hard science fiction novel.
I believe that Pacific Edge is a book that should be read in book clubs for those who don’t like science fiction. Robinson creates solid characters in the story and presents a worldview that deserves further examination.
California, 2065. Water law changed such that Inyo County owns its water, not Los Angeles. Corporations smaller and people bike everywhere and live in multi-family communal spaces. The quality of ideas is excellent, the writing sometimes transcendent.
Utopia means ‘no place’ or ‘nowhere’. You can’t ignore this irony reading K.S.Robinson’ s concluding book of Three Californias series about alternate futures seen from the perspective of Orange County, California. Pacific Edge (first published in 1990) is an ecofiction, it portrays a near-future utopian dreaming scenario that it is only slightly shifted from our own reality.
Most of the region has undergone hyper-development but citizen action has limited growth and the expansion of big corporations. The multi-nationals are disbanded and everything from businesses to homes to transportation, is small scale, sustainable and green. Social arrangements are in place, and citizens’ group manage the healed natural systems with democratic governance. Daily life is quite mundane and it is based in close face-to-face relationships.
In Pacific Edge, KSR underlies a few of his concrete ideas for creating a utopia. The year is 2065 and it involves advanced technologies but the economic systems go beyond capitalism. People are part of the biosphere, but not antitechnological. In the Pacific Edge the story is, perhaps, less exciting than the post-apocalyptic society of The Wild Shore, but it is more real and believable. What KSR give us, in a sense, is how it might feels if we decide to take the first steps of reconfiguring the landscape, the infrastructure, and the social and economic sytems of our societies.