Product Description

By the time Phil Chase is elected president, the world’s climate is far on its way to irreversible change. Food scarcity, housing shortages, diminishing medical care, and vanishing species are just some of the consequences. The erratic winter the Washington, D.C., area is experiencing is another grim reminder of a global weather pattern gone haywire: bone-chilling cold one day, balmy weather the next.

But the president-elect remains optimistic and doesn’t intend to give up without a fight. A maverick in every sense of the word, Chase starts organizing the most ambitious plan to save the world from disaster since FDR–and assembling a team of top scientists and advisers to implement it.

For Charlie Quibler, this means reentering the political fray full-time and giving up full-time care of his young son, Joe. For Frank Vanderwal, hampered by a brain injury, it means trying to protect the woman he loves from a vengeful ex and a rogue “black ops” agency not even the president can control–a task for which neither Frank’s work at the National Science Foundation nor his study of Tibetan Buddhism can prepare him.

In a world where time is running out as quickly as its natural resources, where surveillance is almost total and freedom nearly nonexistent, the forecast for the Chase administration looks darker each passing day. For as the last–and most terrible–of natural disasters looms on the horizon, it will take a miracle to stop the clock . . . the kind of miracle that only dedicated men and women can bring about.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #456153 in Books
• Published on: 2007-02-27
• Released on: 2007-02-27
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 400 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Inside-the-Beltway policy wonks and government scientists strive to save the world from environmental collapse in the well-written third installment (after 2005's Fifty Degrees Below) of this hyperrealistic, near-future SF series. The Gulf Stream—slowed by global warming—has been restarted and nuclear-powered naval ships stand by to generate electricity for frigid coastal cities. Phil Chase, an ecologically minded Democrat from California in the Al Gore mold, has won the presidency, due in part to the efforts of NSA scientist Frank Vanderwal and his spook girlfriend, Caroline Barr, who helped foil a right-wing attempt to fix the election. But only time will tell if the world has both the scientific know-how and the political will to reverse the ongoing rush toward an ecological precipice. Combining surprisingly interesting discussions of environmental science with Robinson's trademark tramps through nature and an exciting espionage subplot, this novel should appeal to both the author's regular SF audience and anyone concerned with the ecological health of our planet (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About the Author
Kim Stanley Robinson is a winner of the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Awards. He is the author of eleven previous books, including the bestselling Mars trilogy and the critically acclaimed Fifty Degrees Below, Forty Signs of Rain, The Years of Rice and Salt, and Antarctica–for which he was sent to the Antarctic by the U.S. National Science Foundation as part of their Antarctic Artists and Writers’ Program. He lives in Davis, California

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Chapter One



By the time Phil Chase was elected president, the world’s climate was already far along the way to irrevocable change. There were already four hundred parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and another hundred parts would be there soon if civilization continued to burn its fossil carbon–and at this point there was no other option. Just as Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected in the midst of a crisis that in some ways worsened before it got better, they were entangled in a moment of history when climate change, the destruction of the natural world, and widespread human misery were combining in a toxic and combustible mix. The new president had to contemplate drastic action while at the same time being constrained by any number of economic and politic factors, not least the huge public debt left deliberately by the administrations preceding him.

It did not help that the weather that winter careened wildly from one extreme to another, but was in the main almost as cold as the previous record-breaking year. Chase joked about it everywhere he went: “It’s ten below zero, aren’t you glad you elected me? Just think what it would have been like if you hadn’t!” He would end speeches with a line from the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley:

“O, Wind, if Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?”

“Maybe it can,” Kenzo pointed out with a grin. “We’re in the Youngest Dryas, after all.”

In any case, it was a fluky winter–above all windy–and the American people were in an uncertain state of mind. Chase addressed this: “The only thing we have to fear,” he would intone, “is abrupt climate change!”

He would laugh, and people would laugh with him, understanding him to be saying that there was indeed something real to fear, but that they could do something about it.

His transition team worked with an urgency that resembled desperation. Sea level was rising; temperatures were rising; there was no time to lose. Chase’s good humor and casual style were therefore welcomed, when they were not reviled–much as it had been with FDR in the previous century. He would say, “We got ourselves into this mess and we can get out of it. The problems create an opportunity to remake our relationship to nature, and create a new dispensation. So–happy days are here again! Because we’re making history, we are seizing the planet’s history, I say, and turning it to the good.”

Some scoffed; some listened and took heart; some waited to see what would happen.



As far as Frank Vanderwal’s personal feelings were concerned, there was something reassuring about the world being so messed up. It tended to make his own life look like part of a trend, and a small part at that. A hill of beans in this world. Perhaps even so small as to be manageable.

Although, to tell the truth, it didn’t feel that way. There were reasons to be very concerned, almost to the edge of fear. Frank’s friend Caroline had disappeared on election night, chased by armed agents of some superblack intelligence agency. She had stolen her husband’s plan to steal the election, and Frank had passed this plan to a friend at NSF with intelligence contacts, to what effect he could not be sure. He had helped her to escape her pursuers. To do that he had had to break a date with another friend, his boss and a woman he loved–although what that meant, given the passionate affair he was carrying on with Caroline, he did not know. There was a lot he didn’t know; and he could still taste blood at the back of his throat, months after his nose had been broken. He could not think for long about the same thing. He was living a life that he called parcellated, but others might call dysfunctional: i.e., semi-homeless in Washington, D.C. He could have been back home in San Diego by now, where his teaching position was waiting for him. Instead he was a temporary guest of the embassy of the drowned nation of Khembalung. But hey, everyone had problems! Why should he be any different?

Although brain damage would be a little more than different. Brain damage meant something like–mental illness. It was a hard phrase to articulate when thinking about oneself. But it was possible his injury had exacerbated a lifelong tendency to make poor decisions. It was hard to tell. He had thought all his recent decisions had been correct, after all, in the moment he had made them. Should he not have faith that he was following a valid line of thought? He wasn’t sure.

Thus it was a relief to think that all these personal problems were as nothing compared to the trouble all life on Earth now faced as a functioning biosphere. There were days in which he welcomed the bad news, and he saw that other people were doing the same. As this unpredictable winter blasted them with cold or bathed them in Carribbean balm, there grew in the city a shared interest and good cheer, a kind of solidarity.



Frank felt this solidarity also on the premises of the National Science Foundation, where he and many of his colleagues were trying to deal with the climate problem. To do so, they had to keep trying to understand the environmental effects of:

1)the so-far encouraging but still ambiguous results of their North Atlantic salting operation;

2)the equally ambiguous proliferation of a genetically modified “fast tree lichen” that had been released by the Russians in the Siberian forest;

3)the ongoing rapid detachment and flotation of the coastal verge of the Western Antarctic Ice Sheet;

4)the ongoing introduction of about nine billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year, ultimate source of many other problems;

5)the ensuing uptake of some three billion tons of carbon into the oceans;

6)the continuing rise of the human population by some hundred million people a year; and, lastly,

7)the cumulative impacts of all these events, gnarled together in feedback loops of all kinds.


It was a formidable list, and Frank worked hard on keeping his focus on it.

But he was beginning to see that his personal problems–especially Caroline’s disappearance, and the election-tampering scheme she had been tangled in–were not going to be things he could ignore. They pressed on his mind.

She had called the Khembali embassy that night, and left a message saying that she was okay. Earlier, in Rock Creek Park, she had told him she would be in touch as soon as she could.

He had therefore been waiting for that contact, he told himself. But it had not come. And Caroline’s ex, who had also been her boss, had been following her that night. Her ex had seen that Caroline knew he was following her, and had seen also that Caroline had received help in escaping from him. He also knew that Caroline’s help had thrown a big rock right at his head.

So now this man might very well still be looking for her, and might also be looking for that help she had gotten, as another way of hunting for her.

Or so it seemed. Frank couldn’t be sure. He sat at his desk at NSF, staring at his computer screen, trying to think it through. He could not seem to do it. Whether it was the difficulty of the problem, or the inadequacy of his mentation, he could not be sure; but he could not do it.



So he went to see Edgardo. He entered his colleague’s office and said, “Can we talk about the election result? What happened that night, and what might follow?”

“Ah! Well, that will take some time to discuss. And we were going to run today anyway. Let’s talk about it while en route.”

Frank took the point: no sensitive discussions to take place in their offices. Surveillance an all-too-real possibility. Frank had been on Caroline’s list of surveilled subjects, and so had Edgardo.

In the locker room on the third floor they changed into running clothes. At the end of that process Edgardo took from his locker a security wand that resembled those used in airports; Caroline had used one like it. Frank was startled to see it there inside NSF, but nodded silently and allowed Edgardo to run it over him. Then he did the same for Edgardo.

They appeared to be clean of devices.

Then out on the streets.

As they ran, Frank said, “Have you had that thing for long?”

“Too long, my friend.” Edgar veered side to side as he ran, warming up his ankles in his usual extravagant manner. “But I haven’t had to get it out for a while.”

“Don’t you worry that having it there looks odd?”

“No one notices things in the locker room.”

“Are our offices bugged?”

“Yes. Yours, anyway. The thing you need to learn is that coverage is very spotty, just by the nature of the activity. The various agencies that do this have different interests and abilities, and very few even attempt total surveillance. And then only for crucial cases. Most of the rest is what you might call statistical in nature, and covers different parts of the datasphere. You can slip in and out of such surveillance.”

“But–these so-called total information awareness systems, what about them?”

“It depends. Mostly by total information they mean electronic data. And then also you might be chipped in various ways, which would give your GPS location, and perhaps record what you say. Followed, filmed–sure, all that’s possible, but it’s expensive. But now we’re clear. So tell me what’s up?”

“Well–like I said. About the election results, and that program I gave you. From my friend. What happened?”

Edgardo grinned under his mustache. “We foxed that program. We forestalled it. You could say that we u...

Customer Reviews

A pleasing end to the cycle
This book is going to going to rub some people the wrong way. More than the others in the series, it attacks current political dogma and demands a change. It does, in fact, ask why when the US government is doing so much to stabilize the economy, the world, and help people in general, why we still think that government help is bad. New Orleans needed more help, and Texas couldn't wait for the federal government. So this level of the book is going to be liked or disliked based on personal political beliefs. I think we have seen that from past reviews.

However, this book like the others is only tangentially about politics. Like mant works of science fiction it is a way for to think of how out technology will effect the world and how we might preemptively prevent negative consequences. When it thought we would have robots wandering around the street, the three laws of robotics were proposed. Star Trek proposed the Prime Directive for dealing with new cultures. The list goes on. This series presupposes a traumatized world that has not happened yet, and may not happen, and proposes some alternatives. It may not be the best idea to expend government funds to pump and mine every bit of fossil fuel and burn it for energy. It may be better to spend money on Solar. The same goes for accounting methods that do include ancillary costs of acquiring that oil, such as the $1 trillion for the war in iraq. Who knows if any of this will transpire, or if any of this work? This is science fiction.

Even this technological consequence thing is secondary to the real crux of the story, which is what Robinson, like so many other science fiction writers, excel in. That is people and relationships. Each character in the story is certain archtype, and each represents a specific manner of interacting with the world. Charlie is the domestic political, feeding ideas to those in charge in hopes of making a change, while at the same time knowing that family is what makes a country. Ann is the dedicated scientist, looking for a silver bullet to solve the problem. Diane is the scientist administrator who believes that world can be saved through science, a constant theme through most science fiction, and in the real world, politics is who one saves the world. Ergo, the thrust of all three books.

This is why I like this book the best. In the previous books it appeared that Robinson was going to take the traditional trajectory and claim that science would allow to live at our current standard of living, or even better, and still save the world. While it is a nice fantasy, I did not think it fit in with overall tone of the book, which was more reality based. However, in this last book with the increasing focus on the refugees from Khembalung and Frank, and the freegans, it is clear that he does realize, and is trying to promote, a change in relationship to our planet. This is another reason why some may find it to be their most hated book. Even Ann, the absolute scientist, has moments where she realizes that science alone cannot help us.

Which we see in the allegory of Frank dropping off the grid, people leading decent lives by eating what others waste, and an entire village raising Joe to become not what his father desperately wants, a son he can call his own, as Nick is definitely his Mother's son, but whatever Joe is. And this may be the lesson of book. We cannot, science cannot, religion cannot, make something that which it is not. The world happens. We can change it for a while, but at some point we just have to adapt.

Terribly boring
Terribly boring, a sorry way to end such a promising series on environmental climate change. Again, Robinson focuses on the bureaucracy dealing with climate change which can be interesting, but the plot was tedious and drawn out. The lame side story of a secret government agency fixing the election via a Diebold like fixing is pointless. I have no doubt Diebold has done some nasty stuff, but I did not see the relevance of it in this book. This entire series dragged for me and this last book was such an utter disappointment, I really wanted to like it but it was not good.

Fascinating
In Sixty Days and Counting, Robinson closes his stupendous climate trilogy. In this series, Robinson gives us a fascinating look into very realistic scenarios of politics and science in a not too-far-away future. But what gives these books an added depth, I believe, is his wonder on human nature, on who we are, and why we are the way we are. One of the aspects that I most enjoyed in these books was his delving into evolutionary biology and sociobiology. That is, how to explain in a scientific way the way we are, based on the understanding that we are apes that evolved in the African savannas. We're apes with very special abilities, for sure, but apes in the end. Robinson goes further and connects ideas that have come from an evolutionary point of view with Tibetan Buddhism. I was surprised to see how close they are, how they've come to similar conclusions by way of very different methods. I believe that he was able to set out these two sets of complex ideas in an understandable format, and I'm very glad that he included these topics in the books. This is the reason that I give 40 Signs of Rain (and this trilogy) 4 points.
I could also add other high points of these books. First is Robinson's ability to create fascinating characters and go deep into their thinking and acting. By the end of this book, we know the characters as if they had been our friends all our lives. In his first book, Forty Signs of Rain, Robinson starts with several characters whose lives at first appear disconnected, but later on become more intertwined in a complex and interesting drama. On the second book, the author focuses more on Frank, a professor from UCSD who is at leave from the university and working at NSF. This character is rich, complex and realistic. The second book is the strongest of the three for me, with the most entertaining plot, and where he covers these philosophical ideas more deeply. In the third book my understanding is that he focuses more on change, and how what we believe to be permanent things turn out to be ephemeral.
I do have some criticisms! I think that the first book starts out too slow, and the third book looses steam at one point, and, for a while, it is hard to see where the author wants to go. But it is on this seemingly non-changing plot in 40 Days and Counting that suddenly everything is different by the end of the book.
In this climate trilogy you will find a realistic story of climate change, not a Hollywood story The Day After Tomorrow-like, where in a single day a cold front buries all North America in 1000 feet of ice. But in that realism relies, for me, the strength of this book. Robinson was able to create such a good story out of ordinary people in extraordinary times. And although this trilogy might have its slower parts, I highly recommend it.