Books › New York 2140
New York 2140
813 pages
A sprawling, hopeful love letter to a drowned but defiant metropolis.
What it feels like
Reading this feels like taking a slow, fascinating water-taxi ride through a flooded but fiercely alive metropolis. The pace is leisurely, allowing you to soak in the intricate details of a society that has adapted to catastrophic climate change with stubborn resilience and pragmatic optimism. The prose is dense and analytical, often pausing to explore the mechanics of high-finance, tidal ecology, and urban infrastructure, yet it remains deeply human. It is a mood of bustling, aquatic survival, where the dread of environmental collapse is eclipsed by the warmth of community and collective action. This is a book for readers who crave hard sci-fi that prioritizes sociological depth, economic theory, and a stubborn, hard-won hope for the future.
- Mood
- bustling
- aquatic
- hopeful
- immersive
- Tone
- pragmatic
- optimistic
- analytical
- wry
- earnest
- Pace
- leisurely
- Themes
- community resilience · ecological adaptation · collective action · late-stage capitalism · urban survival
- The writing
- Dense, highly detailed, and deeply researched, blending narrative with socio-economic essays and historical musings.
- The arc
- Moves from a sprawling, disconnected view of daily survival to a unified, hopeful surge of collective action.
- Who it's for
- Readers who love hard sci-fi that focuses on sociology, economics, and climate optimism rather than fast-paced action.
Content notes
- climate anxiety
- wealth inequality
- natural disasters
About the book
The waters rose, submerging New York City.
But the residents adapted and it remained the bustling, vibrant metropolis it had always been. Though changed forever.
Every street became a canal. Every skyscraper an island.
Through the eyes of the varied inhabitants of one building, Kim Stanley Robinson shows us how one of our great cities will change with the rising tides.
And how we too will change.
Description from Open Library.
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