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Three Californias Triptych
Three Californias: The Wild Shore, The Gold Coast, and Pacific Edge
Three Californias is the brilliant sf trilogy (The Wild Shore, The Gold Coast, Pacific Edge) that launched the career of international bestseller Kim Stanley Robinson, author of Red Mars and 2312.
Before Kim Stanley Robinson terraformed Mars, he wrote three science fiction novels set in Orange County, California, where he grew up. These alternate futures—one a post-apocalypse, one an if-this-goes-on future reminiscent of Philip K. Dick, and one an ecological utopia—form a whole that illuminates, enchants, and inspires.
The Wild Shore was nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award, and won the Locus Award for Best First Novel. Ursula K. Le Guin hailed it as “A fresh wind blowing”. The second of the trilogy, The Gold Coast, is a manic, savage look at the craziness of technology out of control. The third, Pacific Edge, is a Utopia, where humanity tries to live in harmony with the natural world, but greed is still a force, and hearts still break. Pacific Edge won the John W. Campbell Award for Best Novel.
With a new introduction by Francis Spufford, bestselling author of Golden Hill.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
Before Kim Stanley Robinson terraformed Mars, he wrote three science fiction novels set in Orange County, California, where he grew up. These alternate futures—one a post-apocalypse, one an if-this-goes-on future reminiscent of Philip K. Dick, and one an ecological utopia—form a whole that illuminates, enchants, and inspires.
The Wild Shore was nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award, and won the Locus Award for Best First Novel. Ursula K. Le Guin hailed it as “A fresh wind blowing”. The second of the trilogy, The Gold Coast, is a manic, savage look at the craziness of technology out of control. The third, Pacific Edge, is a Utopia, where humanity tries to live in harmony with the natural world, but greed is still a force, and hearts still break. Pacific Edge won the John W. Campbell Award for Best Novel.
With a new introduction by Francis Spufford, bestselling author of Golden Hill.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
848 pages, Kindle Edition
Published February 4, 2020
109 people are currently reading
697 people want to read
About the author
Kim Stanley Robinson
250 books7,527 followersKim Stanley Robinson is an American science fiction writer. He has published 22 novels and numerous short stories and is best known for his Mars trilogy. His work has been translated into 24 languages. Many of his novels and stories have ecological, cultural, and political themes and feature scientists as heroes. Robinson has won numerous awards, including the Hugo Award for Best Novel, the Nebula Award for Best Novel and the World Fantasy Award. The Atlantic has called Robinson's work "the gold standard of realistic, and highly literary, science-fiction writing." According to an article in The New Yorker, Robinson is "generally acknowledged as one of the greatest living science-fiction writers."
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
October 4, 2021
Really enjoyed it! Highly recommend reading this edition as opposed to the three separate books to make the close comparison between the three Californias and annotating. I also recommend you don't skip the introduction, as it did give me an extra appreciation for how each possibility is presented, especially the unique utopia type of the third book.
March 6, 2020
This is a collection of three novels depicting three radically different futures of Orange County, California. None of these futures is particularly appealing, but each shows fairly effectively that no matter what, life goes on. Besides the setting, the only commonalities are an archeological dig giving a quick look at how we get from our world to theirs, a severe reduction in nudity taboos, and a man named Tom Barnard, a wise elder serving as a mentor to each of the three young protagonists.
The Wild Shore is set after a Russian terrorist attack that saw thousands of neutron bombs all set off at once in major cities across the US. Life wasn't exterminated in North America, but Russia and Japan keep the survivors isolated and restrict any serious recovery. The plot mainly follows three groups of people: a community of peaceful farmers and fishermen, a somewhat militant group that wants to restore the United States, and a group of scavengers that collaborate with the foreign oppressors for their own gain. The most disturbing group here was the militants (living in the shockingly large city of San Diego, almost 2000 people strong); the book was written in 1984 but these jingoist patriots want to "make America great again" which has a very uncomfortable ring to it today.
The Gold Coast describes a world where our current culture of hedonistic sprawl continues on, resulting in widespread casual drugs, self-driving cars, multi-level freeways, and an ever-growing military-industrial complex. Unlike the first and third novels, nature here has basically vanished. "The county was crowded, they needed that 66,000 acres [of national forest] for more homes, more jobs, more profits, more cars, more money, more weapons, more drugs, more real estate, more freeways! And so that land was sold too." Fairly sobering, as that sadly seems the path we are following as a country.
The last book, Pacific Edge, describes what happens when the world suddenly takes climate change very seriously and transforms into an ecology-first society. It seems like a utopia at first, but as the tale progresses an oppressive socialistic government starts to be revealed, with politics and corporate greed still alive and well. The main conflict is over the potential commercial development of the last remaining bit of wilderness in the area; contrasted with the multi-level freeways and near-total lack of vegetation of the previous novel it makes the protective group seem hugely entitled.
All three were fairly interesting, but if they hadn't been bundled into the same physical book I'm not sure I'd have read them all. The Wild Shore was easily my favorite, showing how quickly history and culture are mangled and forgotten: Shakespeare being a great American from the state of England, for instance. Pacific Edge was probably intended to be a brighter future after the darker path of the first two, but a zoning fight in a liberal tree-hugging utopia simply doesn't make for a believable or compelling story. Taken together, though, they make for thought-provoking reading, and one can easily see the germs of what became the wonderful Mars Trilogy in Robinson's writing.
First Sentence (from the forward):
Triptych: a medieval painting made of three separate panels hinged together, so that as well as sharing a subject or a theme, the pictures can be turned to face each other, to start a silent conversation with each other.
February 4, 2021
As a trilogy, a bit uneven. I'll go back and add more about the first two volumes (although I can say offhand that the introduction to the second, The Gold Coast, a parable of unrestrained capitalism in Orange County, rings the truest), but this is mostly a recap of the third volume, Pacific Edge.
For a utopia, this version of 2065 Orange County is definitely lacking in something. People are relatively comfortable and in relative harmony with their environment, but there are questions left unanswered that point to a more uneasy future. The central conflict of the novel revolves around a potential plot to exploit one of the last undeveloped hilltops in El Modena in order to build a biotech facility. The initial hurdles are water rights and zoning, and there is a bunch of skullduggery with regards to the company's funding sources and size (in this future, companies over a certain level of revenue are legally required to spin off assets or otherwise stay under the cap), but the concerted opposition to the development comes from protagonist Kevin Claiborne. Kevin is a member of the town council (one of two Greens), and the party's objection in part stems from the fear that a development like this would change the town, violate its character, cause growth in the population.
This of course begs the question: if these towns are not growing, where is everyone else? What moral future allows for zero population growth without resorting to limits on children, forced migration, ever-increasing sprawl, etc. etc.? The character of Oscar Baldarrama, a lawyer from Chicago temporarily living in El Modena, provides something of the outsider's perspective, and even he is amazed by Orange County's (still!) total lack of public transportation and the locals' borderline-libertarian reliance on bicycles above all else. (Cars are permitted on particular freeways and more limited access routes, but how do the elderly and infirm and handicapped get around? How fortunate for El Modena that there don't seem to be any living in town.)
The most interesting passages in Pacific Edge are probably the interstitials that precede some chapters, featuring a narrator leaving the temporary refuge of Switzerland to return to a pandemic-ridden America with heavily militarized border controls. Towards the end of the novel, it is revealed that these are past diary entries of Kevin's grandfather, Tom, who by the time of the main narrative is living isolated in a hillside cabin in El Modena but who was responsible for jump-starting the Green movement that led to a complete overhaul of socioeconomic relations and political economy in America. Oscar's letters to his sister back home also serve to encapsulate much of the relatively trivial concerns of the locals and to explain how different this place - and California - are from the rest of the country.
Is it paradise? Almost certainly not. But it doesn't read as if intended to serve as a cautionary tale, either. Pacific Edge is a myopic utopia focused on a single town in a single county, and despite excursions to Colorado and the Pacific Ocean, never strays very far. It may be an improvement on today - but we can do even better.
For a utopia, this version of 2065 Orange County is definitely lacking in something. People are relatively comfortable and in relative harmony with their environment, but there are questions left unanswered that point to a more uneasy future. The central conflict of the novel revolves around a potential plot to exploit one of the last undeveloped hilltops in El Modena in order to build a biotech facility. The initial hurdles are water rights and zoning, and there is a bunch of skullduggery with regards to the company's funding sources and size (in this future, companies over a certain level of revenue are legally required to spin off assets or otherwise stay under the cap), but the concerted opposition to the development comes from protagonist Kevin Claiborne. Kevin is a member of the town council (one of two Greens), and the party's objection in part stems from the fear that a development like this would change the town, violate its character, cause growth in the population.
This of course begs the question: if these towns are not growing, where is everyone else? What moral future allows for zero population growth without resorting to limits on children, forced migration, ever-increasing sprawl, etc. etc.? The character of Oscar Baldarrama, a lawyer from Chicago temporarily living in El Modena, provides something of the outsider's perspective, and even he is amazed by Orange County's (still!) total lack of public transportation and the locals' borderline-libertarian reliance on bicycles above all else. (Cars are permitted on particular freeways and more limited access routes, but how do the elderly and infirm and handicapped get around? How fortunate for El Modena that there don't seem to be any living in town.)
The most interesting passages in Pacific Edge are probably the interstitials that precede some chapters, featuring a narrator leaving the temporary refuge of Switzerland to return to a pandemic-ridden America with heavily militarized border controls. Towards the end of the novel, it is revealed that these are past diary entries of Kevin's grandfather, Tom, who by the time of the main narrative is living isolated in a hillside cabin in El Modena but who was responsible for jump-starting the Green movement that led to a complete overhaul of socioeconomic relations and political economy in America. Oscar's letters to his sister back home also serve to encapsulate much of the relatively trivial concerns of the locals and to explain how different this place - and California - are from the rest of the country.
Is it paradise? Almost certainly not. But it doesn't read as if intended to serve as a cautionary tale, either. Pacific Edge is a myopic utopia focused on a single town in a single county, and despite excursions to Colorado and the Pacific Ocean, never strays very far. It may be an improvement on today - but we can do even better.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 17, 2022
Don’t know if I’d think much of any of these three books if read individually. Fairly straightforward plots keep you plodding along and descriptions of a potential future add interest. Each book has a few passages that are particularly good. But there’s some magic to be gained by reading all three in succession, especially as characters re-emerge in each possible future, setting off inevitable comparisons and pondering, which stay with you and increase in depth after each book you finish.
March 26, 2021
I feel like I deserve some sort of reward for completing the doorstop of a trilogy. I didn’t get an actual reward, but I did credit myself with finishing all three books, for my Goodreads 2021 challenge, instead of just a single volume! This is a remarkable accomplishment, but becomes something of a slog if you read all three consecutively.
As any fan of KSR will know, the overriding theme of his work is how humans struggle to live within ecological limits. This volume has three scenarios for a future California.
The first, and possibly the most pared back, is a picture of the few survivors of a post-nuclear conflict living in a frontiersman-like future focused on gardening and fishing in the altered climate of Southern California, where the nuclear attack has brought cold winters and harsher weather conditions to a tiny population of survivors. It’s .... ok, as KSR goes, and reads much more like a classic science fiction trope with an intriguing overlay of the Soviets and Japanese blockading the remnants of the US and preventing them from advancing technologically.
The third book in the trilogy, the utopian scenario if you will, is an ecologically advanced civilization that has conquered global capitalism through a system of legal reforms and clean technology. The governance and the conflicts are at a very small scale, a village-level democracy. But the story itself is somewhat wanting in sense of narrative conflict. Indeed, I’d bet that you if ever lived on a kibbutz or a small communal setting the intensely personal conflicts over small disputes and romantic rivalries seem very familiar. Incidentally this is one of the few KSR books in which a romance plays the primary motivating role for a protagonist... he doesn’t do love stories very much.
The middle book on many levels is the most challenging and most interesting. It’s a philipkdickian world of Orange County capitalism run amok, an autopia of freeways and designer drugs and defense contractors and malls and mass consumption. A very un-KSR world in other worlds. But in this story, as in the others, there is a desperate desire to find a connection to the landscape, the lost ecology of Orange County beneath the asphalt and sprawl. And the complex ecosystem of friends and associated in the second book of the trilogy is the most sprawling and hard to navigate, indicative of the all-consuming nature of a capitalistic system that has devoured the ecology and society.
In all three books there is one character, Tom, who recurs as the voice of the past — connecting with a society irrevocably lost, prior to the nuclear war, the devouring sprawl, or the green revolution. That character does the philosophizing so typical of KSR novels, which can sometimes be a bit awkward but fits with the way that KSR’s later novels would integrate in alternating chapters (which is foreshadowed in the green revolution book in the trilogy).
All told, while I didn’t love all of this trilogy, it’s impossible not to respect the world building and achievement. Reading these 80s pieces in the context of his 2000s work shows his growing mastery and integration of economic and ecological theory into the novels.
As any fan of KSR will know, the overriding theme of his work is how humans struggle to live within ecological limits. This volume has three scenarios for a future California.
The first, and possibly the most pared back, is a picture of the few survivors of a post-nuclear conflict living in a frontiersman-like future focused on gardening and fishing in the altered climate of Southern California, where the nuclear attack has brought cold winters and harsher weather conditions to a tiny population of survivors. It’s .... ok, as KSR goes, and reads much more like a classic science fiction trope with an intriguing overlay of the Soviets and Japanese blockading the remnants of the US and preventing them from advancing technologically.
The third book in the trilogy, the utopian scenario if you will, is an ecologically advanced civilization that has conquered global capitalism through a system of legal reforms and clean technology. The governance and the conflicts are at a very small scale, a village-level democracy. But the story itself is somewhat wanting in sense of narrative conflict. Indeed, I’d bet that you if ever lived on a kibbutz or a small communal setting the intensely personal conflicts over small disputes and romantic rivalries seem very familiar. Incidentally this is one of the few KSR books in which a romance plays the primary motivating role for a protagonist... he doesn’t do love stories very much.
The middle book on many levels is the most challenging and most interesting. It’s a philipkdickian world of Orange County capitalism run amok, an autopia of freeways and designer drugs and defense contractors and malls and mass consumption. A very un-KSR world in other worlds. But in this story, as in the others, there is a desperate desire to find a connection to the landscape, the lost ecology of Orange County beneath the asphalt and sprawl. And the complex ecosystem of friends and associated in the second book of the trilogy is the most sprawling and hard to navigate, indicative of the all-consuming nature of a capitalistic system that has devoured the ecology and society.
In all three books there is one character, Tom, who recurs as the voice of the past — connecting with a society irrevocably lost, prior to the nuclear war, the devouring sprawl, or the green revolution. That character does the philosophizing so typical of KSR novels, which can sometimes be a bit awkward but fits with the way that KSR’s later novels would integrate in alternating chapters (which is foreshadowed in the green revolution book in the trilogy).
All told, while I didn’t love all of this trilogy, it’s impossible not to respect the world building and achievement. Reading these 80s pieces in the context of his 2000s work shows his growing mastery and integration of economic and ecological theory into the novels.
December 12, 2020
First of all, Maybe reading the entire collection in a week was a big undertaking. I hurt my Should carrying it, and various other stuff to work. That might have colored my Opinion. Next this is Three novels in one volume.
First it's the Wild Shore. Set in a post nuclear future it has a lot or world building. That is helpful in explaining what Orange county is like in this timeline. But the story needs more plot, and maybe longer to fill out the story a bit. The story is interesting. But should be part of a longer narrative.
Then it's Gold Coast. This is the best Story of the Three. Maybe more interesting, because it is something that is possible to have happen now. The characters are interesting, and there are nice plot twists. Even if some of the twist are not developed to a full exent.
Thirdly it's Pacific Edge. This was a tough one to get through. It was a legal drama, which is not really my cup of tea. The characters were very interesting. I liked Oscar. But the Story seemed to just drag.
I did enjoy how some characters where in all the stories, but in different yet similar roles. But overall it was long.
First it's the Wild Shore. Set in a post nuclear future it has a lot or world building. That is helpful in explaining what Orange county is like in this timeline. But the story needs more plot, and maybe longer to fill out the story a bit. The story is interesting. But should be part of a longer narrative.
Then it's Gold Coast. This is the best Story of the Three. Maybe more interesting, because it is something that is possible to have happen now. The characters are interesting, and there are nice plot twists. Even if some of the twist are not developed to a full exent.
Thirdly it's Pacific Edge. This was a tough one to get through. It was a legal drama, which is not really my cup of tea. The characters were very interesting. I liked Oscar. But the Story seemed to just drag.
I did enjoy how some characters where in all the stories, but in different yet similar roles. But overall it was long.
June 14, 2024
I don’t give many 5 stars, but this triptych deserves it. The 3 possible future Californias where each novel takes place are dramatically different, one post-apocalyptic, one that extrapolates our current way of life to near-dystopic extremes, and one eco-socialist utopia. You come to understand fully how each imagined future came to be and how it functions, but instead of focusing on explicitly describing political or economic systems, Robinson clues us in by focusing on the rich lives of his characters as they move through these very different societies.
Each book is a coming of age story of a young man, and their experiences tell the reader intimately about their respective society by way of their rites of passage, their struggles against authority and systems of oppression, their lessons from wise elders, how they relate to friends, family, and lovers, and their relationships with nature.
Somehow Robinson manages to tell three captivating stories that stand on their own merits, all the while peeling back the onion to develop three rich, immersive, speculative worlds.
Each book is a coming of age story of a young man, and their experiences tell the reader intimately about their respective society by way of their rites of passage, their struggles against authority and systems of oppression, their lessons from wise elders, how they relate to friends, family, and lovers, and their relationships with nature.
Somehow Robinson manages to tell three captivating stories that stand on their own merits, all the while peeling back the onion to develop three rich, immersive, speculative worlds.
May 9, 2021
I was first exposed to Kim Stanley Robinson from hearing him interviewed on a series of podcasts. Enjoying his worldview, I decided to dig into his work, starting with his most recent, The Ministry for the Future, and going back to this - a collection of his first three novels. All are well-written and more speculative fiction than true Sci Fi. As will become clear as you read, Kim Stanley Robinson is an environmentalist and while critical of U.S. policies, remains optimistic and hopeful. These books reminded me of T.C. Boyle's work and that is a significant compliment. I did enjoy the second book the most but all are quite good and I highly recommend if you're looking to sample Robinson's earlier work.
June 13, 2024
Dystopia, extrapolation, and utopia.
The Wild Shore was so isolated, unaware of anything outside of their 100 mile radius. It was survival from harvest to harvest. It was never getting questions answered about anything in the wider world. That isolation was the saddest part of story for me. They lived with the shadowy knowledge of a historically more connected world, but with no way to verify facts or connect again. These people had problems, yet hardly recognized them.
The Gold Coast was frantic, without attention, and distracted. There was rarely time, or desire, to think or feel. These people had problems, but rarely looked at them directly.
Pacific Edge was an odd blend of past and future, people working closely with the earth, having more than enough of what one needs, and living well with the little that is truly needed. There was almost nothing to be worried about. Yet the people in that world had as many worries and griefs as those in the other two stories.
Three possible futures in Orange County, California.
The Wild Shore was so isolated, unaware of anything outside of their 100 mile radius. It was survival from harvest to harvest. It was never getting questions answered about anything in the wider world. That isolation was the saddest part of story for me. They lived with the shadowy knowledge of a historically more connected world, but with no way to verify facts or connect again. These people had problems, yet hardly recognized them.
The Gold Coast was frantic, without attention, and distracted. There was rarely time, or desire, to think or feel. These people had problems, but rarely looked at them directly.
Pacific Edge was an odd blend of past and future, people working closely with the earth, having more than enough of what one needs, and living well with the little that is truly needed. There was almost nothing to be worried about. Yet the people in that world had as many worries and griefs as those in the other two stories.
Three possible futures in Orange County, California.
January 6, 2021
I really liked the first two books in this compilation; honestly, the third one I almost totally skipped. By that time I think I was just burned out. All three are varying scenarios of the future Orange County. The Wild Shore depicts the world before technology. The Gold Coast depicts the world with way too much technology. And the third, Pacific Edge, from what I could tell, was supposed to depict the future as utopia. All in all, I wish I had read these separately as originally published, because at around 1000 pages it was just too much.
August 15, 2023
The Wild Shore and Pacific Edge were superior to The Gold Coast. The Gold Coast was set in a world that didn't draw me in and neither did too many of the characters. The Wild Shore was a real adventure with the story twisting and bending. I was lost in the world and stressed at times. I'm not sure if I'm reading too much into it but is Pacific Edge perhaps a precursor to Red Mars? I suggest this because Ann Clayborne pops up in the background which I found ultra exciting.
January 5, 2023
I am giving up after page 760 out of 890! I more or less liked the first book. The second one went in more directions with a less clear plot. It was ok, not great, but I figured the series would feel more meaningful once I'd read all 3 parts. I'm halfway through the third part and don't care about the main character or the plot, so I don't have a compelling reason to continue.
January 29, 2023
Wild Shore & Gold Coast: capable, well-realized books, but both nonetheless still with a feel of seen it done to more effect elsewhere (by, say, Walter Miller Jr. or Philip K. Dick). But Pacific Edge? That is essential reading, no two ways about it. Up there with the best episodes of Mad Men in artfully capturing human want (and human want being thwarted).
November 12, 2025
The first novel was good, had Twain vibe. I did not enjoy the mix of dystopia and masculinity in the second, and couldn't get very far. The third started the same way as first and second, so why read more? I am a huge fan of Ministry for the Future, so it was enjoyable to look thru his first novel-writing attempts.
March 22, 2020
Fantastic!!!!
December 29, 2020
first novel not so great.
the other two were very good to great.
the other two were very good to great.
October 25, 2023
Didn’t enjoy this book and did not finish it.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews