Response Paper: Kim Stanley Robinson, Pacific Edge

The chief mode of Science Fiction is not prophecy, but nostalgia. (Roberts 33)
Kim Stanley Robinsons utopian novel Pacific Edge is set in the future, but while reading it felt in a lot
of ways like the author was looking back instead of forward. This might partly be due to the fact that
the novel was published in 1990 and some of the imagined technology feels outdated for readers
more than twenty years later. For example, his characters still write letters. Also, telephones and
computers are not personal and omnipresent, they are installed in the house and are connected only
to certain houses across the globe. In 2014, only fifty-one years away from where Pacific Edge takes
place, our world is connected to an extent that Robinson could not have imagined when he wrote
the story. We as contemporary readers are constantly reminded that we are dealing with a work of
the past.
In any case, scientific advancements were clearly not Robinsons focus. To me the most interesting
aspect of the novel was that the utopia was not created through science but by (quite recent) social
and legal changes. The first time I became aware of that was at the beginning when some artifacts of
our culture were found and commented on by the workers. One could argue that in this case even
the novum, which functions as a kind of trigger [that] alerts the reader to the fact that she cant
take things for granted (Roberts 20), is somehow pointed backwards. The group gets into a
discussion about values and from this point on it is clear that we deal with a society that has other
guiding principles than we have. When we take a closer look at the way in which Robinson constructs
this utopia, it emerges that his ideas about change are not new by any means.
In the way the living arrangements are portrayed, we see that there is an emphasis on community.
Most people live not necessarily in families, but certainly in small, multi-generational communities
that take care of each other and share responsibilities like looking after the children. I was reminded
of the proverb: It takes a village to raise a child. Apart from the individual houses, the community
aspect becomes even more obvious in the choice of the setting. El Modena is a small town with an
active town life and a lot of social support. This idea goes back to a time prior to urbanization and
industrialization when people were still more dependent on each other.
The return to nature is probably the most important aspect of the novel, which is indicated by the
central conflict of preserving Rattlesnake Hill. However, instead of introducing some new, ecofriendly mode of transport, Robinson chooses to rely on a sustainable, but ultimately antiquated
vehicle. The preferred way of moving in his utopia is by bike (or human-powered flight which
essentially follows the same principle) and it is explicitly stated that people value physical labor and
hard work to get from point A to point B. As a general tendency, people move their bodies more and
sports have mostly replaced other cultural activities. There are still cars and planes, but they have to
be rented and are only used for long-distance travel. The ships are modeled after old sailing boats
and use wind to move them. All of this indicates the moving of humanity back towards nature and
away from a society too keen on excessive growth and development.
Tom Barnard is the character who links past and present. He is one of the activists who promoted the
change to a green and more socialist policy and through him we come to understand the
development of this society, both through what he tells others and his diary entries from the past.
When we first meet him he is mourning his dead wife and the life he used to live. While his past self
appears to be very focused on the future, we learn later on that in fact he wanted to re-create a
utopia he already knew from his childhood. I would say that this helps to prove the point that
nostalgia can a very important, if not the most important, motive for creating a utopia.

Scholarly article reference:

Roberts, Adam. Science Fiction. London: Routledge, 2000.