
Forty Signs of Rain
Science in the Capital, Book 1
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Narrated by:
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Peter Ganim
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Kim Stanley Robinson
About this listen
When the Arctic ice pack was first measured in the 1950s, it averaged 30 feet thick in midwinter. By the end of the century it was down to 15. One August the ice broke. The next year the breakup started in July. The third year it began in May. That was last year.
It's an increasingly steamy summer in the nation's capital as Senate environmental staffer Charlie Quibler cares for his young son and deals with the frustrating politics of global warming. Charlie must find a way to get a skeptical administration to act before it's too late-and his progeny find themselves living in Swamp World. But the political climate poses almost as great a challenge as the environmental crisis when it comes to putting the public good ahead of private gain.
While Charlie struggles to play politics, his wife, Anna, takes a more rational approach to the looming crisis in her work at the National Science Foundation. There a proposal has come in for a revolutionary process that could solve the problem of global warming-if it can be recognized in time. But when a race to control the budding technology begins, the stakes only get higher. As these everyday heroes fight to align the awesome forces of nature with the extraordinary march of modern science, they are unaware that fate is about to put an unusual twist on their work-one that will place them at the heart of an unavoidable storm.
BONUS AUDIO: Includes an exclusive introduction by author Kim Stanley Robinson.
Listen to all of our Capital Trilogy titles.©2005 Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group (P)2008 Audible, Inc.Critic reviews
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It Just Goes On
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I love Kim Stanley Robinson
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Here it my word of wisdom: Listen to it at 1.25x speed, and the narration flows better and you won't think you are listening to a bot.
Performance at 1.25x
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Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?
Yes. Easy story to get into. Very typical Kim Stanley Robinson. If you are expecting a thrill a minute story you don't know the author.What was the most interesting aspect of this story? The least interesting?
I liked the science. It seems very factual and this again is typical of the author. It is a bit hard to follow as an audiobook but not vital to the story.Least interesting was the USA focus. America saves the world. (yawn)Would you listen to another book narrated by Peter Ganim and Kim Stanley Robinson ?
Yes. Part 2 is downloading now.Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?
No, but I would lose my job if I tried so it suits me perfectly.Any additional comments?
The narrator did a fine job.What I expected
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narrator might as well be robot AI voice.
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Great book, terrible narrator
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Interestingly - Robinson reveals, bit by bit, the theme that science, all left-brained and objective, absolutely needs to be brought together with the right brain, with passion, with heart, with emotion. While much of the novel is slow going, it really kicks in when a very rational-minded scientist, following circumstances that get his heart pumping, actually scales a building and breaks in to retrieve a letter.
Where Robinson's novel begins to really shine, however, is toward the end of this book (the first of a series of three) - when the flood hits, when the climate crisis becomes very real very quickly, when D.C. gets completely flooded. What happens then, and how Robinson describes it, gives a strong sense of what may well be in our future because of several climate tipping points coming ever closer.
PS: The narrator was terrible.
Scientists in D.C. - slow going until ...
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Concept awesome, but slow like ice melting.
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Good story, horrible narration.
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Good story but to robotic voice actor.
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