1 Feb 2010

The contents of the upcoming "The Best Of Kim Stanley Robinson" have been released. It contains short stories and novellas from the entirety of Stan's career, from the 1980s throughout the 2000s. It is edited by Jonathan Strahan and is expected to be released mid-2010 in the USA by Night Shade Books, in hardcover.

The 300-page volume includes 23 stories: 5 from The Planet On The Table, the novella The Blind Geometer, one novella from Escape From Kathmandu, 10 from Remaking History, 3 from The Martians, and 3 previously uncollected stories (including one never before published):

  • Venice Drowned
  • Black Air
  • Ridge Running
  • The Lucky Strike
  • Our Town
  • The Blind Geometer (previously uncollected)
  • Mother Goddess Of The World
  • Glacier
  • Remaking History
  • The Lunatics
  • Before I Wake
  • The Translator
  • Zurich
  • A History Of The Twentieth Century, With Illustrations
  • A Sensitive Dependence On Initial Conditions
  • Muir On Shasta
  • Vinland The Dream
  • Arthur Sternbach Brings The Curveball To Mars
  • Sexual Dimorphism
  • Discovering Life
  • How Science Saved The World (previously uncollected)
  • Prometheus Unbound, At Last (previously uncollected)
  • The Timpanist Of The Berlin Philharmonic, 1942 (previously unpublished)
  • Afterword by Kim Stanley Robinson

Night Shade Books page

28 Jan 2010

Popular science fiction and science blog io9 has published an interview with Kim Stanley Robinson, focusing mainly on Galileo's Dream.

Meanwhile, reviews for Galileo's Dream continue to pop up and I add them for your reading and commenting pleasure in the site.

Don't forget to check out the calendar on the left for readings and discussions involving Robinson (event tonight and tomorrow at North Carolina's Duke University)!

17 Jan 2010

More readings and discussion events with Robinson, still in the USA but this time on the East Coast: at Duke University, at Durham, North Carolina.

A discussion on Science Fiction and Ecology with Stan Robinson
Co-organizer Gerry Canavan says:
"We’re coming back for another semester of Ecology and the Humanities events, sponsored by the Franklin Humanities Institute and organized by the editors of Polygraph 22. The group’s first event of the spring will be a conversation with science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson on “Science Fiction and Ecology.” There will be a short reading for this event, the draft of the interview conducted between Stan and the Polygraph 22 editors; contact me if you’re planning to attend and would like a copy."
Thursday, January 28, 2010, 7-9 pm
John Hope Franklin Center 240, Duke University
Durham, North Carolina

Also, Robinson will be speaking on "Science, Religion, Ideology" in the event "Competing Cosmologies, Effecting Worlds: Intersections of Science and Religion" along with another science fiction author, Nisi Shawl, and two academics, Bruce Lincoln and Michael Taussig.
Friday, January 29, 2010, 10am-5pm
(KSR speech & Q&A 10:15am-11:15am)
Breedlove Room, Perkins Library, Duke University
Durham, North Carolina

Of course, if you attend any of these events, feel free to drop a comment here!

Stan Robinson wrote a Galileo-related article for Suvudu, a "multi-contributor blog with the mission of providing information, content, and free ebook downloads to fans of Science Fiction and Fantasy".

 

If the themes of Galileo's Dream interest you then you might want to see "Agora", a 2009 film by Spanish director Alejandro Amenábar (Tesis, Abre los Ojos, The Others, Mar Adentro) starring Rachel Weisz. "Agora" (picture above) deals with the life of Hypatia, Greek philosopher and astronomer in Alexandria, at around the end of the 3rd century AD, at the turning point between the Greek/Roman Antiquity and the Christianity-dominated Middle Ages, and tackles themes dear to Robinson as well: science vs religion, or perhaps empathy vs intolerance, politics, history of religions and history of civilisations, astronomy... A truly excellent film that did not get the cinema release it deserved.

Finally, Jo Walton wrote a great piece on Pacific Edge for the (rich) blog of Tor, KSR's publisher for up to that novel (1990). "Water, love, and meetings" looks on utopia and and simply concludes "we’re no closer to utopia—or if we are, then not the one Robinson was after".

"Central to Tom and to what Robinson is doing is his meditation on his eighties Californian childhood, growing up in utopia, in a free country full of opportunity, but a utopia that was grounded in exploitation in the Third World and pollution of the planet. The key sentence, as he vows to work for a better world is: “If the whole world reaches utopia, that dream California will become a precursor and my childhood is redeemed.” That’s imperialist guilt in a nutshell, but in this book with its small scale issues of water in California and softball games we’re constantly being reminded that the rest of the planet is there, in a way that’s quite unusual in anglophone SF."

9 Jan 2010

Happy new year! Galileo's Dream has now been released in the USA (in hardback)! Oddly enough, several major bookstores in the UK (online at least) seem to be out of stock since before Christmas. Was the first print so conservative on sales figures?

As reviews of the novel pop up, be they published or from random bloggers, I will be adding them to the site. Of course if you have a review and want to see it on the site you can send it to me or leave a link or post a comment in the book's page here at KSRi.

Also, Robinson will be making several appearances in Northern California for readings and discussions of his latest novel. So far three events have been organized, you can also find them on the calendar on the left.

A reading with Robinson and Terry Bisson at Moe's Books in Berkeley
on Wednesday January 13, 2010, 7:30pm
2476 Telegraph Avenue
Berkeley CA 94704

A discussion of Galileo and astronomy at the Explorit Science Center
on Saturday January 16, 2010, from 7pm
2801 Second Street, Davis, CA
Tel: (530) 756-0191
An event organized by the Davis Astronomy Club

A reading at The Avid Reader in Davis
on Friday January 22, 7:30pm
617 Second Street, Davis, CA 95616
Tel: (530) 758-4040

Pictured: Galileo and his telescope as it is in exhibit at the Institute and Museum of the History of Science in Florence, Italy.

24 Nov 2009

As hinted by last week's update, Stan already has ideas brewing for further novels, and one of them is to be set in the future, where "human beings have fled Earth in favor of new homes within the solar system". Along with his agent for the last twenty years, Stan Robinson just signed a deal for three books with the publisher Orbit. From Publishers Weekly:

Orbit's Tim Holman inked Kim Stanley Robinson to a world rights, three-book deal, with the first title in the agreement, 2312, slated to drop in 2012. Holman, v-p and publisher of the Hachette sci-fi/fantasy imprint, brokered the deal with agent Ralph Vicinanza. Robinson, who's won various genre awards including the Hugo and the Nebula, is best known for his Mars trilogy, published in the 1990s by Bantam's Spectra imprint. In the new novel, set 300 years in the future, human beings have fled Earth in favor of new homes within the solar system.

Galileo's Dream is not yet out in the USA and we know the title of Robinson's next novel already: 2312. The round number between the novel's title and its projected publishing date hints that its subject matter would of course be relevant to contemporary issues as well. Perhaps the same narrative device for linking different time periods in Galileo's Dream will be used again. What is certain is that a three-book deal does not necessarily mean a trilogy. Still, the news is that apparently Stan moves back to the subject matter of the much-praised Mars trilogy: space colonization!

Says Orbit publisher Tim Holman, on Orbit's site:

"Kim Stanley Robinson is a writer who can make the future credible, no matter how incredible it might seem. 2312 will be set in our solar system three hundred years from now; a solar system in which mankind has left Earth and found new habitats. This will be a novel for anyone curious to see what our future looks like – a grand science-fictional adventure in every sense – and I’m thrilled that Orbit will be publishing it in both the US and the UK."

Note: When Galileo's Dream was announced end of 2006, the August 2009 release date was set and respected (the title of the novel, however, did change), so the 2012 publishing date and the book description for the above is quite reliable.

Photo from the Cassini mission, depicting Saturn, Titan and other moons (via APOD).

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