Pacific Edge

Pacific Edge, Kim Stanley Robinson, 326 pages

The world has changed to a system focused on small-scale politics, renewable energy, and community-based living. In the small village of El Modena, carpenter and homebuilder Kevin Claiborne has just joined the city council, only to discover that the mayor is attempting to sneak through legislation that strengthens big business and risks exploiting the last undeveloped hilltop in town.

This is what I had been hoping for when I began reading the Three Californias triptych. Robinson envisions a world as close to utopia as possible, where humanity lives in harmony with nature instead of in opposition to it. My favorite part was where the town watches two tall ships come in to port, racing to be the first into the harbor, just like in the golden age of clipper ships (for in this future, the shipping industry has converted back to sail power, as indeed seems likely in our own), though I was frustrated by the lack of research put into other aspects of ship life (a specific quibble of mine, as I was a professional tall ship sailor for two years; this would probably not bother a layperson). There are parts of this trilogy that are very obviously written by a man – did Robinson need to spend as much time describing women’s bodies as he did? This stuck out to me most in Pacific Edge, because I really liked the rest of this book. If you’re interested in environmentalism and want to envision a hopeful future for the human race, this is a book for you.