Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

Unavailable
2312
Unavailable
2312
Unavailable
2312
Audiobook19 hours

2312

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

()

Currently unavailable

Currently unavailable

About this audiobook

Winner of the Nebula Award for Best SF Novel of the Year
The year is 2312. Scientific and technological advances have opened gateways to an extraordinary future. Earth is no longer humanity's only home; new habitats have been created throughout the solar system on moons, planets, and in between. But in this year, 2312, a sequence of events will force humanity to confront its past, its present, and its future.

The first event takes place on Mercury, on the city of Terminator, itself a miracle of engineering on an unprecedented scale. It is an unexpected death, but one that might have been foreseen. For Swan Er Hong, it is an event that will change her life. Swan was once a woman who designed worlds. Now she will be led into a plot to destroy them.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateMay 22, 2012
ISBN9781611135718
Unavailable
2312
Author

Kim Stanley Robinson

Kim Stanley Robinson was born in 1952. After travelling and working around the world, he settled in his beloved California. He is widely regarded as the finest science fiction writer working today, noted as much for the verisimilitude of his characters as the meticulously researched scientific basis of his work. He has won just about every major sf award there is to win and is the author of the massively successful and highly praised ‘Mars’ series.

More audiobooks from Kim Stanley Robinson

Related to 2312

Related audiobooks

Science Fiction For You

View More

Related articles

Reviews for 2312

Rating: 3.439814796296296 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

540 ratings73 reviews

What did you think?

Tap to rate

Review must be at least 10 words

  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    As always, Kim Stanley Robinson does not disappoint. The book is full of detail which makes the near(ish) future presented believable and makes me want to know much more. However, I was a little let down by the story itself but mostly because I just couldn't get into the main characters in the same way I have been able to in previous novels by this author. Still, an enjoyable read all around and I look forward to the next one!

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    It was enjoyable, as an imagination of future human capability in colonising the solar system but plot-wise I started to agree with a comment I'd seen saying the ending was contrived. All of a sudden there seemed to be a key plot element that was rammed in quickly about three quarters of the way through. I found myself skimming long bits of non-plot related eco-imagination which I didn't care about. I just wanted to see how it turned out.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I have read a lot of science fiction over the years, frequently exploring other genres before returning to “catch up” on newer authors. I read Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy many years ago and remember enjoying them, though apparently not immensely. This novel was a Hugo Award nominee, so I gave it a chance.As many have mentioned, this is a first class example of “world building”, well supported by hard science fiction and in many instances, highly original. As the name suggests, the story takes place roughly 200 years into the future. The solar system has been colonized and there is political discord among the several competing factions and alliances. Artificial intelligence has reached the stage where “replicants” have begun to appear. Life expectancy has reached over 200 years, with potential immortality on the horizon. Acts of interplanetary terrorism set the stage for the story.The backdrop of the story is about as good as it gets. Only Peter Hamilton can compete in the arena of world building, among the numerous authors I’ve sampled. The hard science fiction is first rate. The story itself, however, simply doesn’t measure up to the scenery. It is not bad, by any stretch; it is simply not that good, which is a shame. The story drags at times and the primary characters were just not that interesting to me. Periodically, chapters called “Lists” and “Extracts” are inserted. Some of the Extract chapters contain information dumps, which are helpful. Others are pointless and the List chapters are a complete waste of time. Nevertheless, this novel is a worthwhile investment of your time if you enjoy hard science fiction.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    An inspection of the solar system after it has been thouroghly colonized, Some grand ideas held together by the simplest of plots.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    As I've come to expect from this author, this is a well-written, thought-provoking novel of a more or less optimistic and even realistic human future. The two main characters - Swan and Wahram - are deliberate studies in opposites, reflecting in many ways the myths associated with their home worlds, Mercury and Saturn (one of its moons, to be precise) respectively. They are unusual individuals, to say the least, but very human for all of that, and as opposites are awkwardly attracted to each other. The awkward courtship of this pair is part of what builds their basic humanity, for all that they are each departures from what we would consider normal for human beings. These are two out of a cast of characters drawn from an array of variations on a theme in humanity.

    The story is basically a mystery, the unraveling of a dangerous plot to manipulate the politics of the solar system. How the danger is identified and ultimately dealt with spins the tale of Swan and Wahram and their friends. Along the way they must question what exactly it means to be human, and unravel the secret of one of the simplest and yet most unusual futuristic weapons I've ever encounter.

    It helped that I've read (more than once) Robinson's Mars trilogy; this book is clearly set slighting in the future of that universe. There's even a very clear reference to a character from Red Mars, the son of one of the First Hundred who found himself marooned in orbit after the fall of a space elevator. While the experience of reading 2312 was enhanced by being familiar with this version of the future, I would in no way consider the trilogy required reading for this new book. (Although I highly recommend reading the Mars trilogy all the same.)

    Regarding the lists and excerpts that trouble so many reviewers, I found them to add an enormous amount of background material to the story without slowing the tale with a lot of lengthy exposition. I can see where some readers might be troubled by this material, seeing it as breaking up the story unnecessarily. That did not happen for me. I read the lists and excerpts as they occurred, and then simply moved on with the story without pondering them closely, or trying to fit them directly into the narrative. It all seemed to fold into the story quite naturally, that way, and added a lot of color and flavor to the tale. It worked well for me. Your mileage may vary. It is, in the end, a book best suited to bold readers, something that could be said of many works by this author. If you are already a fan of Robinson, read this book. If you are not familiar with his work, this is as good a place to start as any.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A mixed bag. I had to keep a dictionary nearby to look up words. Written with great descriptive language. A story of political intrigue, science fiction, and romance.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Love reading Kim Stanley Robinson and his thoughts regarding the potential for near planet colonistation.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I liked it. But. It took me months to read. It was more of technological, biological travelogue of a future solar system than a character or plot driven novel. The plot and characters were interesting enough but they got lost a little in the gee whiz ain't the future great being able to whiz around the solar system like this with our future tech stuff. I love KSR's vision of the future but I should have cared more for the the characters and the plot than I did.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Without giving the plot away, there were some very interesting concepts about what life in the first two hundred years of planetary colonization might be like, both technically, socially, and politically.
    However, it really dragged in places and could have easily been about 100 pages shorter. I liked the writing but the characters of Swan and Wahram seemed artificial and an experiment in literary archetypes rather than people that might exist in 300 years.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Tiptree longlist 2012. I really enjoyed the imagining of human colonisation of different planets, moons and asteroids in the Solar System, each with their own wildly varying conditions - it's a shame that it couldn't have been woven into a less plodding book.The actual story/plot was difficult to discern in among all the verbiage expended on the relationship between the obnoxious main character, Swan, and her placid minder Warham.I really did give it "the 8 deadly words" but kept going for the snippets describing the obstacles and ingenuity of colonising the solar system.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    My first book by Kim Stanley Robinson, and boy do I regret NOT reading his other books earlier!First of all, it is very erudite and fiercely intelligent.Secondly, it is very heartfelt and full of emotion,- one can really feel the author's genuine concern, despair and hope for humanity's well-being.KSR often goes into the minutiae of behavior, thought and decision-making in the seemingly mundane moments of life; and how they ultimately culminate in change. The nature of change is also well delved into.There is quite a bit on art, music, philosophy, rhetoric and rhetorical devices.Great many ideas on economics, politics, social structures.And of course - ecology, biospheres, ecoengineering, terraforming, various space habitat engineering, longevity treatments, gender manipulations and so on.The main story is chronologically linear without confusion. But in between chapters there are short sets of lists, excerpts and "quantum walks". Excerpts provide a wider view of events in the form of historical records from the further future.Lists I enjoyed the most! - I feel it's best to treat them as association strings.Highly recommend it not only to science fiction readers, but any reader of contemporary literature. Will absolutely read ALL other books by Kim Stanley Robinson.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The jumping-back-and-forth style of writing was a bit confusing, but I loved the way the story encompassed the solar system, and the interesting views of future society.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Kim Stanley Robinson's earlier Mars trilogy casts a long shadow over this work. The future history described in the trilogy is the background for 2312. Mars is frequently mentioned in 2312 but never visited (nearly everywhere else in the Solar System is). It is the elephant in the room. I get the impression that 2312 is the book KSR would have liked to write when he was working on Blue Mars. Then, when his imagination wanted to soar to the other planets, Martian gravity pulled him back. 2312 could not have been written without the Mars Trilogy coming first. But this novel has strengths of its own.2312 is an imagining of future human history in the Solar System. It is a contemplative and mature work, whose author recognises his own strengths and weaknesses. Kim Stanley Robinson has vast knowledge and ability to imagine human ingenuity in space exploration and colonisation. There is more in KSR's head on this topic than can be contained in any plot. The book is punctuated by lists and excerpts, tantalising snippets of Solar System knowledge. In different hands this book could have been a thriller or detective mystery. But for KSR it is a love story, and a deep pondering of human life.KSR's characters are at their weakest when they become mere tour guides to the wonders of his imagined worlds. This happens less frequently in 2312 than in Green Mars, and the novel is stronger for it. Here KSR focuses on two main characters and a few minor ones (as opposed to the many cipher characters in the Mars trilogy). Wahram is a Saturnian, slow, contemplative and deliberate in his actions. Swan Er Hong is an erratic Mercurial artist whose own body and mind are frequently her experimental canvases. The characters are well-realised (once you get past the astrological stereotypes of their personalities) and their slow-moving love story is believable.This book reminded me of the later (post God Emperor) Dune novels by Frank Herbert in its pacing, older and more thoughtful characters, and the deep consideration given to problems by its protagonists. It is a great and human imagining of a future neither dystopian nor utopian.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Robinson paints a picture of the year 2312 with humans populating the planets, moons, and just about anything else floating in our solar system. Asteroids are hollowed out and sent spinning to be "innie" worlds. Nitrogen is sent from Saturn's moon Titan to make Mars habitable. Mercury is occupied by a moving city that slides on rails to stay just over the horizon and away from the blazing daylight.The worlds of human existence Robinson paints are interesting, but I did not find the characters to be nearly as interesting. Similarly, the book's story plods along slowly. Ostensibly, it's a mystery. There is an attack on Mercury's city. The central character Swan becomes part of that investigation. That investigation does not start to move along until the last 10% of the book.Swan is a weird character, with bits of genetic engineering and an implanted artificial intelligence device called a qube. She was too much of a mish-mash for me to care about.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Four stars instead of three because this book is a dazzling work of imagination. Four stars instead of five because so much in terms of characters' motivation is unexplained and so much that is explained does not drive the action forward. If this had been written as a new trilogy instead of one big book, it might have had more narrative power, and I might be saying that I loved this book instead of that I was impressed by it.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I thought it was a solar-system wide version of the Mars trilogy. If you enjoyed that you'll like this. I certainly did!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Interesting. A real physics look at the year 2312, the events preceding it, and some of the consequences of it. But also exploring the concepts of consciousness, AI and the human spirit - much more positive than many such novels, it is similar in scope to Alistair Reynolds, but lighter and less grimy.Swan is our heroine. She's 130 or so and looking forward to at least another 50 years of life, maybe more if the technology keeps increasing. She currently lives in Terminator a mobile city on Mercury that travels on rails perpetually avoiding the full glare of daylight. Like many f the population she's an artist and her art has taken many forms over the years - from self experimentation through to many forms of geography - simple sculptures to whole asteroid spaceship forms. The book opens with the death of her 'parent' Alex. A formidable woman who'd been responsible for many of Mercury's political movements. Swan finds a handwritten note from Alex asking her to courier - in person - a note to one of Alex's friends on Saturn. This Wahram wasn't someone she knew about. And the request to keep the note physical, rather than passing it through her embedded AI, suggests the course of the rest of the book. The AI's aren't conscious. But only just, and they do manage to pass a Turing test, sort of. Swan and Wahram travel round the rest of the solar system investigating a few such curiosities with the aid of various friends. Inventive and imaginative, the story is interspersed with extracts from the future, and somewhat more boringly, Lists of associated concepts. the Quantum Walks of AI thought processes are the cleverest of such interruptions. The plot is not so fast moving that these cause particular problems, but not all readers will appreciate them. I found the thoughts on various forms of governance interesting, and the possible future of earth well constructed. The requirement on not breaching any of the rules of physics have constrained many more popular options. The only error I noticed was the spacesuits adrift in Venus orbit - surely they should have been exposed to the excessive solar radiation that the terraformed planet was shielded from? Another issue is that it isn't always clear over what timescale the book is written. It doesn't start in 2312, but it isn't ever clear precisely when it does start, and how long various actions take - the longevity treatments mean that there isn't such an urgency from the part of the characters.I found this enjoyable and engrossing, much like all of KSR's work - it isn't the mind blowing epic of the Mars trilogy, but it does move a lot faster than they do.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    2312, Kim Stanley RobinsonI struggled to rate this as three stars. There were parts of the story that I wanted to give five stars but much of the book deserved 1 star. It was not the story, but rather the writing style that bothered me. Robinson took a great story and wrapped it in a lot of unnecessary junk. He had chapters of lists and random walks that detracted from the story and came off very gimmicky. Sometimes you feel that an author does not take the time to develop the plot or the characters, this was not Robinsons problem. He took the first 250 pages to develop the characters and set up the plot, 250 PAGES. At that point I still was not sure just what was going on and where the story was going. Having said that I really enjoyed the book. I liked the characters and the plot. The thing that most impressed me, and what drew me to the book originally, was the vision of people living on other planets and other bodies throughout the solar system. The idea of a city on tracks on Mercury that is always located just before dawn is incredible. I can just close my eyes and imagine being there, longing to be there. I contained a love story and the struggle of a character to understand who they were and what their life meant. I found that fascinating and worthwhile to experience.I don't think I can highly recommend this book because it is way too long and needs a brutal editing job. However, having read through it, I don't feel I wasted my time. I am better for having experienced it.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    It was OK. The plot meandered a bit too much, and kept being pushed to the background so we could follow the adventures of Swan and Wahram. (I would have preferred more plot time.) As with other KS Robinson I have read, this one joyfully describes an almost utopian space age, even with its petty political intrigues, a utopia where traveling between planets and terraria doesn't seem to cost a thing. I don't believe a space future would be as marxist as that!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Welcome to the Solar system of the 24th century. Mars is fully terraformed (and independent and trying to break clean from everyone else in the system), Venus is about to receive the same treatment (and there is enough people already living there), the moons of the outer planets are conquered; humanity even found a way to build a city on Mercury (and it involves railroad tracks). At the same time Earth is dying from the over-population, the melting ice and the animals that had been extinct for a very long time. To add to the canvas, you have thousands of worlds built inside of any rock that a human could find, genetic engineering is a part of life, AI is all over the place and the world is an interesting place.Even if I did not know who had written the novel, I would have recognized the way the Solar system is built -- not because there is any repetition but simply because this is what Kim Stanley Robinson does. This time he chooses a not so conventional way to show this world - by extracts from a future history (sometimes pages long, sometimes a jumble of half sentences) and a sequence of lists which make no sense and look pointless until you realize what they mean and they either give you some additional information about the world or a clue you need to understand what happens or simply the connection between two extracts that are otherwise not connected. Add to this the few chapters discussing different moons and planets and the world is there - alive, breathing and gorgeous. The year that gives its name to the novel does not get mentioned in the linear story until page 400 (unless if I missed is somewhere) and quite a lot of action happens before that - the novel leads to it even if the extracts start talking about it much earlier. And the story the unfolds is not really new or unexpected - but it is executed pretty well - accident killing thousands of people, another one almost killing everyone on Mercury, a league between planets and worlds (and the head of this league dying out of the blue, the human impulses and stupidities given a bigger theater to be played on. And then come the people itself - changed, genetically engineered but pretty much the same. And Robinson takes hist time to show what the human race is turned into (sometimes in somewhat too vivid details). The part that does not work (as almost always with Kim Stanley Robinson) is his portrayal of the people that are supposed to be the main characters - some of his secondary ones are a lot more believable and interesting than Swan who is supposed to be the leading character. The dialog does not really work for most of the book (no real surprises there and thankfully there is not too much of it), Pauline's conversations occasionally get tedious (although they are quite entertaining for the most part), the "love" affair is predictable, expected and almost feel like a caricature and the main "solution" of all the mysteries is visible from halfway through the book. And despite this, the novel works. It is a powerful glimpse in what could be - both in the Solar system and in the development of the human race and society. It will not be everyone's cup of tea but it is what you would expect from Kim Stanley Robinson.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    For those of us who love Robinson's vision for the future this is a welcome return to the worldbuilding and technology dumps of the Mars Trilogy. For those who, as i recently read in a review, find Robinson "Preachey" and "Long Winded" this will drive you mad. As alway the structure was interesting and playful, and the descriptions of the physical and social world of the future engages the reader and makes me wish to explore this world more. I am already looking forward to the next installment in this trilogy.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Robinson's solar system of the near future feels at once so real and probable, while radically extrapolated, that the society and the settings nearly overwhelm the mystery. Part of the effect comes from his leveraging of our remembrance of the solar systems of his Mars trilogy, "Mercurial", Galileo's Dream, and the Science in the Capital series. I'll reread this and do a longer review on the blog, but my first criticisms are that the plot only aggregates into a action late in the novel, where we spend longer with a slighter lead character than Robinson's given us in past offerings. Swan felt like an elevated supporting character and I found myself wishing we were spending more time with small detective, Jean Genette.But these are relatively minor criticisms, seems odd to say when plot and protagonist are the critical points, yet I enjoyed the novel's structure, prose, and vision of the future so thoroughly that I was more than willing to go along for the ride and left me wanting more.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    2312 is a strange book that provides more then one or even a few plots and ideas, cramming it all into one linear story. By that I mean you can't pick one concept or idea to describe this book, and I don't think that this helped the story. It's got everything from the usual AI story (are they sentient? Answer is always yes...) to a love story that feels forced at times. Where the book is great is in the world. Taking place in a period where humanity has populated the solar system but not beyond it, there are factions and cultures on nearly every rock and planet, settling and terraforming everything. People get around sometimes on conventional spaceships but usually on terraformed asteroids, living inside of them. These ideas and the world I will remember. But the main story and characters?.. Probably not.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Between this service and the main competition I have consumed over 50 audiobooks in the last year alone. This is the only book I couldn't bring myself to finish so far. The storyline may be good, but the narration is so poor I felt disconnected and just stopped listening.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    The first half to two thirds of the book barely advanced the plot at all. I ended up feeling like this was a short story that was overhauled into a novel. Filling the plot gaps were painfully long scene settings as well as strange long lists and disjointed extracts. The wrap up was very loose as well. In my opinion it felt like the opening of a series because so much was left unresolved or was so lightly explored. I wish it had been a novella with sequels. On the plus side it lasted much longer than my usual book selections because I was not deeply interested in it until near the end.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    A nice ramble though a somewhat optimistic future. Cities on rails - surfing the rings of Saturn - big glacier dams...
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I finished this feeling unsatisfied. Without giving spoilers, this is a book that has two layers of plot: one largely personal and interpersonal, one about the 'big events' going on. If you've read Robinson before, this isn't surprising. In this book, I just didn't like it. The resolution of the 'big events' were unsatisfying, to say the least. Even though he straight up just says that events are resolved they just evolve, this is still an unhappy ending for me. (Minor spoilers-ish comments follow.) What happened with the qubes? It seems like that is a pretty major development and they are are just whisked off stage left. Their schemes? Well, schemes; that what schemes are. Unsatisfying even if, philosophically, kind of true.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    There were so many passages in this that I wanted to cut and paste to the world. We are crappy ancestors. One of the best, most optimistic, pessimistic, realistic, fantastic books I've ever read. 6 stars (on Mars, on Mars, on Mars ...)
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I enjoyed Robinson's ideas on space, however I found the characters unengaging.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Not as amazing as New York 2140, but still enjoyable.