There were some moments of real resonance and beauty in here, but the whole wasn't really working for me. ( )

Woof. Talk about a vision of future tech that didn't age well. This was a tough grind for me. ( )

Much better than the first. I like it more mainly because of the ideas, it's not as if the characters are better done, or that the plot is much better, I only liked it more because it's a little more what I expect from KSR, a somewhat realistic view of the future. ( )

(...)

The California trilogy might be KSR’s most autobiographical work – at least the setting is, as he moved to Orange County when he was 2. Stan was 34 when he wrote it, and it is very much a book about saying goodbye to late adolescence – the extended period of drugs, booze and parties, being twentysomething before settling down.

I’m not sure how much of an epicure KSR is or was, but Jim McPherson, the main character, is an idealist – something he shares with his inventor. McPherson teaches languages for a living, and KSR taught freshman composition. McPherson is also a struggling writer, writing poetry and history, trying to come to grips with postmodernism, something I’m sure Robinson had to do as well under the auspices of his PhD mentor Frederic Jameson – a giant of pomo literary criticism.

In an excellent 2012 interview in the LA Review of Books, Robinson confirmed the partly autobiographical nature of The Gold Coast, implies his father was a military engineer too, and even goes as far to call it “the story of that time and place, Orange County in the 1970s, in a way I don’t think any other novel has.”

(...)

Full review on Weighing A Pig ( )

Kim is too good!! The greatest compliment I can give is that his writing is THOUGHTFUL! He writes for those who live, who pay attention to their environment, the details. He makes you ask more by showing how to come up with questions. He has the Steinbeck discipline of starting from the ground up, every time. In tight, efficient writing he nails science, nails politics, nails characters, nails sense of place. Just nails it. Why aren't kids required to read books like THIS in school???
I haven't read the 3rd California book but I'm sure that Gold Coast is the best. It's head and shoulders above the first one, which was charming for sure. Kim, please read this comment and let ME be the guy who writes your retrospective! I have deep precise observations and questions about every book by Robinson I've read, and I think there is a certain class of writer who writes to have the material recognized and understood. Anyway. Another Kim classic. ( )