Sixty Days and Counting

Science in the Capital, Book 3

By: Kim Stanley Robinson

Narrated by: Peter Ganim, Kim Stanley Robinson

Length: 20 hrs and 21 mins

Publisher's summary

By the time Phil Chase is elected president, the world's climate is far on its way to irreversible change. Food scarcity, housing shortages, diminishing medical care, and vanishing species are just some of the consequences. The erratic winter the Washington, D.C., area is experiencing is another grim reminder of a global weather pattern gone haywire: bone-chilling cold one day, balmy weather the next.

But the president-elect remains optimistic and doesn't intend to give up without a fight. A maverick in every sense of the word, Chase starts organizing the most ambitious plan to save the world from disaster since FDR - and assembling a team of top scientists and advisers to implement it.

For Charlie Quibler, this means re-entering the political fray full-time and giving up full-time care of his young son, Joe. For Frank Vanderwal, hampered by a brain injury, it means trying to protect the woman he loves from a vengeful ex and a rogue "black ops" agency not even the president can control - a task for which neither Frank's work at the National Science Foundation nor his study of Tibetan Buddhism can prepare him.

In a world where time is running out as quickly as its natural resources, where surveillance is almost total and freedom nearly nonexistent, the forecast for the Chase administration looks darker each passing day. For as the last - and most terrible - of natural disasters looms on the horizon, it will take a miracle to stop the clock . . . the kind of miracle that only dedicated men and women can bring about.

BONUS AUDIO: Includes an exclusive introduction by author Kim Stanley Robinson.

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©2007 Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group (P)2008 Audible, Inc.

Critic reviews

"Robinson's gift is a vision that uses the environment and its complexity as the focus of all that happens, rather than merely as grim set dressing or allegorical overlay." ( Time)

fiction about science, not sci-fi

I want to offset some of these negative reviews, and the final book in the series was my favorite by far. This series is fiction about the lives of scientists... not science fiction. It's not action packed, not thrilling, and not exactly romantic. In particular, I found the interrelated discussions of climate science and American Transcendentalism to be utterly captivating, and truly moving.
If you want a thriller/ shoot em up, you probably shouldn't get this. If endless digressions about about hiking in the Sierras, raising children, looking at paintings by Vuillard, reading Emerson, Listening to Astor Piazzolla, and considering the carbon sink capacity of lichen covered trees in Siberia sounds interesting, than this is the book for you.

Three books? Three books?

Look, as fiction about ideas and science and our government, it's great. Outstanding really, as a view on how our country might respond. Really well written, and the characters are very engaging, most of them, but it's almost a travel log of, I am guessing, his raising his own kid(s) , with fictional people woven in. There is this one tiny, Ok maybe three morsels of action, that when they come I am almost ready to get on my knees and cry out in gratitude. But some how I read all three books, start to end. Go figure. So there was something really good, just not action. He obviously has a great mind and is a great story teller, but three books and only a few morsels?

Should have ended with '50 Degrees Below'

I would have preferred a cliffhanger ending in '50 Degrees Below'. No hard feelings, I just think the plot in the third volume feels a bit predictable and forced. I agree with KSR that the second volume is the best.

Very good sci fi

Although it's not a space opera, this is science fiction in the best tradition: an alternative present when the climate crisis is worse. There's plenty of action, lots of science (primatology, meterology, environmental science, psychology, neurology, etc.), politics, thriller intrigue, beautiful descriptions of the environment and sex. Who could want more?
The reader's neutral "narrator" voice is an acquired taste but his diversity of character voices and accents is masterful and I quickly got use to the sound of the narration -- like being in neutral gear in a car.
I thoroughly enjoyed this.

A great series

If you are interested in Kim Stanley Robinson or other hard sci-if then you’ll enjoy this series.

I read this after reading many of his other books and it is interesting to see many ideas and themes starting here.

A bit disappointing, but some saving moments

I read the earlier two books back when they first came out, so some of my issues might come from losing some of the threads. But unfortunately this book felt rambling, but there were some great moments. Other reviewers said it felt like it needed more editing, and I would agree. The narrator though was a lot of the issue. It almost sounded like a computer-generated voice. Someone reading a science fiction book should know how to pronounce Feynman's name.

Another imaginative near future yarn

I appreciate the value of repetition in fiction, and really like KSR’s approach to exploring reality ty and possible realities. It’s sometimes a little over the top but even the coincidences and stretches are entertainingly written, and they go by too quickly, a sign of a good book.

Totally disappointed

I bought the series all at once and am very disappointed. Slowly developed story line, dull unexciting narration, and only occasionally (Very occasionally) some dark, cerebral humor.

Save your money and credits.

Liberal Drivel/Redeming Characters

This series had every liberal agenda regarding capitalism, the environment, clandestine right-wing agencies, globalism and Bush-bashing. There were endless droning commentary on bio-statistics, Buddhism, and other stuff. Yet, in the end, Robinson created some very interesting/intriguing characters. If he had preached less, reduced the amount scientific babble, and focused on the plot in one book instead of three - he would have had something.

Narrator not worthy of author

This book would certainly have been rated higher if not for the distracting "style" of the narrator. His mechanical reading was not enjoyable. The story was engaging enough to hold me despite this narrator.