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Sixty Days And Counting by Kim Stanley Robinson
01/06/2007 . Source: Pauline Morgan 
pub Bantam Spectra. 388 page hardback. Price: $25.00 (US), $30.00 (CAN). ISBN: 978-0-553-38313-6. Buy Sixty Days And Counting in the USA - or Buy Sixty Days And Counting in the UK  check out websites: www.bantamdell.com
One of the biggest problems facing today's evangelists is getting across the message. Once there were just two choices: the soapbox on the corner or the pamphlet sold for pennies on the streets. With increasing literacy it might have become easier but this was counteracted by advancing technology.
Today, we are bombarded with so many messages from all kinds of media, from the 'Buy Me' ads to the serious film documentary. Then there is the vast range of warnings from the dangers of not using the right disinfectant in your toilet to the dire consequences of continuing to drive your gas-guzzling 4x4 to the post-box. There is a grave danger that the planet threatening issues will get swamped among the trivia.
Kim Stanley Robinson has laid his cards on the table. Climate change is a serious threat to our current way of life. If we don't change our behaviour, we will change our planet, irrevocably. At the present time, there is still a chance we can do something about it.
In the first of this trilogy, 'Forty Signs Of Rain', the effects of climate change have caused melting of the Antarctic ice sheet, a rise in sea levels and the stalling of the Gulf Stream. The first two are happening now, the latter is imminent. The result in Robinson's scenario is wild weather conditions which lead to the flooding of Washington.
In the second book, 'Fifty Degrees Below', the wet summer has been succeeded by a severe winter in which Washington freezes and temperatures drop to record lows. They have managed to re-start the Gulf Stream by dumping vast quantities of salt into the North Atlantic. By the end of this volume, Senator Phil Chase has been elected to the White House. His platform is to work towards reversing the effects of climate change. Sixty Days is the period he has given himself to get things moving in the right direction and work on providing sources of clean power for the United States.
He has a familiar team backing him. Charlie Quibler is dragged in from his home-working situation drafting policy documents to the White House and forced to leave his son, Joe, in the crèche. Diane Chan is made scientific advisor to the president. Frank Vanderwal is still working with the National Science Foundation to find and fund projects that will help. His problems include an increasing inability to make decisions, a missing girl-friend and a state of homelessness. The cold winter drove him out of his tree house in the park and now shares a shed with an ageing Buddhist at the Khembali embassy.
The technical material in the novel is essential to understanding what the various teams are trying to achieve although some non-scientific readers might struggle a little. Robinson makes no concessions. This is the way his characters would think and speak. It is their lives that we are eavesdropping into. As Phil Chase moves into his new position as president and his teams work to achieve a smooth take-over from the previous incumbent there is a genuinely frantic, yet organised, atmosphere. It is almost possible to taste the pressures that his people are working under.
Despite the excellent things in this novel, it has a different feel to the previous two. This is because the most important character is side-lined in favour of politics. There is not the same climactic build up towards disaster as in the others. While the climate, in the form of floods and the freeze, shape the lives of the Washingtonians in the first two volumes, the imminence of catastrophe has receded here. Yes, there is talk about drought and there are frequent electricity outages, but they do not assume the same significance.
This is a shame because it is returning the weather to the place that it currently holds in our lives, whereas the impact it made in the first two books made the situation scary. Here we are left with the feeling that the politicians and the scientists will find a way to sort it out so the ordinary person can carry on as normal. Overall, 'Sixty Days And Counting' lacks the big, hard-hitting climax that was the wake-up call in both 'Forty Signs Of Rain' and 'Fifty Degrees Below'. Perhaps an opportunity lost. Despite this' the book is worth reading.
Pauline Morgan
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