Sixty Days and Counting

Description

In his first sixty days, President Phil Chase intends to prove he can change the world and solve climate change. A highly topical, witty and entertaining science thriller - the follow-up to Forty Days of Rain and Fifty Degrees Below. Frank Vanderwal, in the office of Presidential science advisor, finds something reassuring about the world being so messed up. It makes his own life look like part of a trend. He's been homeless for a year, the ex-husband of the love of his life did permanent injury to his nose - probably his brain - with a punch, and the love of his life has had to go into hiding from the secret service, which has Frank under surveillance, too ... but meanwhile there's the world to save. Frank's a scientist. He has to save the world so that science can proceed, obviously. This has become known as the Frank Principle. China is close to meltdown, the security agencies are in overdrive, carbon figures are close to cooking the world ... and the team has sixty days to establish a new reality.

Kim Stanley Robinson was born in 1952 and, after travelling and working around the world, has now settled in his beloved California. He is widely regarded as the finest science fiction writer working today, noted as much for the verisimilitude of his characters as the meticulously researched hard science basis of his work. He has won just about every major sf award there is to win and is the author of the massively successful and lavishly praised Mars series.

'Sixty Days is finely written and persuasively paints what may be -- if climate change happens the way so many scientists fear -- the best of all possible futures. Read it and worry.' SFX 'An elegance that manages to contain a what-happens-next vigour! It makes astonishing connections' The Times on 'Fifty Degrees Below' Praise for 'Forty Signs of Rain': 'The Brave New World of global warming ! A narrative that is rich in closely observed characters and a wonderfully vivid sense of place ! depicts a society sleep-walking towards the abyss ! His great achievement here is to bring the practice of science alive and to place this in an all-too familiar world of greedy capitalists and unprincipled politicians. Robinson's critique of science is heartfelt ! humans have gone from being the smartest animal on the savannah to being "experts at denial".' P.D. Smith Guardian 'A funny, convincing, intelligent book' Kim Newman, Indpendent 'Kim Stanley Robinson is freed by his medium -- fiction -- to deliver [a] message with passion and restraint ! A great book' New Scientist More on the Mars books: 'To make Mars real and make it interesting. That's the double challenge which Kim Robinson has here so squarely and successfully faced! scientific reality leads straight into a conflict plot! a running commentary on human desire, frustration and fulfilment.' Tom Shippey Guardian 'A beautiful book -- to be lived in.' Ian Watson Daily Telegraph 'A complex combination of science fiction and fact, political and social commentary which, together with strong characterisation and a brilliantly conceived plot, blend into a book that reads like a heavily dramatised version of past events, flowing smoothly from start to finish and building up to a climactic conclusion. Probably the most outstanding aspect of Robinson's novel, however, is his stunning visualisation of the beauty of this hostile planet. By the end you can't help feeling you understand the place, that it has some meaning beyond that of just another location for a story ! I'm looking forward to reading the next two volumes almost as eagerly as I'm anticipating the reality of such an outrageous venture.' Alex Hardy Time Out On Antarctica 'A tour de force of adventure writing, memorably told ! He describes Antarctica like a great travel writer, but he does so in the aid of the story ! It is hard to put the book down. It is important, it is relevant, it gives us a huge new continent to imagine; and it is fun.' Mail on Sunday 'The most momentous science fiction novel of the year! Robinson has turned his gaze on a landscape almost as hostile and unspoiled as Mars and describes it gloriously well.' Daily Telegraph 'A fascinating richness ! with the unobtrusive lightness that allowed him to finesse so many of the difficult grandeurs of epic in the Mars books, he steals in Antarctica towards the tricky inward experiences of those archaic Brits, "conquering the world with bad boy scout equipment".' Independent