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Covers of the Three Californias series

The Three Californias Trilogy (also known as the Wild Shore Triptych and the Orange County Trilogy) consists of three books by Kim Stanley Robinson, that depict three different possible futures of Orange County, California. The three books that make up the trilogy are The Wild Shore, The Gold Coast and Pacific Edge. Each of these books describes the life of young people in the three very different near-futures.

The Wild Shore

The Wild Shore (1984) is the story of survivors of a nuclear war. They have started over again, forming little villages and living from agriculture and the sea. The Wild Shore was Robinson's first published novel. It is set in 2047. The theme of the first chapters is that of a quite normal science fiction pastoral, which is deconstructed in the latter chapters, especially when it becomes clear that the post-nuclear war rural life is hindered from developing further by international treaties imposed by the victorious USSR, with an unwilling Japan charged with patrolling the West coast.

The Gold Coast

In The Gold Coast (1988) we learn about the Southern California of 2027, a dystopian extension of today's Los Angeles and car oriented architecture, mobility and life-style: "an endless sprawl of condos, freeways and malls." The book describes the life of Jim McPherson, a twenty-something who finds himself between literary and academic interests, anti-weapons-industry terrorism, and drugs, parties and casual sex.

Pacific Edge

Pacific Edge (1990) can be compared to Ernest Callenbach's Ecotopia, and also to Ursula K. Le Guin's The Dispossessed. This book's Californian future is set in El Modena, California in 2065. It depicts a realistic utopia as it describes a possible transformation process from our present to an ecologically sane future. There is no blank slate from which ecologial utopia can be erected, but the buildings, cities and infrastructures of our past and present. An important aspect of the book is the way these are changed to become "green". Pacific Edge is also realistic insofar as conflicts about diverging interests play a big role. In 2065, these are mainly conflicts between Greens and New Federals as the main political parties, but also conflicts on the personal scale. From a literary critique point of view the broad descriptions of nature and landscape are of interest, as well as the self-references in regard to writing about utopian futures vs. actual political work.

These books, especially Pacific Edge, can be seen as forerunners to Robinson's Mars trilogy.