re:mote voices

Title: 40 Signs Of Rain

Author: Kim Stanley Robinson

Publisher: Harper Collins

Kim Stanley Robinson has always had a certain environmental aspect to his work, which has made a particularly distinctive voice when it comes to science fiction. From his near future Florida trilogy he moved to his epic Martian novels – which covered the colonisation of Mars, from the first landing of 100 people through the terraforming process. With Antarctica he came closer to home, closer to now, but retained much of the feeling which makes his Martian trilogy such a remarkable piece of work.

Following his previous novel The Years Of Rice And Salt, which was an alternate history of the world, he returns to Antarctica. Or more accurately with 40 Signs Of Rain he returns to the same background. The characters from Antarctica have moved on, leaving us with the people who have taken their jobs, or are in some other ways connected to those previous characters. Antarctica to some degree followed the consultant of an American congressman, the congressman who remains the only character (as far as I can recall) who appears in both novels. His new advisor is Charlie, who works from home, looking after his two sons, and pushing the congressman to greater conscious of environmental issues. At the same time his wife Anna works for the National Science Foundation, which funds scientific work across America. Where she works beside Frank Vanderwal, who is on loan from San Diego, where he has connections to a company, which also has connections to another character from Antarctica.

40 Signs Of Rain follows the lives of these three characters, and in the process how they encounter the inhabitants of a small island of Tibetan dissidents who are threatened by rising sea levels. The book is scattered with commentary about increasingly hazardous weather conditions, and the environmental collapse around us. Which to some degree make up the 40 signs of rain from the title.

Unfortunately 40 Signs Of Rain is not Antarctica. Rather than being set in Antarctica or Mars for that matter, which provided so much depth and exoticness to the work, 40 Signs is set in Washington. Which removes the historical aspects, discoveries and naming, the levels of experience that come from these other environments. Set beside that, none of the characters come to life to the same degree as those in Kim Stanley Robinson’s earlier work. Frank is a very ambiguous person, resulting in the feeling of not really knowing how to take him for much of the novel. Charlie seems to spend more time watching his youngest son throwing toy dinosaurs than doing much else. By contrast Anna is getting increasingly involved with the islanders and their plight.

The actuality is we are witnessing the frustrated lives of our central characters. So that what we are really seeing is them chafing against the system, becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the way things are supposed to be done. In their own ways they are coming to conclusions, and gradually starting to lash out against the structures which are penning them in. As such it is the second half of 40 Signs Of Rain where things really start to come together, where we start to get a better feel for the characters, where they start to become people we can get interested in, and where events gain a momentum.

This makes 40 Signs Of Rain a little frustrating. Especially building on Antarctica which was a particularly strong piece of work. While 40 Signs has a certain, definite closure as it reaches it’s end, it does leave so much open. As such we can hope that Kim Stanley Robinson will return to this territory, and having created the launch point of 40 Signs hit the ground running with a follow up.