Kim Stanley Robinson Books

Author Kim Stanley Robinson’s work has been labeled as literary science fiction. In the mid seventies, he got a B.A. In literature from the University of California-San Diego and the year after, earned an M.A. In English from Boston University. He also has a PhD in English, for which he wrote his doctoral thesis on the novels of Philip K. Dick (that later was published in hardback book form) after a professor recommended Dick’s work to him. Besides writing fiction, he has sold books and taught composition and other classes at the college level. With his wife, Lisa (who is an environmental chemist), he has two sons; the couple got married in 1982. He has lived in various places throughout his life, these places include: Washington, D.C., Switzerland, and California. Robinson says that he enjoys backpacking through the Sierras. Robinson was born in Waukegan, Illinois in late March of 1952.

Kim Stanley Robinson is probably best known for writing the “Mars” trilogy that he has been given awards for. He has written other novel series (“Three Californias” and “Science in the Capital”) and other stand alone novels and short stories and non fiction. Robinson explores the effects of over developing the planet and his characters often times try to preserve and make better the environment around them. His work also shows scientists as regular people doing regular things (not as action heroes), but also as the protagonists.

KIM STANLEY ROBINSON AWARDS

Kim Stanley Robinson has won many awards for his various stories and novels that he has written. He has won the Locus, John W. Campbell Award, Hugo for best novel, Nebula for Best Novel, and the World Fantasy Award. He has won each of these multiple times as well as others as well. Time has named him “Hero of the Environment” for the way he looks to future and his views.

BEST KIM STANLEY ROBINSON BOOKS

For those of you who would like to get into Kim Stanley Robinson’s work, this section will help with that. It will talk about the novels: “Red Mars”, “Forty Signs of Rain”, and “Icehenge”.

Red Mars: The first novel in the “Mars” trilogy that was released in the year 1993. Sandstorms sweep the landscape and have for many moons. This is life on Mars for humans. Humans have been trying to make the planet more habitable. A group of one hundred, in the year 2026, are about to do just that. John, Frank, Arkady, and Maya lead a mission of terraforming. For some the planet is something they are passionate about, but others are only interested in what they can take. For others there is a chance to bring to life a biomedical miracle. Something that could change all that we know about life and death.

Forty Signs of Rain: The first novel in the “Science in the Capital” series that was released in the year 2004. The Arctic ice pack has lost half of its thickness in about fifty years. After that, it started breaking, and things start getting hotter and hotter. Charlie Quibler (who is a Senate environmental staffer) takes care of his son and has to work with the headache that is global warming. He must get people to skeptical about the whole thing to do anything about the problem to act before it is too late. That is, before the whole world is a swamp. His wife (Anna) has a more rational approach, she works at the National Science Foundation. There is a technology to solve the growing problem, but there is a fight going on to control the machinery.

Icehenge: This novel is a stand alone work and was released in the year 1984. This novel explores some of the same things that the “Mars” trilogy does, although this novel was published a decade earlier than those novels. It is broken up into three parts and cover three different time periods. Part one is an engineer’s diary who gets caught up in a political revolution in 2248 on Mars. In part two, an archaeologist finds the diary three centuries later, and someone finds an odd monument on Pluto’s north pole. In the third part, the great grandson of the archaeologist who found the diary tries to figure out whether or not the monument and the engineer’s diary were left by a wealthy recluse who lives in the orbit of Saturn.

January 5, 2017

Home » Author » Kim Stanley Robinson

BookSeries.org