Just Finished Reading: The Wild Shore by Kim Stanley Robinson

California 2047. It is 60 years after a series of nuclear blasts destroyed the United States as a world power. In the small seashore community of San Onofre life is hard – a constant struggle to make ends meet as they battle unpredictable weather, disease and scavengers who live in the ruins left behind by their ancestors. Their hand to mouth existence looks like all they are destined for until strangers arrive from San Diego with a story of a growing resistance movement dedicated to putting America back on top again. But first they need to recruit new members and spread the word far and wide, they need to push the scavengers back from their borders and they need to find a way to strike back against the ships patrolling off shore which launch missile strikes against any target showing evidence of technology. A group of teenagers relish the thought of adventure to replace the boring tasks of farming and fishing despite older and cooler heads advising caution, but the young must learn their own way – no matter the consequences.

This was, I believe, KSR’s first novel (published in 1984). In some ways it shows, it’s a bit too long and a bit too wordy, the pace is a little under powered and a few of the characters are a bit too like wooden cut-outs. But saying all that it was his first novel and as such I’d certainly be proud of something this well written. The day to day drudge of San Onofre is well portrayed as well as the little victories over the elements. The various central characters are pretty well done and their relationships with each other ring true more often than not. The villain of the piece was probably the most unbelievable character in the whole book but fortunately stayed in the background enough so that you could almost forget him. The overall idea was an interesting one – an America effectively held in quarantine for the protection of the rest of the world (I’m not giving too much away here). Overall it kept me turning pages and left me mussing the possibilities.

So ends my series of books based on Future Earth. As I suspected early on this actually wasn’t much of a challenge (yet again I’m afraid). I had plenty of this sub-genre to pick from so was in no real danger of missing my 10 book target. Probably the only problem I could have faced would have been boredom with the sameness of the plots. Fortunately I have enough ‘capacity’ to alternate between post-apocalyptic and high-tech futures (though I’d hardly call any of them utopian). I also need not have worried that they’d all take place in variations of American futures. Three of them were based in Europe and one on the Far East which made a very nice change from what I would have expected. Presently I’m about to start the fourth book in my ‘random’ ten book interlude and then I’ll move on to ten books that have been made into movies. I hope to surprise both you and me with that batch. I’m going to try and read at least a few books that will raise an eyebrow (or two).