Series
Science in the Capital
Kim Stanley Robinson · 4 novels · 1 short story · 2004–2015
Kim Stanley Robinson's Science in the Capital trilogy follows scientists and staff at the National Science Foundation in Washington, D.C. as they try to get a paralyzed government to act on accelerating climate change, while catastrophic storms on both American coasts turn the crisis undeniable. Forty Signs of Rain introduces biomathematician Frank Vanderwal, the Quibler family, and a delegation of Buddhist monks from a low-lying island nation threatened by rising seas; Fifty Degrees Below and Sixty Days and Counting follow the same characters through worsening disaster and the slow mechanics of policy change. Robinson later revised the trilogy into a single volume, Green Earth.
Summary by Loreful, from public sources
Reading order
The order the books came out.
Best read in the order they were published.
Map
Science in the Capital at the centre, its books fanned around what holds them. Pick anything for its details, and zoom out for similar series in orbit — the reading order above lists the same books as text.
Stats
By decade
- 2000s3
- 2010s2
Shape
4 novels · 1 short story
1 author
reads like:science fictionecological collapsenorth americanear futuretenseadult
Mood
This series sits where the catalog sits — its mood is the corpus average.
this series · the catalog · one dot = one book4 of 5 works carry a tone
Edges of the map
- Forty Signs of Raindarkest · most intense
- Sixty Days and Countingbrightest · calmest