Robinson’s novel set a century or so in the future shows a New York City not very different from the existing one, except that lower Manhattan is underwater and people get around by water taxi or by sky-bridges between the superscrapers. Sealevel has risen 50 feet. But people still want to live in the city and property is at a premium. Most of the narrators live in the same large apartment block which houses over 2000 residents. The characters include two young boys who love searching for treasure. There are two “quants” who work in finance: at the start of the book they have been kidnapped and are inside a shipping container under water. A character called Amelia Black travels the globe in a helium powered ship. Her first project is to transfer polar bears from the Arctic to the Antarctic in an effort to preserve their species in the wild. The NYC police chief deals with problems of crime, but comes to find that a lot of the problems can be traced to the super rich trying to manipulate the city to their advantage. Increasingly, the story is about finance and the power of the rich, with a plan to undermine the rich and give power to the people.

While there’s some pleasure in seeing how the climate change the problem of the domination of society by the wealthiest in society, it’s not exactly informative. New York 2140 is more interesting as a future history of NYC, being firmly based on its past history, and projecting a new story based on its geography and sociology. While there are some racial themes, the main divisions addressed are to do with money and immigration status. It’s engrossing to imagine how NYC would cope in this future of even greater climate instability, in a world where many features are the same or at least similar. The book is in some ways a tour de force, combining so many different narratives, a variety of ideas about finance, cities, adventure, climate, and political change.

The problem with the book is that it goes on far too long. The unabridged audiobook, enthusiastically performed by seven narrators, goes on for over 22 hours. The hard cover is over 600 pages. By about half way through, all the interest of the story has been extracted and yet it just goes on and on. There is no great plot development to keep the reader hanging on: it just unfolds gradually with no great revelations. It’s hard work although judging from Amazon reviews, it seems that some readers are fine with it. Another book in need of a stricter editor.

© 2018 Christian Perring

Christian Perring teaches in NYC.