Tuesday, June 5, 2012

First Lines of Kim Stanley Robinson's 2312

"The sun is always just about to rise. Mercury rotates so that you can walk fast enough over its rocky surface to stay ahead of the dawn; and so many people do. Many have made this a way of life. ...
Mercury's ancient face is so battered and irregular that the planet's terminator, the zone of the breaking dawn, is a broad chiaroscuro of black and white - charcoal hollows pricked here and there by brilliant white points, which grow and grow until all the land is as bright as molten glass, and the long day begun."

- Kim Stanley Robinson, 2312.
So far an excellent "hard" SciFi read in that it's full of fascinating ideas resulting from realistic facts, like Terminator, a city that traverses Mercury on a series of elevated train tracks that expands as the heat of the sun hits them, propelling the city forward ahead of the sunrise.

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