..is wonderful. It’s not really a big idea book like the Mars book were, or at least not yet though you get the feeling that there might be a substructure of big ideas lurking beneath the surface like ice bergs. Instead this is a master story teller, walking us through a restrained, but involving human drama in the near future, and full of Kim Stanley Robinson’s trademark brilliant insights. Not so much science fiction as fiction about scientists, in some way it reminds of Gibson’s near future Pattern Recognition except that Gibson’s timeline leads to Neuromancer and so Cayce and co. were ur-shadowrunners, while Robinson’s leads to Red Mars and so the characters are all proto-First Hundred.

Frank is back and one of our view point characters. Not literally Frank Chalmers in the style of The Martians, but more the re-incarnated archetype of Frank, spun out for another existence ala Years of Rice and Salt.(has any other character in the history of fiction used the word “panmixia”?) Odd choice, I wouldn’t have pegged Frank as a character with much left unsaid and he was never one of my favorites still it is engaging to see his sociobiologist mind breaking down coastal differences in driving patterns in terms of the prisoners dilemma.

Also the scene on page 12 of dropping one’s kid off at day care for the first day is heart rending, and a great argument for staying childless.

I’m only a hundred pages in or so (I’m savoring it), but so far I think its the best thing I’ve read this year.