[.ca] The Wild Shore: Three Californias (ISBN 0312890362)

What would you have done?:
This story takes place in post apocalyptic California. What I liked about the book was the characters and the woven world. Both were very real to me. The book is told from the perspective of the protagonist Henry and told in the first person. I have always prefered books in the first person as I am able to better connect with the character from whose perspective the story is being told. I don't think this book could of been written any other way. KSR paints an incredible picture of post apocalyptic California as you, the reader, and Henry, the protagonist, experience life in a world in what one hopes will never come to be. But, if it did, would it be like this? Perhaps. The story is strong and believeable, the characters as I have said are real and you easily get wrapped up in their lives. No super hero or villian types. Normal people struggling to survive. You get a real glimpse KSR's post apocalyptic California (and World to a small degree). I have never been to California, but through this book I was able to walk the shoreline, climb the cliffs, fish its waters and breathe its air. True, I wouldn't want to be there given the circumstances, but it was all very real. A very compelling read. Recommended for middle teens to adults.

Very very memorable:
I bought this book on sale when I was fourteen. I was intrigued by the possibilities of the storyline - boy saves postapocalyptic America - and I knew KSR had written famous books. I must admit that, at the time, I was a little disappointed. This is not an adventure story at all. However, the fictional society in which these characters live really sticks with you. This is a book that it is really pleasurable to read. Admittedly there are flaws in execution - such as the shootout towards the end, some long dull passages etc - which is why I give it a 4. But this is really memorable stuff.

The Right and Need to 'Matter':
The world of SF has been filled with apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic stories since its very beginning as a separately identifiable genre. Do we really need another one? In the case of this book, the answer to that is a resounding yes! Robinson has crafted a finely wrought work of character and theme that will resonate with readers, that is highly evocative of some of the other truly fine works within this sub-genre, from Pangborn's Davy to Stewart's Earth Abides, that delivers insights into societies and individual human motivations at a level rarely found in any fiction. This book is part of Robinson's triptych (the other two pieces being The Gold Coast and Pacific Edge) that deals with various futures as seen from the perspective of Orange County, California. These books are related by theme only, and can all be read independently of the others. In this one the United States has effectively been destroyed by the use of about 3000 neutron bombs that were smuggled in by truck (the country of origin never provable but supposed to be Russia), turning almost every city into a waste land and wiping out the economic and industrial structure that allows today's Americans to enjoy a standard of living so very much higher than most of the rest of the world. The United States has now been placed in quarantine by the rest of the world, and any attempts to try to re-organize and re-build the country are ruthlessly disrupted. Orange County has returned to a fishing/agrarian level society with government by communal consensus. But this is the mere background to a remarkable tale of two young men, Henry and Steve, trying to find their own way and life answers within this community, underneath the strong influence of the town elder Tom, one of the last survivors who remembers what America was like before the bombs. Henry and Steve are close friends but are two very different personalities, and how each reacts to the opportunity to 'do something' to those who are maintaining the quarantine forms the main basis of the book. The depth of characterization here is remarkable, and the portrayal of the society that grew under these imagined conditions is just as remarkable for its believability and economic viability. I found myself living and feeling right along with the main characters, could see myself in just the situations portrayed, facing the same moral dilemmas and wondering just how I would react, what I would do. The prose is smooth and with a nice balance between description, dialogue, and action, and a theme that is presented via 'show, not tell' methods. All of the 'Three Californias' books are good, but this one is clearly the best, and should be put on everyone's 'must read' list.

Strong concept, disappointing storytelling:
What started as a wonderfully inventive work went downhill after about the halfway point. Too many plot points depended on one character overhearing something important. I finished the book a week ago and while I remember the characters and the situations, I can't recall what happened at the end. That says something.

Post-apocalypse, post-modern SF:
Why is it that every post-apocalyptic book must have the same old tired plot: a youth, hearing about the grand old past, investigates and discovers the "truth" of the past? Of course, the fact is that these books, like most "non-adventure" SF, are about the present using this simplified vision of the future as a looking-glass to it. My problem with the sub-genre is that I don't hold with the simplification--most of these books Imply that our present life is "out of balance" and that, in a antediluvian world, the balance will be restored. I can hold with the former, but I disagree with the latter. So too may Stan Robinson, if I understand the theme behind his Orange County trilogy, of which this is the first book. Taking a common starting point, Robinson looks at the world through three different fun-house mirrors, the first of which is a back-to-nature, return to the "simpler" life. This is pure conjecture on my part, not having read the other two volumes as of yet, however. The Wild Shore was an Ace SF original, published in the same line edited by the late Terry Carr as Gibson's Neuromancer. While it did not set the genre on its ear as Gibson's novel, the seeds of Robinson's later career and his interests can be seen here. While post-apocalyptic, this novel is not a rehash of A Canticle of Leibowitz--rather than concentrating on the tragedy of the apocalypse and how it might happen again and again, Robinson celebrates the enduring human spirit by attempting to show that life goes on much the same as it ever did. Parents will continue to be parents, both supporting and domineering, and children will continue to be children, full of rash actions and the naive belief that they can live forever. Like his short story, "Down and Out in the Year 2000," The Wild Shore can be read as an answer to the cyberpunk belief that technology will reinvent the world. Robinson says, the world may change, but people will not. As a final aside to this incoherent rambling, I was surprised early on in the novel to find another coincidental relationship between this book and Neuromancer. Much has been made of Neuromancer's first line, which, to paraphrase, goes "The sky was the color of a television, tuned to a dead channel." On page 34 of The Wild Shore, Robinson depicts the same color by saying, "On the coast the sky was the color of sour milk...." The two similes are one of the best indications of the different milieu depicted, and the underlying themes of both books.