Kim Stanley Robinson

Kim Stanley Robinson (born March 23, 1952) is an American science fiction writer, best known for his Mars trilogy. Robinson's work has been labeled by reviewers as "the gold-standard of realistic, and highly literary, science-fiction writing".

Early life

Robinson was born in Waukegan, Illinois, but grew up in Southern California.

In 1974, he earned a B.A. in literature from the University of California, San Diego. In 1975, he earned an M.A. in English from Boston University and in 1982, he earned a PhD in English from the University of California, San Diego. His doctoral thesis, The Novels of Philip K. Dick, was published in 1984. A hardcover version was published by UMI Research Press.

Career

Robinson describes himself as a backpacker but not a mountain climber, though mountain climbing appears in several of his fiction works, notably Antarctica, the Mars trilogy, "Green Mars" (a short story found in The Martians), the Science in the Capital series beginning with Forty Signs of Rain, and Escape from Kathmandu.

Robinson was an instructor at the Clarion Workshop in 2009. In 2010, Robinson was guest of honor at the 68th World Science Fiction Convention, held in Melbourne, Australia. In April 2011, Robinson presented at the second annual Rethinking Capitalism conference, held at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Among other points made, his talk addressed the cyclical nature of capitalism.

Major themes

Ecological sustainability

Virtually all of Robinson's novels have an ecological component; sustainability would have to be counted among his primary themes. (A strong contender for the primary theme would be the nature of a plausible utopia.) The Orange County trilogy is about the way in which the technological intersects with the natural, highlighting the importance of keeping the two in balance. In the Mars trilogy, one of the principal divisions among the population of Mars is based on dissenting views on terraforming; it is heavily debated whether or not the seemingly barren Martian landscape has a similar ecological or spiritual value to a living ecosphere like Earth's. Forty Signs of Rain has an entirely ecological thrust, taking global warming for its principal subject.

Economic and social justice

Robinson's work often explores alternatives to modern capitalism. In the Mars trilogy, it is argued that capitalism is an outgrowth of feudalism, which could be replaced in the future by a more democratic economic system. Worker ownership and cooperatives figure prominently in Green Mars and Blue Mars as a replacement for traditional corporations. The Orange County trilogy explores similar arrangements; Pacific Edge includes the idea of attacking the legal framework behind corporate domination to promote social egalitarianism.

Robinson's work often portrays characters struggling to preserve and enhance the world around them in an environment characterized by individualism and entrepreneurialism, often facing the political and economic authoritarianism of corporate power acting within this environment. Robinson has been described as anti-capitalist, and his work often portrays a form of frontier capitalism that promotes equalitarian ideals that closely resemble socialist systems, and faced with a capitalism that is staunched by entrenched hegemonic corporations. In particular, his Martian Constitution draws upon social democratic ideals explicitly emphasizing a community-participation element in political and economic life.

Robinson's works often portray the worlds of tomorrow as in a similar way to the mythologized American Western frontier, showing a sentimental affection for the freedom and wildness of the frontier. This aesthetic includes a preoccupation with competing models of political and economic organization.

The environmental, economic, and social themes in Robinson's oeuvre stand in marked contrast to the libertarian science fiction prevalent in much of science fiction (Robert A. Heinlein, Poul Anderson, Larry Niven, and Jerry Pournelle being prominent examples), and his work has been called the most successful attempt to reach a mass audience with a left-wing libertarian and anti-capitalist utopian vision since Ursula K. Le Guin's 1974 novel, The Dispossessed.

Scientists as citizens

Robinson's work often features scientists as heroes. They are portrayed in a mundane way compared to most work featuring scientists: rather than being adventurers or action heroes, Robinson's scientists become critically important because of research discoveries, networking and collaboration with other scientists, political lobbying, or becoming public figures. The Mars trilogy and The Years of Rice and Salt rely heavily on the idea that scientists must take responsibility for ensuring public understanding and responsible use of their discoveries. Robinson's scientists often emerge as the best people to direct public policy on important environmental and technological questions, on which politicians are often ignorant.

Awards

Robinson's novels have won 11 major science fiction awards, and have been nominated on 29 occasions.

Robinson won the Hugo Award for Best Novel with Green Mars (1994); and Blue Mars (1997); the Nebula Award for Best Novel with Red Mars (1993) and 2312 (2012); the Nebula Award for Best Novella with The Blind Geometer (1986); the World Fantasy Award with Black Air (1983); a John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel with Pacific Edge (1991); and Locus Awards for The Wild Shore (1985), A Short, Sharp Shock (1991), Green Mars (1994), Blue Mars (1997), The Martians (2000), and The Years of Rice and Salt (2003).

Personal life

In 1982, he married Lisa Howland Nowell, an environmental chemist, and they have two sons. Robinson has lived in Washington, D.C., California, and during some of the 1980s in Switzerland. He now lives in Davis, California.

Bibliography

Series

Three Californias

1. The Wild Shore (1984)
2. The Gold Coast (1988)
3. Pacific Edge (1990)

The Mars trilogy

1. Red Mars (1993) - Colonization
2. Green Mars (1994) - Terraforming
3. Blue Mars (1996) - Long-term results
4. The Martians (1999) - Short stories

Science in the Capital series

1. Forty Signs of Rain (2004)
2. Fifty Degrees Below (2005)
3. Sixty Days and Counting (2007)

Novels

• Icehenge (1984)
• The Memory of Whiteness (1985)
• A Short, Sharp Shock (1990) (short novel)
• Antarctica (1997)
• The Years of Rice and Salt (2002)
• Galileo's Dream (2009)
• 2312 (2012)
• Shaman: A Novel of the Ice Age (2013)
• Aurora (2015)

Short story collections

• Orbit 18 (1976)
• The Planet on the Table (1986)
  • Venice Drowned (Universe 11, 1981)
  • Mercurial (Universe 15, 1985)
  • Ridge Running (F&SF 1984)
  • The Disguise (Orbit 19, 1977) Originally published in Orbit 19, 1977, ed. Damon Knight, ISBN 0-06012-431-8.
  • The Lucky Strike (Universe 14, 1984) Originally published in Universe 14, 1984, ed. Terry Carr, ISBN 0-385-19134-0. (nominated for Hugo Award for Best Novelette, Nebula Award for Best Novelette) (frequently anthologized, as in Alternative Histories, 1986, ed. Charles G. Waugh, Martin H. Greenberg, ISBN 0-8240-8659-7, There Won't Be War, 1991, ed. Harry Harrison, Bruce McAllister, ISBN 0-812-51941-8)
  • Coming Back to Dixieland (Orbit 18, 1976)
  • Stone Eggs (Universe 13, 1983) Originally published in Universe 13, ed. Terry Carr, ISBN 0-385-18288-0.
  • Black Air (F&SF 1983)
• Escape from Kathmandu (1989)
  • "Escape from Kathmandu" Originally published in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, September, 1986. (nominated for Hugo Award for Best Novella, Nebula Award for Best Novella) (subsequently anthologized)
  • "Mother Goddess Of The World" Originally published in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, October, 1987. (nominated for Hugo Award for Best Novella) (subsequently anthologized)
  • "The True Nature of Shangri-La" Appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, December, 1989.
  • "The Kingdom Underground"
• Remaking History (1991)
  • "A History of the Twentieth Century, with Illustrations" (in: Vinland the Dream) Originally published in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, April, 1991, revised for Remaking History. (subsequently anthologized: The Year's Best Science Fiction: Ninth Annual Collection, 1992, ed. Gardner Dozois, ISBN 0-312-07891-9; Best New SF 6, 1992, ed. Gardner Dozois, ISBN 1-85487-131-5; The Giant Book of Fantastic SF, 1995, ed. Gardner Dozois, ISBN 1-85487-607-4; The Savage Humanists, 2008, ed. Fiona Kelleghan, ISBN 978-0-88995-425-0.)* Down and Out in the Year 2000 (1992)
  • "Before I Wake" (in Remaking History) Originally published in Interzone #27, 1989; Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, April, 1990) (nominated for Nebula Award for Best Short Story)
  • "Glacier" (in Remaking History) Originally published in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, September, 1988. (subsequently anthologized)
  • "Remaking History" (in Remaking History and Vinland the Dream) Originally published in Other Edens II, 1988, ed. Robert Holdstock, Christopher Evans, ISBN 0-04-440154-X; then Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, March, 1989; and What Might Have Been? Volume 1: Alternate Empires, edited by Gregory Benford and Martin H. Greenberg, 1989, ISBN 0-553-27845-2. (nominated for Hugo Award for Best Short Story but withdrawn as ineligible)
  • "The Part of Us That Loves" (in Remaking History) Originally published in Full Spectrum 2, 1989, ed. Lou Aronica, Shawna McCarthy, Amy Stout, Pat LoBrutto, ISBN 0-385-26019-9.
    • "The Return from Rainbow Bridge" (in Remaking History) Originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, August, 1987.
  • "The Translator" (in Remaking History) Originally published in Universe 1, 1990, ed. Robert Silverberg, Karen Haber, ISBN 0-385-26771-1.
  • "Vinland the Dream" (in Remaking History, later in Vinland the Dream) Originally published in Asimov's Science Fiction, November, 1991. (nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Short Story) (frequently anthologized)
  • "Zürich" (in Remaking History) Originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, March, 1990.
• Vinland the Dream (2001)
  • "A Sensitive Dependence on Initial Conditions" (in Vinland the Dream) Originally published in Author's Choice Monthly #20, Pulphouse Publishing, May, 1991.
  • "Black Air" (in Vinland the Dream) Originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, March, 1983. (won 1984 World Fantasy Award, 1984 Science Fiction Chronicle Award; nominated for Nebula Award for Best Novelette) (subsequently anthologized)
  • "Coming Back to Dixieland" (in Vinland the Dream) Originally published in Orbit 18, 1976.
  • "Mercurial" (in Vinland the Dream) Originally published in Universe 15, 1985, ed. Terry Carr, ISBN 0-385-19890-6. Later in Future Crimes, 2003, ed. Jack Dann, Gardner Dozois, ISBN 0-441-01118-7.
  • "Muir on Shasta" (in Vinland the Dream) Originally published in A Sensitive Dependence on Initial Conditions, Author's Choice Monthly #20, Pulphouse Publishing, 1991.
  • "Ridge Running" (in Vinland the Dream) Originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, January, 1984. (nominated for Hugo Award for Best Short Story)
  • "Venice Drowned" (in Vinland the Dream) Originally published in Universe 11, 1981, ed. Terry Carr, ISBN 0-385-17226-5. (nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Short Story)
• The Best of Kim Stanley Robinson (2010)
  • "The Timpanist of the Berlin Philharmonic, 1942" (in The Best of Kim Stanley Robinson)

Short stories

• "A Martian Childhood" - Asimov's Science Fiction, February, 1994.
• "A Transect" - The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, May, 1986. (anthologized: Future Earths: Under African Skies, 1993, ed. Gardner Dozois, Mike Resnick, ISBN 0-88677-544-2)
• "Down and Out in the Year 2000" - Originally published in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, April, 1986. (subsequently anthologized)
• "Festival Night" (from Red Mars) In: Nebula Awards 29, 1995, ed. Pamela Sargent, ISBN 0-15-600119-5.
• "From 2312 (excerpt)" - Lightspeed Magazine, May, 2012.
• "How Science Saved the World" - Nature, January 6, 2000. Also published under the title: "Review: Science in the Third Millennium", which appeared in Envisioning the Future: Science Fiction and the Next Millennium, 2003, ed. Marleen S. Barr, ISBN 0-8195-6652-7. This is a facetious review of two fictional books.
• "In Pierson's Orchestra" - Orbit 18, 1976, ed. Damon Knight, ISBN 0-06-012433-4.
• "Me in a Mirror" - Foundation â€" The International Review of Science Fiction, #38 Winter 1986/87, 1987, ed. Edward James.
• "On the North Pole of Pluto" - After some reworking, this novella became the third part of Icehenge; also in Orbit 21, 1980, ed. Damon Knight, ISBN 0-06-012426-1.
• "Our Town" - Originally published in Omni, November, 1986; later in Lightspeed Magazine, April, 2012.
• "Primate in Forest" - Future Washington, 2005, ed. Ernest Lilley, ISBN 0-9621725-4-5. Excerpt from Chapter One of Fifty Degrees Below.
• "Prometheus Unbound, At Last" - Nature, August 11, 2005.
• "Red Mars" - Interzone, #63 September 1992.
• "Sacred Space" - I'm With the Bears, 2011, ed. Mark Martin, ISBN 978-1-84467-744-3. This excerpt is from chapter 6 of the novel Sixty Days and Counting.
• "The Blind Geometer" - Originally published as a limited edition by Cheap Street Press in 1986, ISBN 0-941826-13-9, then Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, August, 1987. (subsequently anthologized, as in The Mammoth Book of Modern Science Fiction: Short Novels of the 1980s, 1993, ed. Martin H. Greenberg, Isaac Asimov, Charles G. Waugh, ISBN 0-88184-959-6) (won the 1988 Nebula Award for Best Novella; nominated for the 1988 Hugo Award for Best Novella)
• "The Lunatics" - Originally published in Terry's Universe, 1988, ed. Beth Meacham, ISBN 0-312-93058-5. (frequently anthologized)
• "The Memorial" - In the Field of Fire, 1987, ed. Jack Dann, Jeanne Van Buren Dann, ISBN 0-312-93008-9.
• "The Thing Itself" - Clarion SF, 1977, ed. Kate Wilhelm, ISBN 0-425-03293-0.
• "To Leave a Mark" - The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, November, 1982. (nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novella)
• "Green Mars" (in The Martians) Originally published in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, September, 1985. (nominated for Hugo Award for Best Novella, Nebula Award for Best Novella) (subsequently anthologized)

Non-fiction

Robinson's doctoral thesis examined The Novels of Philip K. Dick (1984). A hardcover version was published by UMI Research Press. He also edited and wrote the introduction of the anthology Future Primitive: The New Ecotopias (1994). In 2014, he co-edited a collection of scholarly essays on the relationship between ecological science, environmentalist politics, and science fiction titled Green Planets: Ecology and Science Fiction (Wesleyan University Press) with Marquette University professor Gerry Canavan.

References

External links

• Kim Stanley Robinson at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• KimStanleyRobinson.info â€" unofficial site
• Short descriptions of K.S. Robinson's novels
• All of Kim Stanley Robinson's audio interviews on the podcast The Future And You (in which he describes his expectations of the future)
• Robinson at the Internet Book List
• Guardian interview with K.S. Robinson (Wednesday 14 September 2005)
• "Comparative Planetology: an Interview with Kim Stanley Robinson" at BLDGBLOG
• Complete list of sci-fi award wins and nominations by novel
• Interview on the SciFiDimensions Podcast
• "Terraforming Earth", essay by KSR at Slate (magazine), Dec. 4, 2012
• Kim Stanley Robinson at Library of Congress Authorities, with 33 catalog records