Asking the Wrong Questions

My latest column at The New Scientist looks at two novels that try to imagine how society will order itself in the wake of environmental and economic collapse.  Kim Stanley Robinson's New York 2140 imagines the titular city as a high-tech Venice, where a quasi-socialist community has arisen in the vacuum left behind when finance retreated, and must now defend itself as the forces of gentrification once again sniff out a profit to be made in the newly hip and livable canalized city.  It's been interesting to watch the reviews for this book pour in: Gerry Canavan at LARB , for example, wonders if it represents the shattering of Robinson's famed optimism, while Joshua Rothman at the New Yorker , and John Clute in Strange Horizons , see the book's vision of a city that survives and even flourishes in the wake of climate change as an inherently hopeful one.  I think that tension is entirely intentional-- New York 2140 is a book that isn't entirely certain whether the...

Before we get started, some other reading projects inspired by Niall's focus week .  At Torque Control , new blogger Shana Worthen is planning to read and host discussions of the eleven books selected in Niall's poll of the best SF by women from the last decade.  The schedule is here .  Martin Lewis, Martin Wisse and Ian Sales have also embarked on similar projects to read SF by women during 2011.  The first installment of Ian's series, on Rosemary Kierstein's The Steerswoman , is here .  Finally, as Chance reminds us in the comments to Martin's post, she's been blogging about women writers since before it was the popular thing at a blog with the self-explanatory name of 365 Days of Women Writers .  Happy reading to everyone, and kudos to Niall for inspiring so many people. On to Gwyneth Jones, who, like Joanna Russ, is a name that has come up a lot in discussions of SF by women and feminist SF in the last couple of years.  My first foray into her...