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Book Summary and Reviews of 2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson

2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson
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Book Summary

From the acclaimed author of New York 2140 and Red Mars, this New York Times bestselling novel tells the story of a future where humanity has populated miraculous new habitats engineered across the solar system -- and the one death that triggers a precarious chain of events that could destroy it all.

The year is 2312. Scientific and technological advances have opened gateways to an extraordinary future. Earth is no longer humanity's only home; new habitats have been created throughout the solar system on moons, planets, and in between. But in this year, 2312, a sequence of events will force humanity to confront its past, its present, and its future.

The first event takes place on Mercury, on the city of Terminator, itself a miracle of engineering on an unprecedented scale. It is an unexpected death, but one that might have been foreseen. For Swan Er Hong, it is an event that will change her life. Swan was once a woman who designed worlds. Now she will be led into a plot to destroy them.

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Book Awards

  • award image The Nebula Awards, 2013

Reviews

Media Reviews

"A magnificent achievement...hugely imaginative and beautifully written." ―Booklist (starred review) 

"Robinson's extraordinary completeness of vision results in a magnificently realized, meticulously detailed future in which social and biological changes keep pace with technological developments." ―Publishers Weekly

"In his vibrant, often moving new novel, 2312, Robinson's extrapolation is hard-wired to a truly affecting personal love story. [...] Perhaps Robinson's finest novel, 2312 is a treasured gift to fans of passionate storytelling; readers will be with Swan and Wahram in the tunnel long after reaching the last page." ―Los Angeles Times

"An sf masterpiece." ―Library Journal

"A brilliant, plausible account of how humans might colonize planets, moons and asteroids, 2312 is also about the future of art and family." ―NPR Books

"Complex and sometimes bewildering, 500 pages crammed full of strange but decent characters whose actions play out against a vastly constructed utopian background." ―The Guardian

This information about 2312 was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

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Author Information

Kim Stanley Robinson Author Biography

Kim Stanley Robinson was born in 1952 and, after travelling and working around the world, has now settled in his beloved California. He is widely regarded as the finest science fiction writer working today, noted as much for the verisimilitude of his characters as the meticulously researched hard-science basis of his work. He has won just about every major science fiction award there is to win.

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