Catching up with everything that happened this year — and in many cases stuff from earlier too.
The Arctic and the Antarctic
We are counting down to the release of Kim Stanley Robinson’s next book, The Best Journey in the World: An Antarctic Story, in December.
LitHub has included it in its most anticipated books of the second half of the year.
KSR visited the continent of Antarctica back in 1995 as part of an the annual Antarctic Artists and Writers Program by the NSF, resulting in the 1997 novel Antarctica; he visited again in 2016. The approximately seventy alumni of the program formed the Antarctic Artists and Writers Collective, launched in 2020. After being defunded by the first Trump administration, the program is run since 2022 as Polar STREAM, an NSF-funded project at Oregon State University.
Meanwhile, KSR is busy thinking about his next novel, to be set in the Arctic. In the summer, he visited Brittany, France for research: Sam Matey-Coste from The Weekly Anthropocene reports on their visit to an Arctic research vessel, the Tara Polar Station, at Lorient and neolithic menhirs at Carnac! Images from Sam:
Interviews
The Weekly Anthropocene
Speaking of which: Sam’s third interview with KSR was earlier this year: Interview: Kim Stanley Robinson, Science Fiction Maestro and Utopian, in 2026 (19/Jan/2026)
An expansive interview, richly illustrated with additional info and context and links. This particular bit speaks to our current moment:
When you’re in the heart of the empire, you’re strangely provincial because you don’t know the rest of the world very well.
But even in America, the Trump administration is unpopular. A majority of the people are saying this isn’t what our country is about. And presumably with a wicked political fight to come, we will take back the vision of an America that is made up of immigrants from across the world.
What happens if you bring together everyone in one country? A sense that we all made it together, coming from everywhere else. If you keep to the oft-announced American ideals of democracy, you’ve got an America you can be proud of. Everywhere there are the problems of these forces, and you don’t want to, especially as an American, give up on America.
Sierra Peaks
Here is something different: KSR passionately talking about his beloved Sierras, drawing from personal experience as shown in his High Sierra book, at the banquet of the Sierra Peaks Section, the Angeles Section of the Sierra Club (1/Feb/2026):
Zero
KSR has been on Bloomberg’s Zero podcast with Akshat Rathi several times. The last one was recorded during the COP30 in Brazil in November 2025 (published 30/Dec/2025): How to Imagine a Better Future — published as an article as Abundance or Adequacy? The Search for Better Climate Futures (paywall)
This one is a highlight: what is the purpose of our existence, what is the story we tell ourselves that give meaning to our lives, how all that relates to climate change and our moment in history?
Ursula K. Le Guin
In Your Spare Time: blog articles written by UKL read and commented on by writers and others.
This one from 2011 by KSR: “Unfacts Concerning the Google (Un)Settlement”: part 1 and part 2 (YouTube)
See the wikipedia page on the 2005-2015 Google Books litigation. This is related to the 2014 Amazon-Hachette litigation, where KSR (and UKL) were among the 900 writers that had signed a letter in support of Hachette. A lot has happened since; now writers not only face discriminatory practices from large private conglomerates, they also face competition from AI-written books.
Grüne Erde
Green Earth was published translated in German in 2026. Publisher Carcosa Verlag put the entirety of the first part/volume, the ten chapters of Forty Signs of Rain, online for free! Also included are KSR’s original introduction to the German edition and his introduction to Green Earth (both in German).
Two interviews with German media that are particularly stand-outs:
2/Jul/2026 at MetropolCon Berlin: KSR discussed the German edition of his Green Earth trilogy with publisher Hannes Riffel, translator Barbara Slawig and science journalist Bettina Wurche, moderated by anti-dystopian writer Isabella Hermann.
4/Jan/2026: Future Histories Lab podcast: rich discussion on utopian writing, literary techniques, intellectual currents and current state of affairs (YouTube).
Plus, since we are on the German section of this post, KSR was one of the authors quoted in the German magazine phantastisch #62 (2016), in the feature “Lang lebe Utopia!?” (“Long live Utopia!?”) by Sonja Stöhr.
Le ministère pour le futur
16/Dec/2025: online conference with KSR at the LUMA Arles conference on the realities of science fiction (YouTube)
7/Jun/2026: written interview in French at Le Grand Continent
New Scientist: Red Mars
The New Scientist book club read Red Mars and KSR offered his comments:
27/Mar/2026 written interview: “Author of Red Mars calls ‘bullshit’ on emigrating to the planet”
It’s not a blueprint or a prophecy or a technical evaluation, it’s a novel. So what I like most about it are its characters and its plot. […]
Nadia and Maya, John and Frank, Sax and Ann, Michel and Hiroko and Arkady, Phyllis and Vlad and Ursula and Spencer and all the other secondary characters, they all stepped off the page and into my head. None of them are anything like me, and I don’t know where they came from. They just showed up and told me their stories. What a gift! And what a story – not just their interpersonal relationships, but also their political interactions with Earth and their terraforming work, and their lives through the many decades, all weaving together to become history, or, as my beloved teacher Fredric Jameson once put it, to History.
25/Apr/2026 video interview: Author Kim Stanley Robinson revisits his vision of life on Mars (YouTube)
+a review of sorts (“Why Kim Stanley Robinson’s Red Mars is still a classic, 34 years on”)+ feedback from the Book Club (“mostly great, with a few quibbles”) + excerpt from Red Mars (the beginning)+ CultureLab podcast (where Emily H. Wilson recommends many works of science fiction)
Everyday Anarchism
KSR has had some great discussions with Graham Culbertson on many of his books on this podcast. This time they discussed Aurora (25/Feb/2026).
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
KSR was the judge in a short fiction story contest for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, “Write Before Midnight”. The result? A seven-story tie.
16/Jan/2026: related to this, the Bulleting organized a panel with KSR, David Harrington (Kronos Quartet), Lovely Umayam (artist) and Alexandra Bell (from the Bulletin): Art + Science: Harnessing the Power of Art and Storytelling (YouTube).
Sustainability Now!
30/Aug/2026: podcast conversation on: Speculations on Conjunctural Futures: What Might We Expect, What Must We Do? (KSQD radio)
California Voices
15/Mar/2026: podcast conversation: A Writer for the Future (Libsyn)
Making Democracy Interesting
KSR participated in a webinar organized by the Harvard Kennedy School’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation: Making Democracy Interesting: Tips from TV, Podcasts, Science Fiction, and Online Creators (22/Jan/2026)
Web for Interdisciplinary Research and Expertise
And finally a find from all the way back from 2016, an interview for the magazine of the Swiss think tank W.I.R.E., in its #15, “Transforming Transport“: “We’ll never leave earth“.
We can only ever think of Mars as a mirror of the world. […] How would we live? How would we organise ourselves? Are there alternatives? Because that’s more and more difficult to imagine in our world, I extrapolate the question into space: how would we organise ourselves on Mars, for example? Now, I assume that we would try to develop an alternative economic system on Mars. Because what drives us here on Earth also digs our graves: capitalism. We are destroying our resources with our growth logic. We would therefore need an economic system that allows everyone to share and that protects natural resources. And if you change the economic system, you would also have to change the education system. And if you change the schools, you automatically change a society’s values and norms.
Solar Guerrilla
A 2019 exhibition in the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, “Solar Guerrilla: Constructive Responses to Climate Change”, featured among others KSR. The Jerusalem Post includes some quotes from the resulting book.
Two short stories
Exploring Location X
Popular Science ran a “Dispatches from the Future” feature in July 2015 with 10 short stories from science fiction authors. KSR’s very short story, “Exploring Location X”, can be read here (offline, archived). Think hiking and Sierra Nevada.
Ein Hundert
The short story “One Hundred” was published exclusively in German for the weekly magazine of Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ), Germany, in August 2020. It can be read here (subscription needed).
SZ asked KSR to write them a story how the world will be in 100 years. It is set in 2120 and deals with cooperatives and sustainable agriculture. Blogger Reißwolf kindly provided a review in English.
KSR recommends
Some recent KSR recommendations in the form of introductions he has written or blurbs he has provided.
Gary Snyder: Essential Prose
KSR wrote the introduction to a Library of America edition of Gary Snyder, the “poet laureate of Deep Ecology”. More about it here.
Fritz Heidorn: Kurz vor ewig: Kosmologie und Science-Fiction
KSR wrote the introduction to this 2016 collection of essays by Fritz Heidorn (“Just Before Eternity: Cosmology and Science Fiction”). KSR and Heidorn previously collaborated on a collection of texts and KSR short story translations in German (first pages available here).
Christiaan De Beukelaer: Trade winds
KSR has written about sail ships making a comeback in many of his novels, notably Pacific Edge and The Ministry for the Future. KSR recommends this book, subtitled “A voyage to a sustainable future for shipping” (Manchester University Press).
Annalee Newitz: The Terraformers
KSR recommends this novel, with the Terraforming story at a galactic scale while retaining a sense of community and positive outlook. See at Newitz’s site. She mentions Robinson in this article on anti-apocalyptic fiction.
Gary Marcus on AI
A simple recommendation of this substack that has a more grounded take on the latest developments on AI.
Patrick Delahunt
Locus Mag reports that Patrick Delahunt passed away in December 2025. He was the original publishing agent for KSR in the 1970s until he retired in the late 1980s. He made sure to find new agents for his clients before retiring, as recollected by KSR in this 1998 interview, which is how KSR ended up with Ralph Vicinanza (who sadly also died in 2010).
Odds & ends
Things I missed previously or not fitting in any other category:
- KSR in the honorary committee to an expansion of the Jesup Memorial Library, Bar Harbor, Maine, 2017-2026
- KSR introduced Chip Delaney in the 2021 Arthur C. Clarke Foundation’s Unleash Imagination event, where he received the Imagination in Service to Society Award (YouTube). KSR first met Delaney at the 1975 Clarion writers’ workshop; KSR got the same award in 2017.
- KSR expressed support for Gustavo Petro for his election as President of Colombia in 2022. Petro did get elected and Colombia hosted the Santa Marta Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels in 2026. He was not re-elected in 2026.
- KSR mentioned in Gary Snyder’s remembrance of Lawrence Ferlinghetti upon his death in 2021 (Alta Online).
- From 2007: KSR’s novella Green Mars was included in the CD Library sent to Mars on the Phoenix Mars Lander! “The idea that I’m part of the first library on Mars is really a fulfilling moment,” Robinson said to Space.com.
