The novel “The Gold Coast” by Kim Stanley Robinson was published for the first time in 1988. It’s the second book in the trilogy of the Three Californias.
Jim McPherson has a part-time job as a teacher with ambitions as a poet but his life is mostly about sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll. It’s an unstable situation that among other things generates constant conflicts with his father Dennis, an engineer at Laguna Space Research (LSR), an aerospace company struggling with problems connected to a major US Air Force contract.
Jim McPherson criticizes the many US military engagements around the world and for that reason, he becomes a pacifist activist but he feels he’s getting nowhere. Disenchanted, he ends up joining a group that carries out attacks on industries that work with the military.
The so-called trilogy of the Three Californias is a series of novels united only by the geographical setting. They’re completely independent, as Kim Stanley Robinson wrote stories set in different possible futures.
“The Gold Coast” is set in 2027 in an Orange County which has become a sort of concrete jungle with all the problems connected to that kind of situation. Kim Stanley Robinson projected forward by about 40 years certain trends existing when he wrote the novel related to real estate expansion, overseas military operations, and American society.
In the case of technological developments, the author envisioned them particularly in certain fields. Reading the novel almost in the year in which it’s set, the most glaring lack is that of mobile phones. The extreme expansion of Orange County and automated driving systems far more advanced than those existing today are still science fiction.
My problem with “The Gold Coast” is that my impression is that Kim Stanley Robinson wanted to put too much to properly develop it all. The novel begins by presenting many characters in a frantic way and honestly, I struggled already to follow the story. Between the chapters, there are digressions on the history of Orange County starting from the Native American era. They contain a vague ecological message linked to the progressive exploitation of the territory by white people.
The father-son conflict between Dennis and Jim McPherson is supposed to be part of the larger theme of the disintegration of society in an increasingly dehumanized environment but it seemed to me superficial and dull. I have to say that family dramas tend to bore me and it’s very hard for me to appreciate stories like the one developed in this novel.
The point of “The Gold Coast” is to show a metropolis in which economic and technological progress apparently brought well-being to everyone but actually hides a series of problems. The projection of a certain hedonism of the 1980s and capitalism without rules shows a situation in many ways similar to the current one but in my opinion, there are too many digressions that weaken what are supposed to be the novel’s strong elements.
In the end, the part of “The Gold Coast” that interested me most is connected to Dennis McPherson’s job. The contract for a very advanced drone-based automated defense system is probably still science fiction. Kim Stanley Robinson uses it to tell about the behind-the-scenes intrigues linked to rivalries between contractor companies but also within the military and between various government agencies.
“The Gold Coast” is not particularly long, also thinking about Kim Stanley Robinson’s standards, and in my opinion, the author tried to put too much into it. He’s an author well known for the complexity of his novels and all the elements he puts into them, different readers may appreciate some and not others. I recommend it to anyone interested in its themes.
