KimStanleyRobinson.info

Under the celebration of the 25th anniversary of SF&F editions Spectra at Suvudu.com, Kim Stanley Robinson has reminesced over the birth of his 1992 novel Red Mars in a short online interview:

"When I first saw the photos from the Viking missions to Mars, I was hiking a lot in California’s Sierra Nevada, and one stereo-optic photo pair, of Martian cliffs, struck me (in 3-D!) as both very familiar and very strange. It occurred to me that Mars would be a great place to backpack, and I began to read more about it, and think about what that idea might mean. The first result was the story “Exploring Fossil Canyon,” and the second was the middle part of my novel Icehenge. By then the idea of telling the story of the terraforming of Mars was firmly in my mind, but I had my Three Californias Trilogy to finish, and in general did not feel ready to take on such a big project. The title Green Mars seemed very clear to me, however; too clear, given how far away I was from starting, and how many busy science fiction writer colleagues I had. So in 1984 I wrote the climbing story “Green Mars” to lay claim to the title.

By 1989 I was ready to start my Mars terraforming novel. I wrote a couple hundred pages and found my characters had barely gotten to Mars, so in conversation with my wonderful agents Patrick Delahunt and Ralph Vicinanza, I discovered I had a trilogy on my hands. At that point Ralph took over, and made the deal for the trilogy with Bantam Spectra. For this I owe immense thanks to Ralph, as always, and also to Lou Aronica, most of all; and to Jennifer Hershey, who skillfully edited all three of the Mars novels; and to Irwyn Applebaum and Nita Taublib, who were strong advocates and supporters of my work throughout my years at Spectra.

I wrote most of Red Mars in Washington DC, while caring for our infant boy David; I described the process in the poem “Two Years,” published in The Martians. The novel was finished in late 1991, after we had moved back to Davis, California. The writing of this novel was a breakthrough for me in several ways, and a special experience. I remember after sending the book in, I had a month or so to wait while Lou and Jennifer read the long manuscript, and I spent that time tiling a sun porch in our new house. At that point no one had read the book but me. There was a lot of Mars left to go, but I remember the feeling of happiness at that time very distinctly."

Interesting how everything in Robinson's career during the 1980s, from "Exploring Fossil Canyon" to Icehenge to "Green Mars", seemed to have led to the Mars novel/trilogy!

Kim Stanley Robinson's Galileo's Dream has been nominated for the 2010 John W. Campbell Memorial Award, for best science fiction novel! The full list of the nominees is:

• The Year of the Flood, Margaret Atwood (Talese)
• The Windup Girl, Paolo Bacigalupi (Night Shade)
• Transition, Iain M. Banks (Orbit)
• Makers, Cory Doctorow (Tor)
• Steal Across the Sky, Nancy Kress (Tor)
• Gardens of the Sun, Paul McAuley (Pyr)
• The City & The City, China Miéville (Del Rey)
• Yellow Blue Tibia, Adam Roberts (Gollancz)
• Galileo’s Dream, Kim Stanley Robinson (Ballantine Spectra)
• WWW: Wake, Robert J. Sawyer (Ace; Gollancz)
• The Caryatids, Bruce Sterling (Del Rey)
• Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America, Robert Charles Wilson (Tor)

The jury is a small committe consisting of Gregory Benford, Paul Di Filippo, Sheila Finch, James Gunn, Elizabeth Anne Hull, Paul Kincaid, Christopher McKitterick, Pamela Sargent, and T.A. Shippey.

The award will be presented during the Campbell Conference Awards Banquet, to be held July 16-18, 2010 at the University of Kansas.

Robinson had previously won in 1991 for Pacific Edge, and had also been nominated for The Gold Coast and Blue Mars.

The Clarion Foundation, home of the SF&F writing workshop, is organizing a Write-a-Thon that will take place from June 27 to August 7, 2010, and Kim Stanley Robinson is one of the about 70 participating writers (among such names as James Patrick Kelly and Cory Doctorow)!

What is a write-a-thon, anyway? Think charity walk-a-thon. In a walk-a-thon, volunteers agree to walk as far as they can in return for pledges from sponsors, who agree to donate to a charity, usually based on the number of miles the volunteer walks. Our Write-a-Thon works the same way, except instead of walking or running, our volunteers write with a goal in mind. In return, sponsors make donations to Clarion, sometimes based on number of words written, sometimes based on other goals, sometimes just to show support for the writer and Clarion.

Our first annual Clarion UCSD Write-a-Thon will take place at the same time as this year's Clarion Workshop. From June 27 to August 7, 2010, Clarion Write-a-Thon participants and sponsors can tap into the creative energy of the renowned six-week Clarion workshop, encourage this year's Clarion students, and help secure the financial future of Clarion, all without leaving home.

That means that anyone can participate, including you, oh reader, and that also means that you can directly sponsor Stan here!

The upcoming short story collection "The Best Of Kim Stanley Robinson" now has a cover:

Despite the very astronomical cover, it will include a variety of stories, from alternative history and earth-based futures to comedy and adventure. The hardcover title will be filled with 22 stories from the entirety of Robinson's carreer, including the novella-length "The Lucky Strike", "The Blind Geometer" and "Escape From Kathmandu", and an all-new story, "The Timpanist of the Berlin Philharmonic, 1942". It will be coming out in August and it is published by Night Shade Books.

The French SF&F news site ActuSF has published a new interview with Kim Stanley Robinson. It is available in both the original English format, and in a French translation.

Among other things, Stan discusses his writing process, space news, the writers that inspired him, and gives a concise rundown of his ideas on ecology and social justice. Highlights:

We need to reduce our impacts on the environment, and restore habitat for the rest of the animals, who have the same right to leave we do, and are part of our support system (our food, air, water, etc). This effort involves stopping the rise in human population, which is a social justice issue ; in countries where women have full human rights, population growth is right around replacement rate or a little below. So it is patriarchy and injustice that causes the growth in population, which needs to be recognized and confronted. It has to be said, always, that this is not a technical but a political issue ; capitalism is not designed to be sustainable within the closed system of Earth, and it includes most of the injustices of feudalism.

So "ecology" and "social justice" are two ways of talking about the same problem, of sustainability or permaculture, which is a word from agriculture for a truly sustainable civilization.

On his backpacking habits:

So, I think what I do is more like the French term "randonee" ( ?). We hike fairly long distances in the Sierra Nevada mountains, using passes without trails, and usually very far from other people. It’s not like what people do in the Alps, although it resembles perhaps the summer version of the "Haute Route" between Chamonix and Zermatt ; except there are no huts along the way, and very few trails or people. Having done a couple years of exploring in the Alps, I am aware that people tend to travel in the Alps and the Sierra Nevada very differently ; this is something I’d like to write about someday.

He also teases the content of his next novel, tentatively titled 2312:

I am writing a novel in which humanity is occupying the solar system and terraforming many of the planets and moons, as part of the project of dealing with climate change on Earth ; so they are terraforming Earth too.

French readers will be happy to learn that Galileo's Dream will soon be published by Presses de la Cité, which also published the Mars and Science in the Capital trilogies.

Photo of the Matterhorn (Cervin en français), on the Swiss/Italy border, by Fabrice Brun.