Fifty Degrees Below (Science in the Capital Book 2)

Kim Stanley Robinson is a quality writer - I've read Antarctica three times! However, for my personal reading tastes, he tends to overly 'philosophise' some of his characters or situations beyond my personal tolerance level. If you prefer this type of writing (there's nothing wrong with it) this book is filled with it. For my tastes however, this tends to slow down the overall progression of the book, when I'm waiting to get to the next event. Finally, my mind says "OK, I get it, I get it" and I skip a lot of writing/pages to get to the next phase of the book.

I read this book many years ago, around the time it first came out. It was an exhilarating and scary read: the author goes into weather effects in a very realistic way. I happen to read this book first, and then went on to read the rest of the series.I agree with other reviewers that the books were somewhat uneven: some parts about the government and politics were rather dry, and yet at the same time, they felt realistic.I recently read a New York Times articles about extreme weather events, and the first thing I thought of was this book. The world is hitting extremes of cold, and heat, and rain. It was so cold in Russia that natural gas pipelines ruptured when the natural gas spontaneously liquified. So hot in Brazil for so long, they've depleted their reservoirs and hydro-generation capacity trying to keep cool. So wet in Britain that businesses are being forced to close after being flooded a dozen times in two months. It's snowing in Italy and the Middle East.In retrospect, 50 Degrees Below and the other books in the series are such accurate depictions of the now-real effects of global climate change that they are eerily prescient.

I have gone back and forth on this review because I'm just not sure how I feel about this book. In "Forty Signs of Rain", I gave Robinson a lot of leeway in the slow progression of that novel. I believed that I understood what he was trying to say: That we are all going about our lives, almost blithely, as the effects of global warming start to catch up with us. That book flipped between the academic struggles to address global warming and the day-to-day realities of domestic life. Finally in the end, the gathered clouds unleash and we are off and running......And then in "Fifty Degrees Below" Robinson switches character emphasis and presents a new slow progression. There have been significant weather related events, but these are told as back-story--we do not get to go through them with the characters. But something is coming, and there are ominous portends in Siberia, tornadoes along the east coast of Canada, excessive rain in California, and drought just about everywhere else. Washington D.C. has been remade by an almost biblical flood, and most of the story takes place there. While the federal government does practically nothing to restore Washington D.C., Robinson's central character begins to adapt to the new reality, discovering primal urges within him that force him to cope. This is interesting characterization, but still small in the world of things.The book just plods along. Winter in Washington D.C. gets really bad, but people manage to survive. The central character's efforts to help, both scientifically and culturally, are noble but seem like too little, too late--too small. And perhaps this is what Robinson is trying to say; if so I give him credit, but the vehicle for his message could still be more compelling. Suspending disbelief is difficult in a story in which the government won't even move to restore the nation's capitol (New Orleans?). And Robinson takes a lot of jibes at the Right (deservedly so), as if he were as disgusted as many of us by events since the 2004 election and felt compelled to air them out in this story.So I believe, if I am interpreting Robinson's message correctly, that he is making some significant, profound observations about our fate as a species and as individuals, but the story moves along so slowly that I know many will not finish it. So how to rate this book? I'm just not sure.

I really enjoyed the first book, but it was the background needed to pull off this one. It all reminds me of today, the politics, the denial of climate change, the denial of science. But, since the weather was changing drastically, and many people were dying, they gave much more money to a science organization of the Federal government. They invested that in science groups looking for solutions. Really well written. I was lost in the story. If someone tried to talk to me, I wouldn't have heard.

I'm giving this only three stars, not for the writing, but for the serial nature of the two books so far in this trilogy.Like the first book, this one has a lot to offer. Rapid climate change continues apace, and Robinson's scientists and politicians grapple with the effects as they work as involved professionals on the problem. Imagining Minnesotan winter temperatures in Washington DC is a powerful way to bring home how climate change could day-to-day life. The characters are touching and human, and their relationships with each other are as important as their relationship with the weather.But for Pete's sake... the two books published so far aren't novels, they're the first two-thirds of a novel. They're not long enough nor dense enough to be satisfying as individual stories. The Mars trilogy, another trilogy by Robinson which followed a set of characters for three books, covered centuries of events in over two thousand pages; the first two books of this trilogy, by contrast, have the same page count as the last book of the Mars trilogy and span events over roughly a year, and even at that they seem a little padded with a lot of lunches and phone calls and searches for parking spaces. Worst of all, this book ends with another big 'To Be Continued...' placard.It's praising with faint condemnation when a reader's principal frustration with book is that there isn't more of it, but still, be aware that whatever appetites were aroused by _Forty Signs of Rain_ won't be satisfied here. I remain optimistic about the end of the story, but I sure wish I didn't have to wait another year to read it.

This book was almost impossible to put down. Where the author goes from here is going to be very interesting.

Dystopian, "Cli-fi" novel. End of the world climate change disaster novel, with some hippy elements. Is different to other cli-fi novels as it shows humans working together.

A nice read with most parts drawing together at the end.however there are a good many loose ends so the last book has some work to do.

You get immersed in the storyline and you feel cold. What if it really happens? How will we in England survive?

V good book thanks JNR