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Greenhouse Summer
  

Greenhouse Summer (Turtleback)

by Norman Spinrad (Author) "TO BREAD & CIRCUSES," SAID MERVIN APpelbaum, toasting her with one final glass of first-class champagne as the Right Stuff flight from Tripoli came out..." (more)
3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)

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In Greenhouse Summer, humanity's abuse of the environment has melted the polar ice caps, expanded deserts beyond all 20th-century conceptions, and transformed Siberia into a powerful and agriculturally fertile nation--and the changes aren't over, as Monique Calhoun learns when she is sent to Paris for the United Nations' conference on global warming. The scientists present terrifying evidence that Condition Venus may already have begun. Condition Venus is a climactic change that can quickly turn the Earth as hot and deadly as Venus. The end is truly near. And transnational factions working covertly for their own agendas may only hasten the end of the world and the death of every living creature.

Norman Spinrad is, with Michael Moorcock, Harlan Ellison, and Samuel R. Delany, one of the giants of new wave science fiction. He is the author of many novels, including the notorious Bug Jack Barron, The Iron Dream, The Void Captain's Tale, and Child of Fortune, as well as several fiction and nonfiction collections. --Cynthia Ward --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

Spinrad's latest, an uneasy blend of SF, suspense thriller and political commentary, offers grim hope for our planetary ecology. In the future, the United Nations Annual Conference on Climate Stabilization meets in Paris to discuss the possibility that the world's worsening climate may degrade into a chaos of white tornadoes and desert temperatures code-named "Condition Venus." Corporations such as Breads & Circuses, p.r. spinmeisters extraordinaire, will go to any length to learn the truth, and so their operative, sexy Monique Calhoun, is instructed to book the scientists for a dinner on a river boat that's a "data sponge"Ain other words, bugged. In preparation, Calhoun meets the boat's master, ambitious Eurotrash thug Prince Eric Esterhazy. The two fall for one another; and, teaming forces, they discover a diabolical corporate plot. Spinrad remains a whiz with smart dialogue and sharp obsevation of people and place. He buries his theme of biospheric disaster underneath silly spy shenanigans, however, and ends the novel on an unsatisfying note, with the global ecological situation unresolved. (Nov.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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"TO BREAD & CIRCUSES," SAID MERVIN APpelbaum, toasting her with one final glass of first-class champagne as the Right Stuff flight from Tripoli came out of the holding stack, through the cloud deck, and turned on final toward Newark International. Read the first page
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Customer Reviews

7 Reviews
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 (1)
4 star:
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3 star:    (0)
2 star:
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Average Customer Review
3.0 out of 5 stars (7 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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1.0 out of 5 stars Slow start, slow middle, bad science. Avoid., Jan 20 2004
By Peter D. Tillman (Taos, NM USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Greenhouse Summer (Hardcover)
__________________________________________
Not quite a review, since I didn't finish it -- stalled at p.168 (of 317).
Prince Esterhazy hasn't gotten into Monique's pants yet [note 1]. Ivan
& Stella, the rich, boorish (but shrewd) Siberians, are, um, being
colorful. Oh, and the white tornado's a fake.

Gary Wolfe did say, in a generally favorable review (Locus 12-99),
that GS had a slow start, but here I am in the *middle*...

Spinrad's fictional hothouse is, well, *hot*, and 100% man-made. The
latter isn't likely in RL, but it's now well-known that Earth's climate
has changed drastically -- and quickly -- in the past, for no obvious
reasons. Anyway, it's *fiction*, and Spinrad points out the dismal
record of climate models. As always, his writing is impeccable, and he
has a gift for coining Neat Phrases, such as the 'Lands of the Lost', for the
climatic losers -- the poor, low, hot places.

The real problem comes with his McGuffin, 'Condition Venus' -- a

predicted runaway greenhouse, which would make the earth
uninhabitable. This simply isn't believable-- not even the wildest-eyed
eco-alarmists have proposed such a scenario. So the book clunks every
time Condition Venus is trotted out -- which seems like every other
page, around where I gave up.

Another problem is the economics, which is capitalism losing out to
anarcho-syndicalism -- like the Bad Boys syndicate, who are really
good at heart, barring the odd assassination. Anyway, I wouldn't know
an anarcho-syndicalist if one bit me on the ass, even after half a
book's-worth of 'em. The politics are kinda impenetrable too, Blues
and Greens and the Big Blue Machine -- the latter seems to be a trade-
association of climatic engineers and big construction outfits. Eh?

I love the Parisian setting, which is much (too much?) like that in
"La Vie Continue" (1988, in Other Americas) in which a fictional
Spinrad sells movie rights to his "Riding the Torch". Female lead is to
be the "Red Metal Rose" of Russian Spring fame. Very entertaining tale. Unlike Greenhouse Summer.

Anyway, I've mostly liked my previous Spinrad reads [note 2], even
the much-maligned fat-fan unsold-novel excerpt.... But I gave up on
this one. For 220 pages, nothing much *happened*. Life is short, and
the to-read pile is large....
___________
Note 1) Well, I tried again, stalling this time at p. 220. Eric & Monique
finally got it on [yawn]. Not much else happened. Hell with it.

Note 2) -- which include most of his lifetime oeuvre. I suppose my
all-time Spinrad fave might be Child Of Fortune (1985). And I like his
book-review columns in Asimov's.

review copyright 2000 by Peter D. Tillman

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4.0 out of 5 stars Clever vision of an all-too-possible future, Jan 20 2002
By David Kn. (Newton, MA) - See all my reviews
I've been an SF fan for more than 40 years, but find it all too difficult to find stuff worth reading these days. Spinrad's novel wasn't the most literary I've ever read -- the characters were a bit two-dimensional -- but his construction of the post-global warming future was well rounded and convincing. (At least to me. I don't know enough about climatary physics to comment on how technically plausible it might be.) Details: alligators in the canals of Paris, dikes protecting New York City from the elevated sea water, the Sahara Desert so hot as to be (really) lifeless. And the non-climatary details, like making "disney" a non-proper noun representing any technologically produced fake. I also liked the denouement, and the way it revolved around "meatware" computers and the strangely psychotic scientist from California. The politics was interesting, too, although maybe, like the characters, a little overblown to be believable. In all, though, well worth reading.
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1.0 out of 5 stars Don't Bother!, Mar 31 2001
By Kevin Spoering (Buffalo, Missouri United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Greenhouse Summer (Hardcover)
A previous review here warned that this book is poor, but heedlessly I read it anyway, to my chagrin. Character developement is fair, but plot and background science are just plain hideous. This novel is full of fancy French words, point is, who cares, and it is so excessive it detracts from the story line. The writing style makes reading a chore through much of the book, very vague at times and jumps back and forth a lot with the reader struggling to figure things out.

Explicit sex is graphically portrayed two or three times, and to no point whatsoever. Some writers, notably William Barton, use sex as an integral part of character developement and plot, but Spinrad seems to just stick it in (no pun intended) for just shock appeal, or whatever. No more Spinrad novels for me, for awhile.

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Most recent customer reviews

2.0 out of 5 stars A sumptuously written book that just doesn't deliver
Spinrad is clearly a master wordsmith, but what bogged this book down for me was the long time it took to figure out what the novel was actually about. Read more
Published on Dec 2 2000

4.0 out of 5 stars Greenhouse Summer is HOT! HOT! HOT!
Out of all the S.F. I have read that I found innocently standing on my local library shelf, this has got to be the most erotic novel I have ever found. Read more
Published on April 16 2000 by joshua

4.0 out of 5 stars Greenhouse Bummer ...
I truly thought the world was gonna' end in this one ... Alas ...

HOT DAYS: Dealing with our current situation of global warming, what I thought to have been an "End of the... Read more

Published on Dec 26 1999 by Ronald

5.0 out of 5 stars Spinrad at the height of his considerable powers!
Norman has finally returned with an utterly fantastic novel eagerly awaited by Spinrad enthusiasts worldwide! Read more
Published on Nov 11 1999 by Melissa

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