Reviews for EUROGRAPHICS 80

The average rating for EUROGRAPHICS 80 based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-03-30 00:00:00 Eileen Galleshaw Tra cent'anni, nel nostro futuro, cosa ci sarà? Vero, io quasi certamente non ci sarò, e così la maggior parte delle persone che conosco. Ma qualche bambino, figli piccoli di amici e amiche, forse sì. Ecco, la mia paura, da prima che Spinrad scrivesse questo romanzo il cui punto di forza è la forte capacità predittiva ecologica e sociale, è che il futuro immaginato da Spinrad si realizzerà. Il fatto è che questo scenario non sarà una apocalisse, ossia un cambiamento veloce e repentino, bensì, a livello globale, abbastanza lento da permettere alle persone di rendersene appena conto, ma abbastanza veloce da cambiare tutto. Un romanzo fatto più per farci pensare a quello che stiamo facendo del globo terrestre, che per farci leggere qualcosa di valido letterariamente? No. La prima parte è pesantemente vera, ma letterariamente la storia regge bene, è godibile e ben scritta. 4 stelle.

Review # 2 was written on 2020-05-27 00:00:00 Mark Taylor Climate change is a common speculative-fiction trope these days, but when Norman Spinrad wrote this in the late 90s, hardly anyone was doing it. He wasn't the first SF writer to tackle the topic, of course, but reading it now, it's clear he was well ahead of the curve. Then again, leave it to Spinrad to write a climate apocalypse novel that's light on epic disaster and heavy on sex, drugs, corporate conspiracies and 60s counterculture philosophy. That's not to say Spinrad's future is optimistic. The polar caps are gone, parts of Earth are uninhabitable, and what nation-states are left have little power, which is split between The Big Blue Machine (a cabal of rich corporations), "Green" syndicalists and Bad Boys, a syndic run mainly by the mafia and the triads. Meanwhile, several top climatologists have predicted that a sudden acceleration of global warming dubbed "Condition Venus" may be imminent. This is the backdrop for the main story, in which PR flack Monique Calhoun is assigned to manage an emergency UN climate conference in Paris to determine how long they have before Condition Venus kicks in, and what can be done to reverse it. The twist: The Big Blue Machine is funding both the conference and the PR for the first time, and everyone from Mossad to Russia wants to know why. Monique is recruited by Mossad to find out by liaising with Eric Esterhazy, who runs a luxury riverboat for Bad Boys that is outfitted with wall-to-wall surveillance. It's somewhat messy in terms of the sociopolitical backdrop, though it's typical of Spinrad in that he tends to design his futures as allegories, not plausible outcomes. But his exposition is somewhat muddled, which make the allegiances and motivations of Monique, Eric and other key players hard to grasp at times - you really just have to shrug and go with it. Also, even by Spinrad standards, the sexual chemistry between Monique and Eric is ludicrous. That said, Spinrad uses his characters to raise ethical dilemmas - how far would you go to save the planet? Do the ends justify the means? And do we really need to wait until we know an outcome for certain before we take action? So as flawed as the novel is, Spinrad at least offers a different and thought-provoking take on the climate-apocalypse genre.