In Regards to Chapters 13 Through 15 of
Kim Stanley Robinson's Antarctica
http://bmkold.ipfox.com/index.html
1 April 1999
The ending of the book ties everything up really well. Perhaps too well, but then since most of this wrap up is in the form of suggestions for a renewed Treaty which is likely to be ignored, perhaps not.
It is good that Val decides to remain on her own rather than suddenly deciding she needs to be with either Wade nor X, neither of which would have really been well supported by the story line even though the possibilities of romance were hinted at.
It was interesting to note how X rises from the oppressed everyman to the leader of the Co-Op movement. I felt in a way that this became an icebound Horatio Algers success story. In a way, this is subversive to Algers and the American dream because X's formula for success was vastly different. On the other hand, I felt Robinson may have been subverting himself because Robinson had X's success defined on America's terms: private home and leadership position.
In some ways, this was a textbook made interesting. The story is not about people, but about a time and place. In this way, Robinson is almost working along the same lives as James Clavelle's whose Asia Saga brings the continent, its history, its people, to life in a way that a true textbook on the subject never could.
But at the same time, he's only telling us so much about Antartica and he's really using a principle of cognitive estrangement to tell us a lot about ourselves in the here and now.
So this book is really an amalgorithm of past, present, and future. And just as Robinson is telling us, history is a search for what has happened, not black and white but lots of grey, but so too should be our handling of the present and future. We must seek to understand the forces at work, why they are, and where they are headed, rather than just gie blanket praise or condemnaiton.
Although I could see the argument for McDonald's as a sacred place, I don't think such an argument would be taken too seriously from anyone who wasn't wearing a straight jacket. But it is a good demonstration of why words on paper are not adequate to protect the spirit of any resolutions towards the care and well being of either the planet or the people on it.