The Gold Coast — Kim Stanley Robinson

“Bold, manic, wonderful,” this dystopian sci-fi thriller imagines ecological collapse in an alternative future California (Los Angeles Times).

2027: Southern California is a developer's dream gone mad, an endless sprawl of condos, freeways, and malls. Jim McPherson, the affluent son of a defense contractor, is a young man lost in a world of fast cars, casual sex, and designer drugs. But his descent in to the shadowy underground of industrial terrorism brings him into a shattering confrontation with his family, his goals, and his ideals.

“Owes more to 1984 and A Clockwork Orange than to the usual SF scenario. . . . Robinson offers a stark cautionary tale with a glimmer of hope at the end.” -- Publishers Weekly

“A rich, brave book . . . It celebrates, with an earned and elated refusal of despair, the persistent, joyful survival of human persons in the interstices of the American juggernaut.” -- Washington Post