Damek.

Just in case you didn’t already know, I have to say it again: I love Kim Stanley Robinson.

His writing always seems to match my own perceptions of the world, mirroring thought processes in my own mind, while at the same time nudging them along and leading me to better or fuller understandings of myself and the world. It’s not simply a matter of putting into words what I’m already thinking — a common criticism of books in general, that the best ones just tell us what we already know — no, new ideas abound for me in his books, and even when they don’t, his treatment of things I’m already thinking about is always more than just self-affirming; it’s empowering.

His most recent book, Fifty Degrees Below, which I have finally received from the library, is the second part of a trilogy he’s writing (the first book is . The books use abrupt climate change brought on by global warming as a device — the story follows a range of characters dealing with this, and they create the tension and drama — but the main topic of the book is science itself. Robinson excels at writing about science, showing real scientists doing real science, and raising interesting questions about the place of science in our lives, in politics, and in society. But this review of Fifty Degrees Below says it all better than I can.

What I wanted to do here was share one example of what I love about his writing. This is just from a bit of exposition at the beginning of the book, and not an example of his excellent, normal writing about characters and their actions, but it’s worth it anyway. The book opens with Washington, D.C., having experienced a torrential flood — I won’t go into the reasons, you can read the first book to find them — and now that the waters have receded, Robinson begins setting the stage for this second book:

Of course the usual things were said by the usual parties. Disaster area, emergency relief, danger of epidemic, immediate restoration, pride of the nation, etc. Indeed, as capital of the world, the president was firm in his insistence that it was everyone’s patriotic duty to support rebuilding, demonstrating a brave and stalwart response to what he called “this act of climactic terrorism.” “From now on,” the president continued, “we are at a state of war with nature. We will work until we have made this city even more like it was than before.”

But truth to tell, ever since the Reagan era the conservative (or dominant) wing of the Republican party had been coming to Washington explicitly to destroy the federal government. They had talked about “starving the beast,” but flooding would be fine if it came to that; they were flexible, it was results that counted. And how could the federal government continue to burden ordinary Americans when its center of operations was devastated? Why, it would have to struggle just to get back to normal! Obviously the flood was a punishment for daring to tax income and pretending to be a secular nation. One couldn’t help thinking of Sodom and Gomorrah, the prophecies specified in the Book of Revelation, and so on.

Meanwhile, those on the opposite end of the political spectrum likewise did not shed very many tears over the disaster. As a blow to the heart of the galactic imperium it was a hard thing to regret. It might impede the ruling caste for a while, might make them acknowledge, perhaps, that their economic system had changed the climate, and that this was only the first of many catastrophic consequences. If Washington was denied now that it was begging for help, that was only what it had always done to its environmental victims in the past. Nature bats last — poetic justice — level playing field — reap what you sow — rich arrogant bastards — and so on.

Thus the flood brought pleasure to both sides of the aisle. And in the days that followed Congress made it clear in their votes, if not in their words, that they were not going to appropriate anything like the amount of money it would take to clean up the mess. They said it had to be done; they ordered it done; but they did not fund it.

[...] Experts from [agencies like FEMA, the Army Corps of Engineers, and others] tried to explain that the flood did not have a moral meaning, that it was merely a practical problem in city management, which had to be solved as a simple matter of public health, safety, and convenience.

I mean, what’s not to love? And I heavily identify with the idea in general that so many issues before government do not have a moral meaning and are merely practical problems in management. But moralism makes for good politics — or, more accurately, moralism in politics makes for good television.