Antarctica

Antarctica is -- like all of his other novels -- unique in his oeuvre: Robinson never writes the same book twice.

At first sight it is a blend of near future adventure thriller, historical report, political treatise and landscape travelogue. But when I looked closer, rereading the parts I had highlighted to possibly quote here, it slowly dawned on me: this is KSR's big epistemic novel. It is epistemology that subtly & cleverly holds together the different themes of this book: storytelling, imagination, science, ethics, politics, economics, the reality of nature.

As such, it might be the richest book Robinson has written -- at least from an philosophical point of view. Robinson convincingly ties utopia and science together once and for all: this is no scifi, but realistic fiction about the essence & scope of science.

More on that after the jump.

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