The SF Site: Kim Stanley Robinson Reading List

Novels

The Wild Shore (1984)
Ace/Tor

In 2047, it has been sixty years since America was quarantined after a devastating nuclear attack. Henry, at 17, wants to help make America like it was before all the bombs went off. But, for the people of Onofre Valley, on the coast of California, just surviving is enough of a challenge. Living simply on what the sea and land can provide, they strive to preserve what knowledge and skills they can in a society without mass communications. Then one day Henry meets two men who say they represent the new American resistance.

The Gold Coast (1988)
Ace/Tor
The Wild Shore

21st century Orange County, CA is full of designer drugs, freeways that glide and soar. It's a mass-culture, video-saturated world for Jim McPherson who is adrift in society. He lives his life through dreams of the past. Dennis, his dad, is an aerospace engineer involved in military research, a fact that Jim ignores -- until he becomes a minor urban terrorist out of boredom. Father and son, separate for so long, are finally on a collision course.

Pacific Edge (1990)
Unwin Hyman, Tor

The sun beats down on Orange County, CA. People play softball and pedal their flyers above ecologically-sound thermocrete rooftops. The democratically-elected council debate environmental issues and make rational decisions for the public good. There lives Kevin Claiborne. To him, it must be the perfect society. But when he hears of plans to develop Rattlesnake Hill, the last piece of wilderness in the area, he senses the bubbling of corruption below the unblemished surface.

Red Mars (1993)
HarperCollins UK, Bantam Spectra

Winner of the 1993 Nebula Award, Red Mars begins the chronology of the Mars trilogy with the first man setting foot on the surface of Mars: John Boone, American hero in 2019. In 2027, the First Hundred -- Earth's finest engineers and scientists -- made the first mass-landing. Their mission is to terraform the planet, turning it from a wasteland into an Eden populated by people, plants, and animals. They strive to bring about the genesis of a new, living planet. But in order to do so, they must overcome their own limitations: personalities, prejudice, politics, and greed. How can John Boone hold the dream together? Already there are factions within the Hundred, different ideologies and views of what Mars is, and should be. And in his own life, he and his co-leader, Frank Chalmers, are in deadly competition, over Mars and over the beautiful Maya.

Green Mars (1994)
HarperCollins UK, Bantam Spectra

Winner of the Hugo Award, in this, the 2nd volume of the trilogy, change is evident. However, not for the best. The dream of a new world is under way, but corrupted. Red Mars is gone, ripped apart by the violent and failed revolution of 2061. The First Hundred have scattered or died, and for the moment their dreams with them. The rebels are underground, dreaming of their utopia.

Blue Mars (1996)
HarperCollins UK, Bantam Spectra

In the 3rd volume, Mars has been terraformed and is now politically independent. There are canals and shallow seas that are subject to sudden storms and rapid freezes. It is also warmer than ever with plants and animals specifically engineered for life on the planet. Many of the First Hundred have died and the few remaining are like walking mythological figures to the majority of Martian youth. But on Earth there are troubled times. With terminal overpopulation, reduced resources, and the bitter nationalism that these problems create, many Terrans see Mars as a potential escape. Thus the safety of the Martian culture depends on the health of Terran cultures on Earth. And so on Mars a campaign is begun which will aid Earth through this difficult time in its history.

A Short, Sharp Shock (1990)
Mark V Ziesing, Bantam Spectra

A man finds himself washed up on a strange shore with no memory of his past. He encounters both friend and foe, while discovering a path to deeper humanity and the real meaning of home. Like some of Philip K. Dick's work, this novella leaves the reader with a sense that all is not as it seems. But I don't know that I'd go as far as the dust jacket and say: "Incorporating erotic symbolism fraught with quasi- Freudian overtones and social contrivances invested with Jungian implications, Robinson has created a modern mythological playground."

Icehenge (1984)
Ace/Tor, Macdonald

In the 23rd century on Pluto, Icehenge stands at the north pole of the planet. It is a study in ice frozen harder than stone, harder than steel. Each slab towers 200 feet above the crater-pocked surface. The one in the center bears an inscription in Sanskrit. The first mission to Pluto found it there, waiting for them. Is it a starlit message from an alien race? Or does it mark a human mystery? For there was one ship that might have passed this way, forgotten decades ago. The novel incorporates two short stories, "To Leave a Mark" and "On the North Pole of Pluto".

The Memory of Whiteness (1985)
Tor, Macdonald

Arthur Holywelkin, a brilliant physicist, devoted the last years of his life to creating a strange, beautiful musical instrument called The Orchestra. Hundreds of years later, in a universe centered around music, Johannes Wright is chosen as the Ninth Master of Holywelkin's Orchestra. Wright must travel the solar system pursued by enemies in the name of a destiny he understands only imperfectly.

Antarctica (1997)
Voyager, Bantam Spectra

An epic, futuristic disaster novel set in the wastes of Antarctica, it follows the nuances of those who want to undermine the renewal of the Antarctic Treaty. Coming up through the middle are a small group of eco-terrorists, the Ecoteurs. Their stated goal is to preserve the worlds's last undeveloped spot by chasing off all those who want to ravage it for their own ends.

Novels

The Years of Rice and Salt (2002)
Voyager, Bantam Spectra

The Black Death sweeps 14th century Europe. This time, the plague killed 99 percent of the population, leaving it a vast cemetary of buildings and bones. Lost is the Renaissance, the Industrial Revolution, and the discoveries of the Americas, their colonization by the British and French. Buddhism and Islam flourish while Christianity and Judaism have almost no role in the world. The novel follows characters over 700 years beginning with a wandering Mongol scout, Bold Bardash, scavenging through an empty Athens. In the novel's 7 episodes, we find out the New World is discovered by the Chinese Navy, colonies spreading from west to east, the Industrial Revolution arises via scientists in India, and the equivalence of the Renaissance comes about as a struggle between Middle Eastern Islam and Chinese Buddhism.

Forty Signs of Rain (2004)
Voyager, Bantam Spectra

The first of three linking novels, it takes place in the overlapping worlds of back-biting science, corrupting politics and seductive big business. Each can play a role in the dissolution or salvage of our environment. As progress creeps along, exploitation of the changes can lead to the benefit of mankind or the lining of selected pockets. We meet Charley and Anna Quibler. She's a scientist at NSF who befriends the staff of a new low-lying island nation off the coast of India. He's a stay-at-home dad who works as a senatorial staffer for environmental issues. Both are caught up on the impact of science and how it can help the environment. But there are other competing interests vying for access to those who decide what gets done. And then it starts to rain in Washington.

Fifty Degrees Below (2005)
Voyager, Bantam Spectra

The second of three linking novels, it follows Frank Vanderwal, a minor character in Forty Signs of Rain, and his colleagues at the National Science Foundation who think that a new Ice Age may be coming. They know that, if too much cold water from the polar ice cap mixes with the warm water of the Gulf Stream, it could force the stream further south. The net result will be a drastic temperature change and dramatically modify the weather that warms England and Northern Europe. The scientists have found changes in the giant system that determines the Earth's weather. This summer, the polar ice cap completely melts for the first time.

Collections

The Planet on the Table (1986)
Tor

It collects the following stories:

Venice Drowned

Stone Eggs

Ridge Running

Mercurial

The Lucky Strike

The Disguise

Coming Back to Dixieland

Black Air

Escape From Kathmandu (1990)
Tor, Unwin Hyman

Published like a novel in four sections, it collects the following stories:

Escape from Kathmandu

The True Nature of Shangri-La

Mother Goddess of the World

The Kingdom Underground

Remaking History (1991)
Tor

It collects the following stories:

The Part of Us That Loves

The Translator

Before I Wake

A History of the Twentieth Century, With Illustrations

Remaking History

Vinland the Dream

Rainbow Bridge

Muir on Shasta

Glacier

A Sensitive Dependence on Initial Conditions

Down and Out in the Year 2000

Our Town

A Transect

The Lunatics

Zürich

The Martians (1999)
Bantam Spectra

It is a collection of stories, histories, poetry and other material developed for the Mars trilogy (Red Mars, Green Mars, and Blue Mars). It reveals pieces not seen in the other books like the story of an expedition seeking to scale Olympus Mons (Green Mars). There is the pleasant baseball story titled "Arthur Sternbach Brings the Curveball to Mars" which is an unexpected treat. The book as a whole is a worthwhile adventure, but I'd not recommend it to someone who isn't thoroughly familiar with the trilogy.

Uncollected Short Fiction

Green Mars
1988 Tor Double w/ A Meeting with Medusa

The Blind Geometer
1989 Tor Double 13 w/ The New Atlantis

Red Mars
1992 Interzone, September

A Martian Childhood
1994 Asimov's, February

The Memorial
1994 In the Field of Fire, edited by Jeanne Van Buren Dann & Jack M. Dann, Tor