In Pacific Edge, Kim Stanley Robinson draws the portrait of a utopian world that feels both close and far away from us. The characters are constantly interacting with each other, whether at the frequent baseball games or at the town councils or even in their daily routines during work. When reading about their lives, their struggles, their aspirations, we recognize ourselves: the human nature that we share. The author manifests the confusion his characters are going through via multiple questions that could as well be directed at us, the reader. “What do you talk about when you are falling in love? It doesn’t matter. All the questions are, Who are you? How do you think? Are you like me? Will you love me?” (134). These questions echo the same kind of uncertainty we go through and so in this regard the characters feel tremendously close to us. Yet, the characters and especially certain aspects of their lives strike us as radically different than ours. The narrative Kevin and his friend entertain with the environment in their living space was the one that surprised me the most. In their home design, Kevin literally regards houses as living spaces in constant connection with nature (125). The technology that characterizes the living space enhances a deeper and more dependent relationship to its surroundings: the cloudgel surrounding the house serves as a thermostat, the atrium has a pool in which the fish that live in it can be selected for cooking. This view and approach breaks from the usual exploitative mindset we have usually worked in when thinking about nature and the environment. Kevin talks about an inability to determine whether one is in or outside the house: this feeling points towards the complicit and appreciative relationship to nature he and his friends have reached, one that is for the most part diametrically opposed to ours.
So, if we feel like Kevin and his friends, what’s stopping us from adopting their same actions?
Robinson, K. S. 1990. Pacific Edge: Three Californias. Tom Doherty Associates, Inc., New York, New York, USA.
