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Most of the things that skyscraper needs in order to be a viable structure - electricity, data, water, sewage - lie underground in systems that will not survive

Most of the things that skyscraper needs in order to be a viable structure - electricity, data, water, sewage - lie underground in systems that will not survive extended submersion beneath seawater.

sevensor 10y ago
Kim Stanley Robinson has this problem in general. It's as if he just doesn't care about the science in his sci-fi. Engineering problems just get hand-waved around whenever they're inconvenient. Terraforming Venus? No problem! Ten kilometer tall spiral launch structures? Sure! A service corridor that goes all the way around a planet? Easy! I might be more inclined to forgive him if he could write a halfway interesting character, or manifest some semblance of a theme, but I'm just constantly disappointed. His work seems more ambitious than spaceships and rayguns, but it always comes up short. I'd rather spend my limited leisure reading time on mindless space potboilers like The Expanse.
- jessaustin 10y ago
  I've just about given up halfway through Years of Rice and Salt. If the writing is this pedestrian, I need more of a point than reincarnation! In truth, I'll probably read the whole thing eventually, since I bought the paperback already, but it's certainly not a page-turner.
  - robbiep 10y ago
    People can have wild differences of opinion. The Years of Rice and Salt is one of my favourite books. I hope you come to enjoy it :)
  - jhbadger 10y ago
    The point isn't reincarnation -- that's just an excuse to have similar characters in different eras. The point is to think about how different (better in some ways, worse in others) the world would have been if Western Europe hadn't been as dominant as it was in our history.
- robbiep 10y ago
  that's interesting to hear your opinion. Mine couldn't be more different. To start with in 2312, the science has largely been explained in the Mars Trilogy - whereas 2312 is more detective novel set in space than sci fi. I'm not sure why the service tunnel (or the rail system and city of Terminator itself, actually) are so far out there given just how far off things we are talking. You've got thousands of hollowed out terria and genetic engineering of humans where sex changes to one side and back again before settling in the middle are commonplace, and it's the metamaterials that defy your belief? Part of good literature and movies is being sold the story so as to suspend disbelief. This has always happened with KSR's books for me. Funnily enough, it didn't happen with Breaking Bad - I couldn't finish it. Anyway, diversity makes the world an interesting place!
- aetherson 10y ago
  "Terraform Venus" didn't bother me. "Terraform Venus and completely stymied by let's say 4 degrees of global warming on Earth" bothered me.
  - nickparker 10y ago
    I didn't think that dichotomy was all that ridiculous. It was always pretty clear that terraforming was still a blunt instrument in his setting. With Venus, they blocked the sun and slammed the surface temps so low that the CO2 was freezing, and on Mars it was pretty much just "Pump as much heat into the air as you can lol" A planet with a huge human population and associated infrastructure is way more fragile. If you threw a lens in front of Earth, all sorts of frightening things would happen to circulation in the air and seas. In the books, Mars got some batshit crazy dust storms in the middle of its process, and Mars' atmosphere had wayy less energy capacity than Earth's at that point. I guess my point is this didn't hurt my suspension of disbelief. Presupposing the orbital lenses are possible, it's not utterly insane to conceive them as imprecise tools that would make a mess of a full fledged biosphere.
    - kbenson 10y ago
      As usual, it's someone that has questions about a theory in fiction that instead of looking for a way it could be right, assume they are correct and easily find a way it could be wrong. The same reason the future is so hard to predict is the same reason outcomes that don't necessarily make sense at first should be given the benefit of a doubt and reasons should be looked for, not discounted. Not only does it make things more enjoyable, but you end up learning a lot more. It does take admitting you may not be the genius you thought you were though, so some people have trouble with that...
    - aetherson 10y ago
      With Venus, they wanted the CO2 to freeze because they wanted to sequester it. They had plenty of ability to fine-tune the temperature of the planet to whatever they wanted, and indeed they do so over the course of the book. It's obviously fatuous to suggest that, oh no, 4 degrees of global warming is a huge problem but also, given the ability to finely control global solar influx with essentially infinite variability (they are, after all, suggesting that they'll use their sunshade to give Venus a day-night cycle, so they can open and close the damn thing every 24 hours indefinitely), you can't find a solution to Earth's global warming problem that's better than four degrees of global warming. A perfect solution? Perhaps not! But better than their status-quo. And what was their amazing solution? Literally air-drop animals everywhere. Think that might have some unintended consequences? The whole thing was absurd. KSR seemed to have no ability to stitch together terrestrial problems that were plausible within the framework of the rest of his solar system.
kbenson 10y ago
Isn't much of Manhattan's subfloors already below sea level? I imagine there are already sump pumps in all of them that have subfloors. Cementing off the exterior of the first few floors and/or raising the street level with landfill (as your sibling comment tpurves suggests) seems like it would be sufficient.
CommieBobDole 10y ago
One thing to consider, though, is that this flooding would have taken place slowly over decades; it would have started with flooding during storms, which became more frequent over time until the sea slowly moved in. So they had plenty of time to move or waterproof that infrastructure. Though that calls into question the premise of the book, because they would have likely either filled in the land or built levees sometime in the half-century or so that the sea was rising.
- kbenson 10y ago
  The interview mentions "the catastrophic flood in 2100" in the context of the book, so it sounds like the book includes a runaway problem at some point.
jounker 10y ago
In many coastal cities sky scrapers extend far below the water table. One architect in Houston described the city's sky scrapers to me as more floating platform than traditional building. (Flooding them could never happen, but sealing them against 50 feet of sea level rise seems like a comparatively minor feet.)

Most of the things that skyscraper needs in order to be a viable structure - electricity, data, water, sewage - lie underground in systems that will not survive extended submersion beneath seawater.

sevensor 10y ago

Kim Stanley Robinson has this problem in general. It's as if he just doesn't care about the science in his sci-fi. Engineering problems just get hand-waved around whenever they're inconvenient. Terraforming Venus? No problem! Ten kilometer tall spiral launch structures? Sure! A service corridor that goes all the way around a planet? Easy! I might be more inclined to forgive him if he could write a halfway interesting character, or manifest some semblance of a theme, but I'm just constantly disappointed. His work seems more ambitious than spaceships and rayguns, but it always comes up short. I'd rather spend my limited leisure reading time on mindless space potboilers like The Expanse.

jessaustin 10y ago
I've just about given up halfway through Years of Rice and Salt. If the writing is this pedestrian, I need more of a point than reincarnation! In truth, I'll probably read the whole thing eventually, since I bought the paperback already, but it's certainly not a page-turner.
- robbiep 10y ago
  People can have wild differences of opinion. The Years of Rice and Salt is one of my favourite books. I hope you come to enjoy it :)
- jhbadger 10y ago
  The point isn't reincarnation -- that's just an excuse to have similar characters in different eras. The point is to think about how different (better in some ways, worse in others) the world would have been if Western Europe hadn't been as dominant as it was in our history.
robbiep 10y ago
that's interesting to hear your opinion. Mine couldn't be more different. To start with in 2312, the science has largely been explained in the Mars Trilogy - whereas 2312 is more detective novel set in space than sci fi. I'm not sure why the service tunnel (or the rail system and city of Terminator itself, actually) are so far out there given just how far off things we are talking. You've got thousands of hollowed out terria and genetic engineering of humans where sex changes to one side and back again before settling in the middle are commonplace, and it's the metamaterials that defy your belief? Part of good literature and movies is being sold the story so as to suspend disbelief. This has always happened with KSR's books for me. Funnily enough, it didn't happen with Breaking Bad - I couldn't finish it. Anyway, diversity makes the world an interesting place!
aetherson 10y ago
"Terraform Venus" didn't bother me. "Terraform Venus and completely stymied by let's say 4 degrees of global warming on Earth" bothered me.
- nickparker 10y ago
  I didn't think that dichotomy was all that ridiculous. It was always pretty clear that terraforming was still a blunt instrument in his setting. With Venus, they blocked the sun and slammed the surface temps so low that the CO2 was freezing, and on Mars it was pretty much just "Pump as much heat into the air as you can lol" A planet with a huge human population and associated infrastructure is way more fragile. If you threw a lens in front of Earth, all sorts of frightening things would happen to circulation in the air and seas. In the books, Mars got some batshit crazy dust storms in the middle of its process, and Mars' atmosphere had wayy less energy capacity than Earth's at that point. I guess my point is this didn't hurt my suspension of disbelief. Presupposing the orbital lenses are possible, it's not utterly insane to conceive them as imprecise tools that would make a mess of a full fledged biosphere.
  - kbenson 10y ago
    As usual, it's someone that has questions about a theory in fiction that instead of looking for a way it could be right, assume they are correct and easily find a way it could be wrong. The same reason the future is so hard to predict is the same reason outcomes that don't necessarily make sense at first should be given the benefit of a doubt and reasons should be looked for, not discounted. Not only does it make things more enjoyable, but you end up learning a lot more. It does take admitting you may not be the genius you thought you were though, so some people have trouble with that...
  - aetherson 10y ago
    With Venus, they wanted the CO2 to freeze because they wanted to sequester it. They had plenty of ability to fine-tune the temperature of the planet to whatever they wanted, and indeed they do so over the course of the book. It's obviously fatuous to suggest that, oh no, 4 degrees of global warming is a huge problem but also, given the ability to finely control global solar influx with essentially infinite variability (they are, after all, suggesting that they'll use their sunshade to give Venus a day-night cycle, so they can open and close the damn thing every 24 hours indefinitely), you can't find a solution to Earth's global warming problem that's better than four degrees of global warming. A perfect solution? Perhaps not! But better than their status-quo. And what was their amazing solution? Literally air-drop animals everywhere. Think that might have some unintended consequences? The whole thing was absurd. KSR seemed to have no ability to stitch together terrestrial problems that were plausible within the framework of the rest of his solar system.

kbenson 10y ago

Isn't much of Manhattan's subfloors already below sea level? I imagine there are already sump pumps in all of them that have subfloors. Cementing off the exterior of the first few floors and/or raising the street level with landfill (as your sibling comment tpurves suggests) seems like it would be sufficient.

CommieBobDole 10y ago

One thing to consider, though, is that this flooding would have taken place slowly over decades; it would have started with flooding during storms, which became more frequent over time until the sea slowly moved in. So they had plenty of time to move or waterproof that infrastructure. Though that calls into question the premise of the book, because they would have likely either filled in the land or built levees sometime in the half-century or so that the sea was rising.

kbenson 10y ago
The interview mentions "the catastrophic flood in 2100" in the context of the book, so it sounds like the book includes a runaway problem at some point.

jounker 10y ago

In many coastal cities sky scrapers extend far below the water table. One architect in Houston described the city's sky scrapers to me as more floating platform than traditional building. (Flooding them could never happen, but sealing them against 50 feet of sea level rise seems like a comparatively minor feet.)