Peter’s Blog

BLDGBLOG has a really nice interview with Kim Stanley Robinson. A lot of the interview talks about utopian ideas and how he’s continually tried to rehabilitate them in his writing. Some early examples, and not mentioned in the interview, are the books in his Wild Shore trilogy. I read and enjoyed Pacific Edge, and the other two, The Gold Coast and The Wild Shore, also look good. Speaking of KSR, Escape From Kathmandu is also quite good.

I just finished Absurdistan this morning and read Bangkok Haunts and Zodiac last week. All good books and I recommend, though Absurdisan was something of a downer. Funnily enough, the back of Zodiac has lots of quotes about how Stephenson makes the future seem like it’s already here but the story to me felt like it’s talking about the near past – incidentally, the book was published in 1988.