A Half-Built Garden is a well thought out first contact story, with an engaging plot — things which would make it well worth reading on its own. But as anyone familiar with my previous reviews will be aware, when I review near-future sci-fi stories about liberatory postcapitalist utopias, that’s not my primary concern. I review…

This book would be a good companion read either with Andreas Malm’s How to Blow Up a Pipeline, or with Robinson’s other books Red Moon and New York 2140. The story, written in 2020, begins in 2025. Climate change has progressed to the point that heat domes in the Global South reach deadly wet bulb…