The Gold Coast , set an alternative future of ecological collapse, is the second novel in Kim Stanley Robinson's Three Californias trilogy. 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. “What a bold, manic, wonderful book this is!” ― Los Angeles Times “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.” ― The Washington Post “Like light focused into coherent beam, The Gold Coast brilliantly illuminates the craziness of technology out of control.” ― Interzone KIM STANLEY ROBINSON is an American science fiction writer. He is the author of more than 20 books, including the international bestselling Mars trilogy: Red Mars, Green Mars , Blue Mars , and more recently Red Moon , New York 2140 , and 2312 , which was a New York Times bestseller nominated for all seven of the major science fiction awards―a first for any book. 2008 he was named a “Hero of the Environment” by Time magazine, and he works with the Sierra Nevada Research Institute, the Clarion Writers’ Workshop, and UC San Diego’s Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination. He has won the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and World Fantasy awards. In 2016 he was given the Heinlein Award for lifetime achievement in science fiction, and asteroid 72432 was named “Kimrobinson.” In 2017 he was given the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Imagination in Service to Society. The Gold Coast Three Californias By Robinson, Kim Stanley Orb Books Copyright ©1995 Robinson, Kim Stanley All right reserved. ISBN: 9780312890377 1     Beep beep! Honk honk. Jim McPherson sticks his head out the window of his car, shouts at a Minihonda whose program has just automatically slotted it onto the onramp ahead of him. “You cut me off!” The man in the Minihonda stares back at him, looking puzzled. Jim’s ancient Volvo swerves sharply up the curving track and suddenly Jim’s hanging halfway out the window and teetering, face inches from the concrete of the freeway. Abe Bernard grabs his belt and pulls him back in, whew! Night in Orange County, here, and the four friends are cruising in autopia. Stars of their high school state championship wrestling team, ten years past that glory, they roll over the seats of the Volvo and try to pin Tashi Nakamura, to keep him away from the eye-dropper of Sandy Chapman’s latest concoction. Tash was their heavyweight and the only one still in good shape, and they can’t do it; Tash surges up through their arms and seizes the eyedropper, all the while singing along with one of Jim’s old CDs: “ Some body give me a cheese burger!” The onramp bends up, curves more sharply, the contacts squeak over the power-and-guidance electromagnetic track in the center of the lane, they’re all thrown into a heap on the backseat. “Uh-oh, I think I dropped the dropper.” “Say, we’re on the freeway now, aren’t we? Shouldn’t someone be watching?” Instantly Abe squirms into the driver’s seat. He has a look around. Everything’s on track. Cars, following their programs north, hum over the eight brassy bands marking the center of each lane. River of red taillights ahead, white headlights behind, some cars rolling over the S-curved lane-change tracks, left to right, right to left, their yellow turnsignal indicators blinking the rhythm of the great plunge forward, click click click, click click click. All’s well on the Newport Freeway tonight. “Find that eyedropper?” says Abe, a certain edge in his voice. “Yeah, here.” The northbound lanes swoop up as they cross the great sprawl of the intersection with the San Diego, Del Mar, Costa Mesa, and San Joaquin freeways. Twenty-four monster concrete ribbons pretzel together in a Gordian knot three hundred feet high and a mile in diameter—a monument to autopia—and they go right through the middle of it, like bugs through the heart of a giant. Then Jim’s old buzzbox hums up a grade and suddenly it’s like they’re in a landing pattern for John Wayne International Airport over to their right, because the northbound Newport is on the highest of the stacked freeway levels, and they are a hundred feet above mother Earth. Nighttime OC, for miles in every direction. Imagine. * * * The great gridwork of light. Tungsten, neon, sodium, mercury, halogen, xenon. At groundlevel, square grids of orange sodium streetlights. All kinds of things burn. Mercury vapor lamps: blue crystals over the freeways, the condos, the parking lots. Eyezapping xenon, glaring on the malls, the stadium, Disneyland. Great halogen lighthouse beams from the airport, snapping around