2312

Author: Kim Stanley Robinson

Using a technique borrowed from John Brunner's Stand on Zanzibar (and, before that, from John Dos Passos's modernist masterpiece, USA), Kim Stanley Robinson interrupts his fast-moving narrative with extracts from scientific papers, reports and other documents that illustrate the medical advances, the political alliances, the ecological catastrophes that have shaped the solar system. The result is to make this account of life 300 years in our future feel as if it is something we have already lived through. In other words, he gives life to the future, giving us confidence that these are the technological achievements ahead of us, this is the whole system in all of its complexity. And around all of this detail, an artist from Mercury finds herself caught up in political machinations that take her to the outer planets and back again, a tour of the system as it is being gradually transformed by humanity that contains moment after moment of breathtaking beauty.Why it's on the list:2312 won the Nebula Award, and is widely recognised as one of the most accomplished novels by one of science fictions most acclaimed writers. It does, triumphantly, what all science fiction aims for and so rarely succeeds: it makes us understand that this is what the future will be like.