169 followers

Kim Stanley Robinson

(b.1952)

Kim Stanley Robinson was born in 1952 and, after travelling and working around the world, has now settled in his beloved California. He is widely regarded as the finest science fiction writer working today, noted as much for the verisimilitude of his characters as the meticulously researched hard science basis of his work. He has won just about every major SF award there is to win and is the author of the massively successful and lavishly praised Mars series.

Genres: Science Fiction, Literary Fiction

Series

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

Mars
   1. Red Mars (1992)
   2. Green Mars (1993)
   3. Blue Mars (1996)
   The Martians (1999)

Science in the Capital
   1. Forty Signs of Rain (2003)
   2. Fifty Degrees Below (2005)
   3. Sixty Days and Counting (2007)
   Green Earth (2015)

Novels

   Icehenge (1984)
   The Memory of Whiteness (1985)
   A Short, Sharp Shock (1990)
   Antarctica (1997)
   The Years of Rice and Salt (2002)
   Galileo's Dream (2009)
   2312 (2012)
   Shaman (2013)
   Aurora (2015)
   New York 2140 (2017)
   Red Moon (2018)
   The Ministry For the Future (2020)

Omnibus

A Short, Sharp Shock / The Dragon Masters (1990) (with Jack Vance)

Collections

   The Planet on the Table (1986)
   Escape from Kathmandu (1989)
   Remaking History (1991)
   Vinland the Dream (2002)
   The Best of Kim Stanley Robinson (2010)
   I'm with the Bears (2011) (with Margaret Atwood, Paolo Bacigalupi, T C Boyle, Toby Litt, Lydia Millet, Wu Mingi, David Mitchell, Nathaniel Rich and Helen Simpson)
   Metamorphosis (2015) (with Alaya Dawn Johnson)
   #cyberpunkNOW and the Dystopian Moment: The London Reader, Volume One (2020) (with George Bartlett, Will Cerbone, William Gibson, Ike Hamil, Zak Kain, Alexander H Maurice, Lena Ng, Reishi Rousseau, Bruce Sterling, Benn Ward and Dann Was)

Chapbooks

Down and Out in the Year 2000 (1992)

Novellas

   A Sensitive Dependence on Initial Conditions (1991)
   A Martian Romance (1999)
   The Lucky Strike (2009)
   Oral Argument (2015)

Series contributed to

Nebula Awards Showcase
3. Nebula Awards Showcase 2002 (2002)

Anthologies edited

Future Primitive (1994)

Non fiction

The Novels of Philip K. Dick (1984)
Green Planets (2014) (with Gerry Canavan)

Anthologies containing stories by Kim Stanley Robinson

Short stories

	Coming Back to Dixieland (1976)
	The Disguise (1977)
	Venice Drowned (1981)		Nebula Awards (nominee)
	Exploring Fossil Canyon (1982)
	To Leave a Mark (1982)		Hugo (nominee)
	Black Air (1983)		Hugo (nominee) Nebula Awards (nominee) World Fantasy
	The Lucky Strike [short story] (1983)		Hugo (nominee) Nebula Awards (nominee)
	Stone Eggs (1983)
	Mercurial (1984)
	Ridge Running (1984)		Hugo (nominee)
	Green Mars [short story] (1985)		Hugo (nominee)
	The Blind Geometer (1986)		Hugo (nominee) Nebula Awards
	Down and Out in the Year 2000 [short story] (1986)
	Escape from Kathmandu [short story] (1986)		Hugo (nominee) Nebula Awards (nominee)
	Our Town (1986)
	A Transect (1986)
	Mother Goddess of the World (1987)		Hugo (nominee)
	Rainbow Bridge (1987)
	The Return from Rainbow Bridge (1987)
	Glacier (1988)
	The Lunatics (1988)
	The Part of Us That Loves (1988)
	Remaking History [short story] (1988)
	Before I Wake (1989)		Nebula Awards (nominee)
	The Kingdom Underground (1989)
	The True Nature of Shangri-La (1989)
	The Translator (1990)
	Zurich (1990)
	A History of the Twentieth Century, With Illustrations (1991)
	Muir on Shasta (1991)
	A Short, Sharp Shock [short story] (1991)		Hugo (nominee)
	Vinland the Dream [short story] (1991)		Nebula Awards (nominee)
	Festival Night (1993)
	Discovering Life (2000)

Awards

	Nebula Awards Best Short Story nominee (1982) : Venice Drowned
	Hugo Best Novella nominee (1983) : To Leave a Mark
	Hugo Best Novellette nominee (1984) : Black Air
	Nebula Awards Best Novellette nominee (1984) : Black Air
	Philip K Dick Award Best Book nominee (1984) : The Wild Shore
	World Fantasy Best Novella winner (1984) : Black Air
	Hugo Best Novellette nominee (1985) : The Lucky Strike [short story]
	Hugo Best Short Story nominee (1985) : Ridge Running
	Nebula Awards Best Novellette nominee (1985) : The Lucky Strike [short story]
	Nebula Awards Best Novel nominee (1985) : The Wild Shore
	Hugo Best Novella nominee (1986) : Green Mars [short story]
	Arthur C. Clarke Award Best Book nominee (1987) : The Memory of Whiteness
	Hugo Best Novella nominee (1987) : Escape from Kathmandu [short story]
	Nebula Awards Best Novella nominee (1987) : Escape from Kathmandu [short story]
	Hugo Best Novella nominee (1988) : The Blind Geometer
	Hugo Best Novella nominee (1988) : Mother Goddess of the World
	Nebula Awards Best Novella winner (1988) : The Blind Geometer
	John W Campbell Memorial Award Best Novel nominee (1989) : The Gold Coast
	Hugo Best Novella nominee (1991) : A Short, Sharp Shock [short story]
	John W Campbell Memorial Award Best Novel winner (1991) : Pacific Edge
	Nebula Awards Best Short Story nominee (1991) : Before I Wake
	Arthur C. Clarke Award Best Book nominee (1993) : Red Mars
	Hugo Best Novel nominee (1993) : Red Mars
	Nebula Awards Best Short Story nominee (1993) : Vinland the Dream [short story]
	Hugo Best Novel winner (1994) : Green Mars
	Nebula Awards Best Novel winner (1994) : Red Mars
	Nebula Awards Best Novel nominee (1995) : Green Mars
	Arthur C. Clarke Award Best Book nominee (1997) : Blue Mars
	Hugo Best Novel winner (1997) : Blue Mars
	John W Campbell Memorial Award Best Novel nominee (1997) : Blue Mars
	Arthur C. Clarke Award Best Book nominee (2003) : The Years of Rice and Salt
	Hugo Best Novel nominee (2003) : The Years of Rice and Salt
	British Science Fiction Association Best Novel nominee (2004) : Forty Signs of Rain
	Arthur C. Clarke Award Best Book nominee (2010) : Galileo's Dream
	John W Campbell Memorial Award Best Novel nominee (2010) : Galileo's Dream
	Arthur C. Clarke Award Best Book nominee (2013) : 2312
	Hugo Best Novel nominee (2013) : 2312
	John W Campbell Memorial Award Best Novel nominee (2013) : 2312
	Nebula Awards Best Novel winner (2013) : 2312
	John W Campbell Memorial Award Best Novel nominee (2014) : Shaman
	John W Campbell Memorial Award Best Novel nominee (2016) : Aurora
	Hugo Best Book nominee (2018) : New York 2140
	John W Campbell Memorial Award Best Novel nominee (2018) : New York 2140

Kim Stanley Robinson recommends

West of the Sun (1953)
Edgar Pangborn
"Edgar Pangborn was one of the greatest American science fiction writers, who established along with Bradbury, Sturgeon, Miller and Cordwainer Smith a poetic, beautifully human style od science fiction. Pangborn's evocative landscapes and intense emotional situations combine to give all his novels a mysterious and powerful beauty. He was a true artist and bringing his work back into print in this way is a great moment for American Literature."

Coelestis (1993)
Paul Park
"Compulsive reading."

Stained Glass Rain (1993)
Bruce Boston
"...the greatest living science-fiction poet"

Flowerdust (1993)
(Divine Endurance, book 2)
Gwyneth Jones
"While 'Flowerdust' is a very exciting action adventure involving drug-running and political turmoil in an exotic, far-future Malaysia, it is also shot through with miracles, giving it a vivid, scary, metaphysical power. Gwyneth Jones is one of the greatest science fiction writers working today"

Cosmonaut Keep (2000)
(Engines of Light, book 1)
Ken MacLeod
"A Nova has appeared in our sky."

First Landing (2001)
Robert Zubrin
"A real page-turner with lots of conflict and excitement."

The Mount (2002)
Carol Emshwiller
"We are all Mounts and so should read this book like an instruction manual that could help save our lives. That it is also a beautiful novel is the usual bonus you get by reading Carol Emshwiller. She aleays writes them that way."

Resurgence (2002)
(Heritage , book 6)
Charles Sheffield
"Charles Sheffield is one of the very best hard science fiction writers in the world."

The Healer (2005)
Michael Blumlein
"A disturbing, beautiful, unforgettable novel."

The King's Last Song (2006)
Geoff Ryman
"Another masterpiece by one of the greatest fiction writers of our time."

The Big Bang Symphony (2010)
Lucy Jane Bledsoe
"A beautiful novel about living in that extreme space, vivid and suspenseful."

Codename Prague (2011)
(Scikungfi Trilogy, book 2)
D Harlan Wilson
"This novel is from the wild edge of science fiction, in the tradition of Philip K. Dick's Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch--fast, smart, funny, and full of a scarily plausible vision of just how weird things could get if we take our biological fate into our own hands."

The King's Witch (2011)
Cecelia Holland
"The Crusades, and the charisma of Richard the Lionheart, have never been portrayed so vividly. A truly exciting novel."

Rage of Stars (2012)
(Sigil Trilogy, book 3)
Henry Gee
"Awesome stuff, and a true pleasure to read page by page."

Annihilation (2014)
(Southern Reach Trilogy, book 1)
Jeff VanderMeer
"This swift surreal suspense novel reads as if Verne or Wellsian adventurers exploring a mysterious island had warped through into a Kafkaesque nightmare world. The reader will want to stay trapped with the Biologist to find the answers to Area X's mysteries."

A Country of Ghosts (2014)
Margaret Killjoy
"This gritty evocative novel explores the question of what an anarchist community can do to resist the assaults that are sure to come if any such social formation were to exist. Yet more important still is that this is an exciting and mysterious novel, a story of war and love in some fictional mountainous country with echoes of nineteenth century Latin America, eastern Europe, central Asia; by the time you’re done you feel you’ve gotten a glimpse into a forgotten part of our history that is nevertheless very real."

Yesterday's Kin (2014)
(Yesterday's Kin)
Nancy Kress
"Nancy Kress's one of the best science fiction writers working today."

The Three-body Problem (2014)
(Remembrance of Earth's Past, book 1)
Cixin Liu
"Immense narrative energy, The best kind of science fiction."

Piano Tide (2016)
Kathleen Dean Moore
"Piano Tide joins Ken Kesey’s Sailor Song as one of the great novels of Alaska and its convoluted coast and history."

Wolf Moon (2017)
(Luna, book 2)
Ian McDonald
"Ian McDonald is one of the very best science fiction writers in the world. His novels are fearless, brilliant wise...they illuminate and entertain spectacularly."

The Moon and the Other (2017)
John Kessel
"Brilliant and thought provoking,,,An intense experience. This may be his best book yet."

The Wall (2018)
John Lanchester
"With The Wall, John Lanchester follows his mind-boggling financial essays and his great realist novel Capital with a bold science fiction fable, a vivid, swift, chilling, and ultimately beautiful human story. All his work is of a piece-he wants his readers to see our moment better, and then do something about it."

Perihelion Summer (2019)
Greg Egan
"Egan here doubles down on climate change with his typically rigorous exploration of a cosmic accident’s effect on Earth and all its people. His characters are sharp and funny and their courageous response to the massive challenge they face works as a spur to cause us to think—why couldn’t we do as well with our own great challenge? This is what the best science fiction can do that no other genre can, and we need it now more than ever. Bravo!"

The Girls With Kaleidoscope Eyes (2019)
Howard V Hendrix
"Howard Hendrix here demonstrates his imagination, versatility, and heart, in story after story...Highly recommended."

Water Must Fall (2020)
Nick Wood
"There's extra edge to this novel that makes it especially compelling."

Strange Labour (2020)
Robert G Penner
"This is one of those powerful science fiction novels that is both intensely realistic and strikingly symbolic at one and the same time; a marvelous accomplishment, written so beautifully as to be etched on the eyeballs."

The Membranes (2021)
Chi Ta-Wei
"This rather astonishing science fiction novel is a powerful story about consciousness and connection with other people. It cuts right to the heart of our current moment by way of metaphor, but in a manner that is entirely Chi’s, and thus a new thing for English-language readers. What a surprising and exciting addition to science fiction and world literature."

Visitors to this page also looked at these authors