Quote Originally Posted by Hobbit View Post
Ropie: You've pretty much said what I thought. I wanted to enjoy it, and there were parts that were lovely, but in the end I wasn't as enthusiastic about it as I had hoped to be.
Exactly, Mark. I remember having a pretty good time reading Red Mars and the small amount of hype around 2312 led me to hope that I'd feel the same this time.

Yes, too much musing on subjects that detracted from the feel of the book. It may have worked better as a collection of short stories/novellas linked by the common theme of the year 2312, rather than one longer story with tiny chapters with those slightly irritating (I thought) lectures and 'excerpts' in between the chapters. I think KSR was trying to go for a bit of the feeling of Stand On Zanzibar by introducing imaginary text books and things between the chapters - and the plot involving computers and terrorism was actually quite similar - but the conviction towards either infomercial or strong plot didn't go either way strongly enough I felt.