Product Description

Kim Stanley Robinson is at his visionary best in this gripping cautionary tale of progress and its price as our world faces catastrophic climate change. Frank Vanderwal of the National Science Foundation in Washington, DC has been living a paleolithic lifestyle in a tree house in Rock Creek Park ever since a big flood of the Potomac destroyed his apartment block. The flood was just the beginning. It heralded a lot of bad-weather news. Now the Gulf Stream has shut down and the Antarctic ice sheet is melting. The good news is that Frank is part of an international effort by the National Science Foundation to restabilize Earth's climate. He understands the necessity for out-of-the-box thinking and he refuses to feel helpless before the indifference of the politicians and capitalists who run America. The bad news is that Frank has fallen in love - with a woman who is not who she seems. He discovers that their first meeting was no accident: he was on a list all along! Her ulterior motive is political and she expects Frank to spy for her. And thus Frank is drawn into the world of Homeland Security, and other, blacker Washington security agencies as the presidential election year heats up. Then suddenly it's winter! It's winter like the ice age, fifty degrees below. As hellish conditions disrupt the lives of even the most important people, there is a convergence of meteorological and human events with Frank at the centre - catastrophe is in the air. This unforgettable story from the master of alternate and future history brings tomorrow into new focus with startling effect.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #83243 in Books
• Published on: 2006-06-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 400 pages

Review
Praise for FORTY SIGNS OF RAIN: 'The BRAVE NEW WORLD of global warming ! A narrative that is rich in closely observed characters and a wonderfully vivid sense of place ! depicts a society sleep-walking towards the abyss ! His great achievement here is to bring the practice of science alive and to place this in an all-too familiar world of greedy capitalists and unprincipled politicians. Robinson's critique of science is heartfelt ! humans have gone from being the smartest animal on the savannah to being "experts at denial".' P.D. Smith GUARDIAN 'A funny, convincing, intelligent book' Kim Newman, INDEPENDENT 'Kim Stanley Robinson is freed by his medium -- fiction -- to deliver [a] message with passion and restraint ! A great book' NEW SCIENTIST Praise for the MARS trilogy: 'The ultimate in future history' DAILY MAIL More on the Mars books: 'To make Mars real and make it interesting. That's the double challenge which Kim Robinson has here so squarely and successfully faced! scientific reality leads straight into a conflict plot! a running commentary on human desire, frustration and fulfilment.' Tom Shippey GURADIAN 'A beautiful book -- to be lived in.' Ian Watson DAILY TELEGRAPH 'A complex combination of science fiction and fact, political and social commentary which, together with strong characterisation and a brilliantly conceived plot, blend into a book that reads like a heavily dramatised version of past events, flowing smoothly from start to finish and building up to a climactic conclusion. Probably the most outstanding aspect of Robinson's novel, however, is his stunning visualisation of the beauty of this hostile planet. By the end you can't help feeling you understand the place, that it has some meaning beyond that of just another location for a story ! I'm looking forward to reading the next two volumes almost as eagerly as I'm anticipating the reality of such an outrageous venture.' Alex Hardy TIME OUT On ANTARCTICA 'A tour de force of adventure writing, memorably told ! He describes Antarctica like a great travel writer, but he does so in the aid of the story ! It is hard to put the book down. It is important, it is relevant, it gives us a huge new continent to imagine; and it is fun.' MAIL ON SUNDAY 'The most momentous science fiction novel of the year! Robinson has turned his gaze on a landscape almost as hostile and unspoiled as Mars and describes it gloriously well.' DAILY TELEGRAPH 'A fascinating richness ! with the unobtrusive lightness that allowed him to finesse so many of the difficult grandeurs of epic in the Mars books, he steals in Antarctica towards the tricky inward experiences of those archaic Brits, "conquering the world with bad boy scout equipment".' INDEPENDENT

About the Author
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 sf award there is to win and is the author of the massively successful and lavishly praised Mars series.

Customer Reviews

Politics in the New Ice Age

One of the good things about Kim Stanely Robinson is that he is unafraid to tackle the real issues facing humanity in the twenty first century unlike most modern scif-fi which appears to be stuck in fantasy. Fifty Degrees below is an interesting book, detailing how the American government attempts to cope with the shutting down of the North Atlantic Drift. However I found the whole read slightly unreal. It is mostly focussed on the characters in Washington DC who appear to carry on with their lives while the world falls apart around them. Major climate disaster is dealt with in a few very short paragraphes and the human sufferring brought about by these disasters is not discussed or dealt with, it is merely edited down to cold science. Also this rather like the Day After Tomorrow, with a new ice age threataning to descend on America - something climate scientists have taken great pains to point out won't happen, even if the NAD does shut down. The books real strength lies in the characters, particularly Frank who decides to live out in the Washington parks and regain his palaeolithic consciousness. The Buddhists were also very good. Alas if Robinson had focussed on warming rather than cooling this may have been a better book. A pity, a great idea missed out upon.

Recommended
It's nice to see a more objective book about climate change by an American writer. Kim Stanley Robinson is the Anti-Crichton!

Astonishingly dull
Dull to the point of being unreadable. The first 150 pages are filled with meandering drivel that takes the plot exactly nowhere. By about this time the reader begins to loose the will to live. Does anything actually happen? Who cares.. the characters are unappealing, the protaganist ineffective, the plot so slow to develop that it actually feels glacial.

I've struggled with this book for a long time, hoping that it will come to form, but to be honest it's a waste of time. Kim Stanley Robinson has written much better books than this. Don't waste your time with it.