How could the book have been improved?

I felt that 2030 could have used better character development and fewer characters. It had too may subplots and would have been better if it had one main plot (the earthquake or the terrorists) and only 1-2 subplots.

What happened to the man who cured cancer? I felt like his character was just left hanging. Maybe I missed it but he just seemed to disappear...

Character development, definitely. Several of the characters were just cardboard cutouts with names attached. But I think the author felt that people in general are shallow and poorly motivated.

The concepts were interesting, though, and I think the book could interest a lot of readers if the characters had gone beyond stereotypes.

At one point he mentions that the majority of the population are Hispanic, but I don't recall any Hispanic characters. And all the Asians were in China...

I hadn't thought of that, suzanneg. You're right. All the characters were white except for the Chinese who came to rebuild LA. I think we're all in agreement that the characters were extremely weak.

I thought that the problems society was faced with in 2030 were all too plausible, however, more ethnic diversity, especially blacks and Hispanics should have been included. My main gripe with the book was that the problems associated with climate change and global warming were given short shrift. I believe that by 2030 the problems with our planet, itself, will far outweigh our societal problems. Increased violent weather patterns, floods, droughts, famine, changes in ocean salinity, greenhouse gasses, air pollution, rising seaboards, perhaps even slowing down or stoppage in major ocean currents. I'm sure there will be many other issues (I'm not a scientist), and it scares the heck out of me. I can't help but feel we are close to (if not AT) a tipping point here, and our governments are no closer to making significant global changes than they ever were. I believe that the book would have been improved if these issues had been given more prominence.

Good point, susank!

He should have tackled fewer topics and developed characters more, it was so high level I didn't really care about anyone in the book. I almost felt like the commentary should have been just that, rather than an op ed piece disguised as fiction.

As expressed above, character development was practically nil. I asked for this book because I thought the premise was interesting, but was really quite disappointed with it. I had trouble telling the characters apart because their names were so "vanilla" and unmemorable. The plot was disjointed and implausible. I read it halfway through and just didn't care anymore. (Because of my age, I usually give books "the 50 page test"; if it hasn't grabbed me by page 50, I move on. Life is too short and there are a lot of really good books out there.

As expressed in all of the posts, character development . there were so many that could have been fleshed out and because Brooks is a screenwriter, I was surprised?

I agree with all the posts about character development. Brooks didn't take enough time to really delve onto the characters so I really didn't care for any of them. Too shallow- such an interesting overall idea though