New York 2140

Very disappointed in the story, the lack of plot, the science was very poor, serious lack of understanding of the basics of global warming, glacial melting sea level rise. The characters are shallow, not believeable, even silly. Also a serious lack of understanding of the New York financial - real estate world which was main story. Also the editing was marginal: Patagonia in South Africa?
The writing was simply not up to par for Robinson. Highly recommend to skip this one.

The novel is a hybrid of sci fi and cli fi, and it works well this way, since cli fi is a subgenre of SF. Three things to note: It has the tenacious, encyclopedic detail that Mr Robinson is known for, the big ideas of a modern CliFi novel and finally the twists and turns of a heist movie. It doesn't take a leftwing storyteller to come up with this Age of Trump yarn, but it helps if your name is Stan Robinson. I loved this book! Btw, there is a character in the novel called Octaviasdottir, which uses an Icelandic naming tradition for using a person's father or mother's name and calling the daughter as So and So's DAUGHTER, or in Icelandic, ''dottir''. So is this character a way for KSR to pay respects to Octavia Butler, the great American sci fi writer? Cool.

Rebecca Solnit's nonfiction book titled "A Paradise Built in Hell, one of the freshest, deepest, most optimistic accounts of human nature I've ever read, reminds me also of Robinsin's New York 2140" which is also about
people rising to the occasion of a Manhattan hit by a 50-foot sea level rise and their rising to the occasion joy and determination in KSR's cli-fi vision of the near future, what he calls "Utopian Climate Change Fiction." The joy his characters exhibit reveal an ordinarily unmet yearning for community, purposefulness, and meaningful work in the year 2140. Like ''A Paradise Built in Hell,' Stan's novel is also an investigation of the moments of altruism, resourcefulness, and generosity that arise amid an unspeakable climate disaster's grief and disruption and considers their implications for everyday life. And like Rebecca's book, "New York 2140" also points to a new vision of what American society could become -- one that is less authoritarian and fearful, more collaborative and local.

So far this book is boring and seems to be going nowhere. Somebody please tell me that it gets better and is more exciting than day trading in Waterworld. Right now I feel like I wasted good money. If I don't update this in a few weeks then my one star rating holds true.

I very seldom don't finish a book, especially one that is reviewed on NPR's Science Friday. But I found the long descriptive narratives boring, hard to follow and the characters singularly uninteresting.

I found this book to be fresh, and interesting. The characters are all well developed and endearing, especially since they are flawed and real. It’s amazing to me that I made it through such a long book with so much in-depth financial information. I can only credit the authors amazing writing talent since I hate all talk that even remotely involves numbers. I have never been interested in global financial issues, and yet...I not only made it to the end, I enjoyed every minute of it.

I loved the changing perspectives and multiple characters. The audible version is so good! Usually, I buy both the book and the audible, and only use the audible version when I can’t physically read the book. However, I found the readers breathed even more life into these wonderfully developed characters.

The one thing that bothered me at times, was the lack of very much social change. It’s more than a hundred years in the future, but the characters continually made pop culture references to our current situation. I realize this is purposeful to drive the themes, but at times, I could find it unbelievable. But it’s a minor concern because this is really a book about our current times. I can only hope we heed the warnings.

It’s a big book, with big ideas. I recommend it.

They called it the Second Pulse: an unexpected collapse of glacial valleys in Antarctica that poured billions more tons of ice into the world oceans than was ever expected. Global sea levels rose by fifty feet in a few years, displacing hundreds of millions of people and triggering an economic meltdown. The world recovered, but it had to adapt.

In New York the lower half of Manhattan was inundated, becoming a "Super-Venice". New Yorkers are a hardy breed and they keep trucking along, taking skybridges and boats to work instead of taxis and trains, and still grumbling about the weather. For the inhabitants of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Building on Madison Square, life continues in this changed world. But when two residents are kidnapped and the city is threatened by a tropical storm, the tower becomes the centre of a sequence of events which could change the world.

New York, New York, so great they named it twice. In novels and on screen, it's been blown up, hit by meteors, invaded by aliens, attacked by Godzilla and King Kong and been subjected to every disaster that the human mind can conjure. Kim Stanley Robinson is the latest author to take a crack at subjecting the city to catastrophe, but his one is both much simpler and more plausible: a significant rise in sea levels. Lower Manhattan is transformed into a series of islands, buildings connected together by bridges and boat taxis, the city at considerably greater risk from storm surges and hurricanes but New Yorkers carrying on as normal because that's what they do.

Robinson is one of SF's most interesting voices, mixing realism with a healthy optimism with real scientific vigour with an interest in macroeconomics. His work veers from the large scale to the intimate: his Mars Trilogy remains the final word on the colonisation of the Red Planet, whilst Galileo's Dream, Shaman and the Science in the Capital trilogy have been more down-to-earth works. Generation ship drama Aurora and his state-of-the-Solar-System epic 2312 have shown a general trajectory back to large scale events, as will his next novel (in which China colonises the moon). New York 2140 takes a different tack, depicting a vast, complex and changed world through the prism of the (now very soggy) Big Apple. There's some interest to be found from parsing the ultra-cynical, profit-driven city through the eyes of Robinson, a Californian utopian scientist through and through.

So this is a book which examines the future of human society through the greatest city humanity has ever built (and maybe ever will build), but the book zooms in even further than that, concentrating on the inhabitants of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Building on Madison Square (the one with the impressive giant clock), now, like so many other buildings, an island rising from the waters. The main characters include NYPD office Gwen, a lawyer named Charlotte, a hedge fund manager, two homeless kids, the building's supervisor Vlade (whose tasks involve making sure the building doesn't sink or collapse from waterlogged foundations) and a cloud video star named Amelia who has her own web channel covering her attempts to save endangered species using an airship. The plot initially appears rather diffuse, with the kidnapping of two computer programmers from the building providing a dramatic spine but the book moving away from this for lengthy tangents on matters material, political and financial, but eventually the sprawling plot threads come together for a fascinating conclusion.

Robinson is that rarest of beasts, a hard SF author who can actually write. His prose is vivid, flows well and changes tonally between narrators (hedge fund manager Frank gets his chapters written in first person, unlike everyone else, just because Robinson likes mixing things up a bit). New York 2140 is simply a tremendous pleasure to read from start to finish for this reason. Robinson is also a bit on the light-hearted side of things here. That's not to say there isn't serious drama and incident (there is, especially when a tropical storm hits the city), but Robinson mitigates this with a sense of humour and an genuine outsider's appreciation for the city.

Really, New York 2140 is a love letter to a city that you'd think doesn't need any more, but works anyway. The city is peppered with anecdotes from the city's history, most of them true. It's startling to learn that Met North (the building adjacent to the Met Life Insurance Building) was supposed to be a supermassive skyscraper taller than the Empire State Building but was abandoned after 30 floors for financial reasons, or that in 1903 an elephant made a break for freedom from Coney Island and swam three miles across the Narrows to Staten Island before being recaptured. Robinson's list of sources and stories will have readers hitting the internet to check out the awesome 18th Century British topographical surveys of the mostly-unsettled Manhattan Island, or confirm that Manhattan is actually sloped with the southern part of the island much lower than the northern. Most insane is the story that a British warship carrying gold to pay its troops, HMS Hussar, sank in New York Harbour and was never recovered. The money on board would be worth hundreds of millions of dollars today, but since the Bronx has been extended over the site of the wreck it can't be recovered. Implausibly, but entertainingly, this becomes a major plot point in the novel.

The book is mostly successful but occasionally flounders: the novel is a little too consumed with economic history and a few jokes wear thin ("sunk costs" is a term that takes on a new meaning), but these points remain minor.

New York 2140 (****½) is more than a well-written profile of the city. As the book continues it gains drama and urgency and ends on a note which moves the story far beyond New York's borders to take in the entire world. It's a little bit too neat and maybe too optimistic, but the book's (unnamed) narrator acknowledges this and points out that the great social transformation which results from the book's events may be temporary. But overall New York 2140 is Robinson at his best: brimming with verve and humour and hope, taking all the knocks that politics and economics and cold science can throw at us and showing that humans can always adapt, change and prosper.

not good. goofy side stories complied around potentially good premise about the city. the cover is by far the best part of this. this is far from what i expected from the same author as Aurora, 2132, & the mars trilogy,

I got to thinking about this problem as an engineering problem. Dikes are a possible solution of course, but when I drive to City Island in the Bronx. I see a hill of reclaimed garbage. How about using the solid garbage as cheap fill? It turns out that NYC produces 14 million tons of solid waste a year, Call it a conservative 30,000 cubic yards solid waste per year. I figure that you could fill in 10 shallow blocks in 10 years(5 ft deep), 10 shallow blocks in 20 more years(10 ft deep) and 30 more years to fill in 10 shallow blocks in 30 years( 15 ft). So in 50 years you have reclaimed 30 blocks of some of the most expensive real estate in the world and found a good use for solid waste. Possibly, you might want to go after just the "low hanging fruit" and fill in 50 shallow blocks in all of the boroughs. Note that there are 262 blocks in Manhattan and maybe half of them are flooded. Or use the waste to build a great dike .

The book is well written and got me to think, as you can see .. Good characterization. But other Sci Fi books like "The Martian" did a wonderful job with numbers and problem solving .Admittedly, books like these do not need to be prepared with a spreadsheet, but good numbers and solutions.. I'd suggest NYC 2040 has more the flavor of a fable. And the book needs a map.

This is one of the less complex reads from KSR.
I purchased it asap, as it's a look at NYC and the world from a dystopian mindset, my favorite genre.
It is one of the more upbeat and positive dystopian novels out there that I have read. Like many of his stories, there are a number of story arc's, but I did not have trouble following them. The writer can create vivid imagery and scenes, and relatable characters.
What I liked about it, is that they grew into an inclusive group who looked out for each other, despite their flaws. What I like is there was no white washing of characters, and except for a few - you really did not know or care about their skin color.
Some may squabble that it mirrors a lot of current events, spun into the future - and also one would expect the tech of the time to be more discretely described - but hey - he is not also going to be expected to be an inventor!
I listened to the audible version. The 20+ hour novel was gripping and went by quickly! Many narrators made the story palpable, and interlude history lessons are given to help develop the background story.

I'm not quite sure how I feel about this one. There was a lot to love about it, but I think there are few things holding it back from being a four star read for me.

The concept was really great. I loved seeing how Robinson imagined New York would operate underwater. He included many details that lent his story a great deal of authenticity: sky bridges between buildings for citizens to traverse the city, the use of boats in place of cars to navigate the water ways (and yes, there was still traffic), diving for various purposes (sport or work) rising in popularity, skating as the waters froze over in winter, the movement of people upward into the sky (blimps and sky villages), farming for food when land is scarce, and the list goes on. It was beautifully imagined and I enjoyed reading all the details.

Although it wasn't heavy on the science aspect, he did include a few of those details too: photovoltaic liners and on the exterior of buildings and solar panels to generate power, water proofing sealants to keep buildings standing upright, drones that could be dispatched underwater for various small tasks, the movement of tides, etc.

But what stood out most of all was the characters. The characters were wonderful and I was able to find something to love about all of them. Stefan, Roberto, Vlade and Amelia were my favorites, but they all won me out in the end. They were crafted very carefully and all had different life experiences and unique voices. The common thread among them was their building, the Met, and their love for New York.

My primary struggle with this book, was the huge concentration on finance. It plays an important part in the book, but man do I hate finance. I think if I had been aware of it before starting, I never would have picked it up at all. Not only is it something I don't understand, but ultimately I just find it incredibly boring. Franklin Garr is a broker (though he describes himself as a professional gambler). I'm not sure what he's brokering precisely, investments I suppose, and most of that went right over my head to the point that whenever the book devolved into those nitty gritty details I just started skimming. Also- what I found strange and unrealistic, is that 120 years in the future, New York 50 feet underwater, they kept mentioning the 2008 recession... I guess 140 years isn't that long, but after all those disasters there hasn't been a single greater recession to reference?

I also feel like the conclusion could have been tighter, or at least we could have been given an epilogue. Mutt and Jeff's storyline never received the attention I felt it properly deserved. They acted as a catalyst for many of these events, but it never seemed to hold any other significance to the story. They start with this huge act of defiance, that receives one line of wrap up in the final chapter. I wanted to know what happened with Franklin's project. What happened with Stefan and Roberto? What about Amelia and her project? Did she continue? Or move onto other things? Charlotte's conclusion was the only one that felt fleshed out.

So I think this is an important book, about the potential dangers of climate change and the current state of the economy, and I'm not sorry I read it, I just think it could have used some trimming and tightening. I'd recommend to fans of climate-fiction.

The title sounds like just another apocalyptic thriller. One look at the dust-cover illustration--a vibrant metropolis, traditional buildings awash in fifty feet of seawater and many 22nd century skyscrapers crowding the new shoreline of "uptown" Manhattan--tells you this is no typical end-of-the-world novel.

And it isn't.

This is not a fight-for-survival story in the wake (no pun intended) of global warming. Not in the traditional sense. It's a chronicle of people, young and old, rich and poor, who, in many clever, intriguing ways, become a vanguard for a new North-American society 120-odd years in the future.

Author Kim Stanley Robinson anchors his firmly in the near-past of the early Millennium, through the thoughts and memories of a cryptic "Citizen" who pops up occasionally to provide voice-over while the story's characters--a stock manipulator, policewoman, two treasure-seeking salvage kids, a building super and her worried manager live through their days and nights in a city on the edge of watery destruction.

I found it fascinating, clever, funny and very entertaining...and enlightening, too. But be forewarned: if you're after the typical down-and-dirty melodrama of us-against-the-horde (of whatever), you may be disappointed.

Go ahead: take a chance--and learn something about how the future might shake out, and how individual human beings--pretty much like those living today--struggle towards a better life, while trying to salvage the one they happen to be caught up in.

Reading a nice, long Kim Stanley Robinson novel is like going on a great vacation: you have a decent idea where you’re going, you know it’s going to be for a while, you know you’re going to get up to some great adventures and have a great time, and you never want it to end. In his latest book, New York: 2140, from the cover and the title, the reader might think they have a good idea what they’re about to get stuck into, but this is a Robinson novel after all, so the reader may get a few things right, while others will be shocking and thrilling and completely surprising.

Most science fiction novels involving a distant and changed future would begin with a long description on how this world got to be this way, but this author does it a little differently, introducing the main characters with P.O.V. chapters that educate the reader on the character and his or her background, and indirectly on the world, how it is and a little about how it came to be this way. Eventually there are chapters from a somewhat omniscient character looking to tell the reader how things went how over the last hundred and fifty years. In this way, Robinson eases the reader into his 600+ page book, like a multi-layer delicious cake where each layer entices you that little bit more.

Let’s introduce our lead players. There are the two friends, coders, who hatch an idea to shake up the entire world economy, and then they just disappear. There’s the market trader guy who does magical things with stocks and shares and makes plenty of money doing it; he’s used to getting things his way, money, women, power. There’s the internet star who travels around in her zeppelin trying to save animals and get herself on camera with or without clothes for her millions of viewers. A building super from Eastern Europe who is much more than that and excels at solving problems. There’s the cop, a detective, New York’s finest, who is always drowning in work, but that’s because she’s damn good at her job. And then there are the two boys who appear to be orphans and not registered anywhere, and they’ve just found something buried under the ground, beneath the waters, under the long stares of the semi-submerged skyscrapers. The characters find themselves drawn together in a most unusual journey.

New York: 2140 is a look at a future world that has suffered a lot, as seen and experienced through a unique group of characters who find themselves unexpectedly drawn together. It’s a complex, diverse and fascinating group with an incredible backdrop of a world that is constantly in flux. And then there’s the hurricane . . .

Originally written on April 28, 2017 ©Alex C. Telander.

The premise is intriguing, and the plot and characters are interesting enough, but in terms of imagining a world, I don't think this book works, and for reasons that are baked in to the date he chose.The year 2140 is 123 years in the future; if we go back that same amount of time, it takes us to1894. So think about it: how much time do you spend thinking back to how your city was in 1894? How many of the issues that were on the minds of people in 1894 still concern us? We can only assume that technological change will have picked up the pace even more going forward a century than in the century leading up to us. But in this story, not much has changed in terms of daily life. Oh, he talks about the types of boats and the ways they have kept some buildings viable after the flooding of lower Manhattan, but the little details of daily life are all too familiar--people get phone calls on a little device on their wrists (in other words, Google watches) and they use screens and ipad-type devices, as well as white boards. Hedge funds and high-speed trading are still going on, and the narrator references Piketty's book Capital in the 21st Century. In other words, i never bought the premise that I was looking at a different world--it was more like 2040, at best, or maybe even 2017 with extra water. I find the author's interest in questions of economic inequality meaningful, but many will not. So I don't think that, on balance, this is a satisfying story.

While I read this book because reviews said it was one of the best for 2017 I was not impressed. The plotline wasn't bad but it took half the book before I even started to understand where the author was going and the sections with the "citizen" were often so off kilter for me that I hated reading them. I have no doubt that if you are sure that certain hard left positions are the right way to run the world and like this writing style you would love this book. Unfortunately the style was not something I enjoyed and I am more centrist and found the ending too weird.

Coming to grips with the sheer imaginative immensity of Kim Stanley Robinson’s futurist novel, NEW YORK 2140 prompted a brief journey to my past --- to New York circa 1959.

I was almost, but not quite, 10, and my world-traveling independently single eccentric great aunt (every child should have such a relative!) treated me to a trip to this most iconic of great cities. One of the must-do’s, of course, was riding by high-speed elevator to the top of the Empire State Building. Back then, it was the highest free-standing structure in the world and would remain so for about another decade, until overtaken by the ill-fated World Trade Center.

It was a crystal-clear autumn day as Aunt M. pointed out the wonders of the metropolis spread out 102 stories below us, informing me that it had been built on an island enlarged by humans to make room for an ever-increasing forest of skyscrapers and port facilities. I was one fascinated geography nerd, but remember complaining that I could not see the “edges” of Manhattan Island --- the buildings seemed to be marching right into the water without any reference to a natural coastline.

Back then I knew nothing of impending global climate change, nothing about polar ice caps and glaciers melting, nothing about inexorably rising sea levels that in the future are predicted to drown numerous major coastal population centers.

Robinson’s NEW YORK 2140 powerfully envisions the city nearly two centuries out from my childhood alarm at the vanished “edges” of lower Manhattan, a time when vast networks of urban streets have become permanent canals, and an entire society has reinvented itself to survive alongside nature’s non-negotiable tidal rhythms.

To even begin gathering in the myriad implications of a literal sea-change in planetary human society is a daunting task for empirical science, let alone the realm of speculative fiction, where the storyline has to be as credible as the known facts on which it is based. But that’s both the charm and challenge of NEW YORK 2140.

As one of the most flexible, eclectic and seriously diligent science-fiction writers of our era, Robinson shows once again how vast catastrophes are both precipitated and overcome through numerous seemingly insignificant human actions --- the stuff of daily life and people coping with it.

This is where we enter 22nd-century New York --- not in the midst of apocalyptic crisis like a 3D Hollywood disaster movie, but during a time when the new normal era of post-flood life has become so well established that few residents have any idea that there was once life below the waterline.

Like the lives of Robinson’s haphazardly intersecting characters, who all live in or near the former Met Life building (reinvented as a communal housing complex), the numerous short episodes of NEW YORK 2140 come at you thick and fast like pieces of a gigantic exploded mosaic or jigsaw puzzle.

At various points, just when the logical part of the brain needs something to bite down on, a character known only as “citizen” (but suspiciously suggestive of Robinson playing the omniscient author) comments on larger enveloping issues, ranging from science to politics, to ecology, to human psychology, back to science and so on. Within this vast scope of contextual commentary, his very human and usually well-meaning characters run the gamut of personal fears, disappointments, adventures, successes, hopes, love interests (lost and found), and even genuine epiphanies, as their lives are pulled closer and closer together.

How this motley crew of protagonists all end up after more than 600 pages of supple, riveting and even optimistic narrative is well worth the trip. While writing against a scientific backdrop that may well prove inalterable and inevitable, Kim Stanley Robinson shows that human destiny is, fortunately, far less predictable.

Reviewed by Pauline Finch

This draaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaags on
and on and on and on.
The guy needs a better editor, one with a big red pencil that can cross out whole pages.
typical KSR book: some good ideas and then they get rolled flat by the big steamroller of verbal diarrhea.
I find myself skipping whole paragraphs, whole pages.
A lot of the story is either inconsequential, or follows no logical line. Just an example: they make BILLIONS from a gold find and then they do not react to it at all? No change of circumstances, no nothing? WTF, man.
As nearly always (big exception is 2312) the story hits huge non-sequiturs, is preachy and didactic and gives its little actors the levers to move the earth. He never writes organic stories, he always comes from the back: This is what I want to preach about, how do I make my characters act it out?

I would suggest Hemingway, in pill form. Three times daily before meals.

Oh, before I forget: the book is full of spellos and factual mistakes.
I expect anyone who writes about Nietzsche and dares to give an opinion about him to at least be able to spell the name.
It's 4 noble truths, not eight. The four riders of the apocalypse are pestilence, war, famine and death; pestilence, not conquest.
Etc etc etc.
As I said: he needs a better editor.

Story starts off slowly. After getting a third of the way in, there's not much science in this work of "science fiction". The story so far is mostly about economics and real estate practices after large sea level rise, rather than anticipating major changes in technologies 120 years into the future. Specifically, the computer stock trading does not seem any different than what's possible today, and a polar bear relocation project via an internet (really is there still the internet in 2140?) reality show that is becoming silly.

As noted on the radio show Science Friday, there is not a scientist among the major characters, so that's kind of a let down and does not offer much hope that imaginative technologies will emerge. But maybe the second 2/3 thirds of the book will pick up with an alien encounter or something.

I listened to this book on Audible. Multiple readers did a good job. I've read the Mars series and his wonderful book on Antarctica. New York 2140 is a fascinating look at how two large surges of climate-change induced glacial melt may change life in coastal cities. Robinson's specialty is well-researched detail, and in this book he tells you about future New York and also, repeatedly, past New York. The anti-capitalist, power-to-the-people veer of the book near its end gets a little preachy, and the depth of the characters doesn't rise to the depth of their surroundings. It is terribly long, but at the end worthwhile.

Overly anvillicious and seeming to require someone who is familiar with NYC neighborhoods. The writing was remarkable at times, but uneven and wordy at its worst. The characters, while initially interesting, experienced almost no growth for the most part. And even when (FINALLY) they did at the end of the interwoven set of stories, I realized one thing.

I just didn't care any more.

Extremely disappointing.
I knew since I read the Mars series (and gave up on the last book) that Kim has an excellent knowledge of science and its possibilities, but that his knowledge of politics and finance is strictly lower class.
2312 was an excellent book, full on interesting ideas on the future of our solar system and the transforming of celestial bodies and the creation of new ones. It was a really interesting idea. The novel kept one moving and anxious to continue to read.
However, now we come to New York 2140. It has no interesting plot, it is boring, and it is a propaganda essay, which in its full context is an insane lie. Let’s point out some interesting observation on the book:
1. Kim condemns, like most current liberals, the massive faults in our current government, industry and blames the 1% for their greedy “find the place that makes the most profit.”
2. The issue with this is first, Kim is part of the 1%. Of 7 billion people on earth, the 1% comprises anyone with an income of $400,000/per year and/or a new worth of around $800,000.
3. That is a lot of people, (70M) including him and me.
4. Kim seems to forget that without unbridled capitalism we would all still be living in caves and gathering roots and berries. Is that what he wants? Kim would condemn our ancestor who picked up a stick, hooked it to a horse and displaces four guys with sticks. That is productivity and it is the only reason we are not still living in caves and gathering roots and berries.
Bottom line: Great scientific ideas. Poor understanding of capitalism and how it has created the “wealth of nations.” Suggestion: Stay with the kind of novel like 2312. That way, he will not demonstrate his poor understanding of the modern world of finance.

Kim Stanley Robinson again has managed to write an amazing, compelling and thought-provoking work of science fiction. The only reason that I'm giving this book four stars instead of five is because the first two thirds are good, but slow, and have to be gotten through to get to the amazing crescendo that is the final third.

This book is about New York after fifty feet of ocean-level rise. This book is about a hurricane, and a disaster, and capitalism. Robinson doesn't do anything to hide his opinion of capitalism - it's not a positive one - but he also make an incredibly persuasive argument to support his opinion. This is the kind of science fiction that you learn something from reading; the kind of science fiction that not only shows you a future, but also changes how you think.

It almost reads like a political fairy tale of how everything could come out right on the other end of disaster and inequality; but of course Robinson makes sure to let us know that there's no happy endings in the real world.

I would recommend this book to anyone willing to give it a shot.

But I couldn't stand it. After about 40% through, I found it unbearable to continue. Long conversations between characters about nothing in particular, detailed boring explainations of financal concerns, extensive descriptions of characters thoughts and extensive detailed decriptions of water and water related areas. Yes, when there is some action and the characters are actually doing something it's a decent story. But those parts are rare and short.

Dear Kim Stanley Robinson,
I know you said that this book should not ve considered as having a happy ending, but it brought a smile to my face and an NYC warmth to my heart. Not easy to find in 2017. So thanks. I have enjoyed all your books and look forward to more.

WOW!! Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities updated 150 years into the future. Manhattan was Wolfe's star character, and Kim Stanley Robinson gives the island an absolutely star return. An island turning into a Venice with canals from Battery Park almost to Central Park. Global warming has caused a huge rise in sea levels and the entire thrust of the book is how the denizens of Manhattan, from the uber rich in their 300-story skyscrapers to the river rats (human as well as musk), survive, thrive and, it's a story after all, fall in and out of love.
The human characters are ok, developed enough to move the story lines along. But Mr. Robinson's speculations on the future are far more compelling, and developed thoughtfully with a bit (well, more than a bit) of left-leaning attitudes that actually bring some romance into the story.
For this book, go to a real bricks-and-mortar book store to see it. If you don't fall in love with the cover, don't buy it. If you do love the cover, and if you are a painter, read the book and then paint the Manhattan and surrounding boroughs that Mr. Robinson so brilliantly describes as they exist n 2140.

Could have been shorter by half or more if tedious descriptions were omitted. Maybe you have to be a New Yorker to appreciate many of them, but other descriptions are too long as well. If not for the author I would have taken this back to the library about page 100, at which point it was dull dull dull. The two boys kept me going. Maybe too many plots and subplots to keep track of. As another reviewer said, not his best. Another author who, sadly, has yet to understand that the word schizophrenia is NOT the same as multiple personality. Such ignorance in an otherwise sophisticated and learned book is especially distressing. And it is such a tiresome cliche'.

Not finished yet, so more later.

Finished it. Probably skipped half the book and scanned a lot of the rest. One more point: a major section is about a huge disaster and only the National Guard shows up: no FEMA, no Salvation Army, no Red Cross. What was he thinking? Or was he?

I would recommend it to New Yorkers only. Likely won't affect taking a look at a new book by Robinson.

Robinson has been one of my favorite authors since I discovered his Three California's trilogy as a teenager. His visionary science fiction is driven by an extraordinary sensitivity to and empathy for the human experience. New York 2140 will make you think deeply about the implications of climate change and the tradeoffs baked into our political and economic systems.

I've only handed out five stars to two other books this year. This book richly deserves them. A believable and frightening look at what happens to Manhattan when the seas rise. A good cast of characters illuminated a number of issues. Scariest of all is the plot to take financial advantage of the flooding. Robinson is awesome at worldbuilding.

I live in lower Manhattan, and ignored the calls to evacuate during Hurricane Sandy; luckily my little patch of ground (in Battery Park City) was one of the few places in lower Manhattan not flooded.

In general, given the dominance of our current polity by climate change-denying reactionaries, I have a pessimistic, even dystopian view of the future of our planet, and fear for the survival and future of my children.

This novel gives me hope, both that civilization, and my beloved city shall survive; not my own building, I suspect, as it is too southerly, but KSR's choice of the Met Life as the home base of his characters building on 23rd is canny (it's built much beyond tolerances, because it was originally supposed to serve as a skyscraper higher than the Empire State Building).

Very possibly, my children, and grandchildren, will happily live in the Super Venice, even as the seas rise, because it takes too long for reality to beat itself into the heads of some voters.

I received this book as a gift. I really liked New York 2140 for its interesting plot, well delineated characters and for the detailed information and convincing portrait of the logical consequences of the inability of US politicians to address the problem of climate change. That said, artistically, I don't think it is Kim Stanley Robinson's best recent work, which I would say was last year's Aurora. Even so, like most of his work, it is an example of SciFi at its best: a highly engaging story that presents possible consequences of human actions on individuals, society and the natural world through an extrapolation of science and technology to a logical crisis point in the future.

KSR is my favorite author. I've read almost all of his books and highly recommend the Mars Trilogy. This book I do not recommend.

Some parts are interesting. It got a bit heavy on the college sophomore politics. Normally KSR is great at making his points in a way that's a pleasure to read, but this was laying it on thick. Not a bad book, but there are too many great books worth reading and this isn't one of them.

Interesting, sometimes humorous story regarding how inhabitants in New York City manage to go on with their life assuming a 50 foot rise in sea level. The characters are fairly well developed, and it's amazing how humans have modified their behavior and adapted to the drastically changed environment. My criticism is the story focuses exclusively on NYC with little information regarding how anyone in the rest of the country or the planet for that matter are doing.

This is a very good book in some ways. It’s full of ideas; the world building is strong. The writing is good to very good. But none of the characters quite seemed alive (except maybe Franklin, who is really more of a type than a person), and the pacing didn’t come together even during the climax. Didn’t quite work for me, in the end.

Another triumph from Robinson. I love his use of language and his characters. I hesitate to call his work science fiction just because it's set in the future. Be nice if congress took it as a text book on how to fix our problems. Btw, being on a retirement budget, I read the library copy of the book.

What's not to love? All of Mr. Robinson's works tell a wonderful story with beautifully developed characters. Mix in a bit of believable extrapolations to a world we will be facing, and you have a compelling book.

"New York 2140" is a long piece of propaganda which scarifies things like interesting and well-rounded characters in favor of Robinson's Big Idea. I will state that, for the most part, I agree with Robinson's Big Idea, however, that doesn't change the fact that the book isn't very good.
The writing is mediocre at best, and the characters in "New York" are for the most part nothing more than mouth-pieces for the author, speaking about different aspects of the Big Idea. Other characters are just chess pieces to get the plot from Point A to Point B. While this is the case in many novels, in "New York" it is obvious. There are a large number of POV characters, but few of them are interesting, and none have any sort of depth or dimension, unless you count a man going from sleeping with a hot twenty or thirty something to sleeping with an older woman(!) as character development. Some of the characters are also quite wearing, such as the children. They are in the book for one purpose, but hang around after their job is done, forcing the author to find things for them to do since he's established them as one of the POVs. Having no feeling for the characters makes it hard to be interested in the little plot there is. Do I care about the fates of the characters? Not really. Do I care if the building they live in is bought out by a mysterious company? No. Do I care if Charlotte wins the election (far too easily)? No.
The book suffers in other ways. Robinson has liberally peppered the book with quotes from philosophers such as Henry David Thoreau, and others known for their observations on politics, economy, or society. Sometimes these quotes are put in their own segment, and sometimes they are spoken by the characters a way of showing how clever they are. These quotes don't often do Robinson any favors. Even if one doesn't agree with the philosophers and others quoted, they are people whose legacy has survived the test of time. If "New York" is indicative of Robinson's work, the reader cannot help but think that his own legacy will be much shorter.
The issues in "New York" may be dear to Robinson's heart, but he probably should have written an essay about it, posted it on his web page, and then gone on to write a piece of fiction worth reading.

Okay, so he waxes didactic at times, but I love it. The stories interplay between the lessons and they all reinforce each other to give a broad and deep picture of New York as a world of its own. The characters are a little (a little?) over the top, but solid, and what else would New Yorkers be? And I've been reading it in St. Petersburg, a city of canals on the Baltic, when I should've been out touristing, but it resonates, the European old lowrises feel like brownstones in Brooklyn.

Have you ever read a book that you didn't want to end (even after 613 pages)? This is that book for me.
Many best selling authors seem to lose their edge with later books, but not Robinson. New York 2140 is his best yet.

I was really looking forward to this book, but was disappointed. The description of the city was interesting and seemed plausible, but there was not much of a story. I skipped through to see if a story was going to happen, but it never did. It was like the day in the life of a flooded city. The mystery of who kidnapped Mutt and Jeff was never solved. The only think I can figure out is that humans never get it. We keep on making the same mistakes over and over. I did like the characters. They helped each other out more than people do today.

This would be a gripping 420 page novel. At 613 pages, it is a bit of a slog. I loved the interplay between the science fiction (a world after dramatic sea-level rise), economic philosophy, and the quirky characters. I especially loved the literary, cultural and economic references that Robinson throws in on every few pages, from references to Pynchon to Piketty to Duke Ellington (It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing). All in all, I'm glad I read it. It's worth the slog.

The novel is written to feel like 2040, not 2140. KSR is writing to warn and push us away from looming catastrophes, both ecological and societal and the world of the book is very recognizable. In fact the only way you'd know it was set more than a century in the future is the mention of super tall skyscrapers using their amazing materials, and the diamond film coating used to waterproof buildings. Other than that it is a contemporary novel with almost no plot that exists to make us realize that our complacency is headed toward destruction for the 99% and even greater wealth for the 1%.

Overall very disappointing: Preachy, trite and filled with cookie-cutter characters nobody could (or would) relate to.

If there is such a thing as the inverse of "Guns and God" prepper litterature, this book is a good example. Instead of a compelling story exploring interesting characters in a challenging setting, the disjointed plot seems mainly designed to allow the characters to launch into preachy tirades about the evils of capitalism and the limitless good afforded by submissive collectivism. The capitalistic bankers (i.e. anyone in a position of power) are 100% totally bad and the social-justice-eco-warriors are 100% totally good.

At best a fairy tale for people at the very back of their echo chamber, covering their ears while shouting "lalalalala" until there's a new president. At worst, a waste of time which doesn't even try to make a point to anyone who's not already a true believer.

A sign, I suppose, of the polarized times we live in.

Why does KSR take ten pages of narrative to cover what any other author would cover in one? And, be warned: this book is extremely New York centric. Those of us not living in NYC will not find the book that interesting.

I really thought this would be a good book. I like KSR's stuff but this is not one of of his good reads. It was not well researched. I like my futuristic sci-fi to be at least plausible and the thought of the infrastructure of Manhattan and other major skyscraper sections of New York being salvaged and renewed with vigor from a 50' rise in salt water is not plausible. It would be a toxic wasteland. The book alternates through many different views from the people that live and play in this glimpse into author Robinson's all too optimistic portrayal of a city vibrant and thriving. What a waste of money.

Robinson has produced a readable book about a future New York that combines elements of climate change and the financial system. While there is very little science in the book, many of the adaptions seem plausible. The characters are sympathetic. Some situations require more suspension of disbelief than others.

An interesting preview of a possible future. Robinson explores the social, cultural, political even financial implications of flooding after the ice caps melt. New York City becomes like Venice. Others choose to live in the air. Robinson alternates the world view between a cast of characters, each viewing things from their own perspectives. It's a large book, examining a large subject, but one that draws you in and holds your interest.

Well worth the time to read it.

Beautifully written and worth reading even if, like me, you aren't sure if you want to read about a dystopic future that is likely to happen. The vivid characters and brilliant storytelling made it one of the best books I read this year.

The star of this book is the city. Robinson does a great job of developing the city as a character. Watch for 2 young boys who are stand-ins for Huck and Tom. Wonderful plot around their antics. It's a different twist on dystopian futures in that the whole world hasn't been devastated, but altered in a meaningful way.

What got old towards the climax was Robinson's clear enmity towards capitalism. His solutions were unashamedly Marxist and socialist. He seems to clearly believe that Marxism is the moral higher ground and taking from those who have invested and saved is completely acceptable. He doesn't address what the reaction would be if someone then took property away from the Marxists, who had just stolen it from someone else.

Why does KSR take ten pages of narrative to cover what any other author would cover in one? And, be warned: this book is extremely New York centric. Those of us not living in NYC will not find the book that interesting.

I really thought this would be a good book. I like KSR's stuff but this is not one of of his good reads. It was not well researched. I like my futuristic sci-fi to be at least plausible and the thought of the infrastructure of Manhattan and other major skyscraper sections of New York being salvaged and renewed with vigor from a 50' rise in salt water is not plausible. It would be a toxic wasteland. The book alternates through many different views from the people that live and play in this glimpse into author Robinson's all too optimistic portrayal of a city vibrant and thriving. What a waste of money.

Robinson has produced a readable book about a future New York that combines elements of climate change and the financial system. While there is very little science in the book, many of the adaptions seem plausible. The characters are sympathetic. Some situations require more suspension of disbelief than others.

An interesting preview of a possible future. Robinson explores the social, cultural, political even financial implications of flooding after the ice caps melt. New York City becomes like Venice. Others choose to live in the air. Robinson alternates the world view between a cast of characters, each viewing things from their own perspectives. It's a large book, examining a large subject, but one that draws you in and holds your interest.

Well worth the time to read it.

Beautifully written and worth reading even if, like me, you aren't sure if you want to read about a dystopic future that is likely to happen. The vivid characters and brilliant storytelling made it one of the best books I read this year.

The star of this book is the city. Robinson does a great job of developing the city as a character. Watch for 2 young boys who are stand-ins for Huck and Tom. Wonderful plot around their antics. It's a different twist on dystopian futures in that the whole world hasn't been devastated, but altered in a meaningful way.

What got old towards the climax was Robinson's clear enmity towards capitalism. His solutions were unashamedly Marxist and socialist. He seems to clearly believe that Marxism is the moral higher ground and taking from those who have invested and saved is completely acceptable. He doesn't address what the reaction would be if someone then took property away from the Marxists, who had just stolen it from someone else.

I don't generally read science fiction, maybe because I read for utility, and have a tougher time judging the value of fiction than non-fiction. This recommendation came from a friend, so I thought I would give it a try.

The context for the story is that sea levels have risen 50 feet due to climate change, and much of New York City is still inhabited, but underwater. The story itself is about massive union strikes against debt repayment that throw the global economy into shock, at which points the banks are nationalized in exchange for being bailed out.

I found the book slow going, which you might expect from something this long. Although I'm quite excited about the storyline, I found it exceedingly frustrating that the story was set over a century in the future. Nothing about the storyline requires that it not just be a story sent in current day. And setting something so far off in the future makes it feel distant, inaccessible, irrelevant.

Additionally, I don't think there's any way a century will pass and we'll have anywhere near the continuity and stability that Robinson predicts. The US government still exists, basically unchanged, as do all the traditional financial institutions and investing approach. The same can be said for money itself, still behaving in basically the same way, in dollars. I don't see this as vaguely possible. There's likely somewhere around a 50:50 chance the human race will be extinct, or with population levels in the tens of thousands by 2040. And even if we're lucky and also actually address some of the pressing issues of our time and happen to pull through, I doubt the US government, dollars, or finance as we know it will still be around.

So it would be a great story, if it was set in present day. Having it so far in the future—an unrealistic future at that—pulls the air out of it for me.

Also, I hate New York! I dislike cities in general, but New York has a grungy and abandoned feeling to it that couldn't be a more fitting illustration of the Tragedy of the Markets. So telling a story set in such a horrible environment also severely detracted from the experience for me.

Personal disclosure: I'm a dedicated non-fiction reader.
I put myself in this water and glad I did.
Powerful characters.
I closed the book at completion and said to self, "I'll miss these people".

Wondering what our future might look like? This is a compelling take that gives reason for both hope and concern. 2140's half-flooded New York City seems to participate as a character alongside the interweaving storylines of the protagonists.

I generally like Kim Stanley Robinson particularly the Red Mars and Green Mars trilogys, but this one I could not get through. I gave up about halfway. The basic premise might have been OK but the cast of characters and the scenarios described were neither rational nor made a lot of sense to me despite endless pages of detail. Really, fully functional buildings flooded up to the fifth floor? I was willing to accept the long theoretical dissertations of how climate warming caused the sea level to rise and the Piketty-esh economics, but eventually I felt it was just preaching more fictional theories.

Is there a plot at all? I got 15% of the way into the book and am going to return it to Audible. Very disappointed. The entire story is disjointed and there doesn't seem to be any point to the book. I am not willing to find out if I am wrong.

The sci-fi fantasy is ruined by the author lack of sensibility on imaginative story telling and ability to depict a visualization of a world so different than that we are in today. Difficult to follow, shallow dialogue with predictable language and weak plot. Even worse is the audio book where no less than 7 narrators read the stories with each character read by multiple narrators. Fictional Franklin Barr have few different voices, some by a woman adding unnecessary confusion.

I've admired this author years ago when I read his novel Stardance. Since then I've kept a watchful eye on his releases. This book, New York 2140 promised to be another masterpiece. But when I saw the ebook price of $14.99, I was taken aback.

That much for an ebook? And the price was set by his publisher, the Hachette Book group. The hardcover price ($17.66) is within three dollars of the electronic version. Isn't that something?

When ebooks became popular, the publishers promised us, the readers, that their price would be substantially less then printed books. Why? The cost of paper as well as the printing process, cost them the most money when producing printed books; that cost is passed onto the buyers of print books. Where Ebooks didn't cost them anything to produce - they existed as a data file, something that could be copied for virtually next to nothing in cost. So they promised us ebooks, very inexpensive ebooks since they didn't cost the Publisher much in producing them. And for a few years we did get cheaper ebooks. But during the past three/four years the publishers have slowly increased the price of their ebooks. At first the store readers protested, rightly protested. Even the store got on board in favor of inexpensive ebooks. The publishers fought back. Finally a compromise was met, the store would continue hosting expensive ebooks, but they would place a warning note next to the price, a note saying the "Price was set by the Publisher", this wAs so buyers would know it was not set by the store. Doesn't that make you feel better?

Now, I took this to mean two things: 1. Not to buy the book because it was outrageously priced for an ebook, and 2. To email the actual publisher, in this case "The Hatchette Group" to complain about their high price for an ebook.

This is what I do, in addition I leave a review to let the author know the reason I hated the book - it's price, the one set by the Publisher. The author needs to know this because they certainly aren't getting increased proceeds/royalties from their expensively priced ebook. Nope, those dollars go straight into the pockets of the publishing house.

So I leave a review like this one, and the store lets it be posted because they're upset too at these high priced ebooks.

PROS
Interesting and innovative setting.
Some intriguing characters and relationships.
Different parts of the story are told from the perspective of each of the main characters in a good way that fleshes out the story without overlapping and retelling.
The author puts a finger to a fundamental problem with unfettered capitalism.
Namely, that rampant greed shifts money and power toward those with money and power leaving the vast majority of the populace and the environment destitute.

CONS
Too much time is spent throughout the book describing scenes. It interrupts the story and gets tedious.
For being so far into the future, there is surprisingly little innovation and technology. Or really much of new anything. The story is basically set in today's world, technology wise, with only a very few exceptions.
The author uses some uncommon terms and references, which I usually like, but it gets to seem fairly pretentious towards the end of the book. They seem more like unnatural insertions of erudition than part of the flow of the narrative, which is horribly broken up by many other interruptions as well.
Many of the characters seem to change their characters and personalities at about two-thirds through the book. At the end of the book one is left feeling cheated by the characters. Their fundamental personalities change. It is very strange.
One of the characters is "citizen" who interjects a few pages throughout the book to rant about politics, economics, or what have you in largely rambling incoherent arguments that are wishy-washy at best, and again, interrupting the actual story. I suppose the author is attempting to educate the readers with "citizen". It is a poor attempt.
[SPOILER ALERT] Though the author identifies some fundamental issues with unfettered capitalism and the banking system in specific, the author thinks that the federal government running the banks is the answer, while at the same time railing that the government isn't working. The several arguments contradict each other.
Also, no details are given on how this resolution would actually work. Further, the author admits not knowing how it would work.
From what I gather, the author points out a problem, proposes a solution, and proposes no reason why the solution would actually work, but rather why it wouldn't.
If this were just a work of fiction I would give it a D-. Since it is also a political statement, and shows how hard political solutions are (unintentionally), I give it a solid F.
The story is about economic revolution. The author overthrows the current economic system with a new tyrannical, exactly the same, system. The fundamentals haven't changed.
What can change the economic system then? Only one thing.
The problem is selfishness. When all selfishness is replaced with selfless true love, then everyone will be taken care of. Anything less results in the same problems.
When do you suppose that will happen?

Too much of a rant about global warming and the market crash of 2008-09. This would have been a much more better book if he had skipped the lectures. The only really interesting sections for me were those involving Vlade and Stefan and Roberto.

It is an interesting idea concerning the pulses and the abrupt rise of sea level. However the book really advocates for fascism. Ms. Robinson seems to be only slightly educated in history. Banks have been nationalized during crisis before, Hitler did it. Also, she goes on about what a great thing it was to nationalize GM. The tax payers lost tons of money on that deal and were never paid back. It also brought ruin to the bond market. As far as natural disaster response, you can't have it both ways. Either the government is good enough or it isn't. Katrina is actually a kind of success story when you consider how many were helped. The democrat party robbed the coffers and didn't keep up the levies. So it was really at fault for the failures. As far as relief goes, they did a good job but were held up politically for a few days by the governor. If she wants to rewrite history because this is fiction, that's fine but so is her recounting of history. Nationalization of banking and industry has another name, fascism. It is exactly the definition. Just odd that the subject of government control gets rehashed without considering the past attempts like Russia, China and Germany during WW II.

I really enjoyed Robinson's Mars trilogy and the Aurora book. I will not read this book, and please pan this review if you think it is unfair for me to post it. The idea that New York will be allowed to go under water is thoroughly implausible. Salt water and microscopic life in it will corrode and decay the buildings in no time. Steel and concrete skyscrapers were not meant to be "Venice". By the time you are done water-proofing each building and the subway it will be way, way cheaper to build a sea wall around the city perimeter, even if it reaches 30 feet in height, and apparently the sea rise here is less. In short, Robinson's very strong pro-environmental beliefs are pushing here against common sense.

This is one of those science fiction novels, the ones that particular people refer to as "message fiction."

Honestly what kind of person comes up with the idea of a setting in which the oceans have risen & turned new York in to a series of sky scrapper islands & the best they can think to do with it is to lecture the reader on the geo-political realities on the ground, from the overly simplified point of view of a college activist: You know, the "all the worlds problems would be fixed if they just stopped eating meat, legalised weed, put men in to concentration camps, or whatever other piece of gibberish pop-psych crosses the mind like a butterfly fart" type of over-simplification of politics.

Hey here's an idea for your next novel, take a setting, then put some interesting characters in to it & then - bare with me, because this is where my ideas become unorthodox - actually have those characters do something of merit in the face of some form of actual narrative conflict.

I go to science fiction for adventure, if I wanted half arsed political commentary from people to unqualified to give it, i'll visit The Guardian or the Huffington Post.

I absolutely hated this book. It was ultra left wing propaganda disguised as speculative fiction. No wonder Melville was featured prominently - Melville would have read this and said, "darn this author is wordy." The style was unreadable, the detail labored and boring. The premise of a partially submerged New York was butchered. Don't waste your time.