The main plot point involves a similar crash predicted by Wall Street trader Franklin Garr (his Patrick Bateman persona hiding the fact that he’s really a do-gooder at heart) who joins up with a rag tag group of coders, counsellors, politicians, bureaucrats and water rats to change the future. New York 2140 is overtly political, wearing its ideas on environmentalism and the economy on its sleeve, and in many places it’s a straight critique of the 2008 crash, openly lambasting the bail out of the banks and the return to the status quo of high finance gambling. The book follows a group of such folk who all live in the Met Life building on Madison Square in the heart of the ‘SuperVenice’.

Manhattan may be in the drink, but hardy New Yorkers simply get on with it, traversing the new canals in ferries and souped-up speedboats, farming fresh fish and seafood in the streets and avenues downtown, and attending water-sumo wrestling matches in the illicit subterranean drinking dungeons in the former subway. Even over a hundred years in the future, where melting polar ice caps have caused worldwide floods and left half of Manhattan under water-the premise of Kim Stanley Robinson’s New York 2140-the great city of New York is still a thriving metropolis, setting the bar for all the so-called ‘intertidal’ cities of the world.

New York, New York, it’s a helluva town! So goes the song, and from Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy to Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, it’s certainly a city that’s inspired writers and artists for generations, and its prominence in media and finance has made it the capital of the world.

Kim stanley robinson 2140