The Novels of Kim Stanely Robinson

Last updated August 12, 1997

Kim Stanley Robinson is yet another great California science fiction writer (he lives in Davis, California). He is more poetic than the other California SF writers (David Brin, Greg Bear, and Greg Benford) probably because he is not an engineer by training. This is no slam on engineers (I'm one) but there is plenty of room for beauty in language in science fiction, even though it is rare.

Kim Stanley Robinson has staked out an interesting territory in the field of science fiction. Basically Robinson writes about the future of society, much like the great Robert Heinline. I think very highly of Kim Robinson. His Mars Trilogy ranks with the finest science fiction writen (despite its flaws).

Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars

For some reason, Robinson decided to try and write a trilogy of novels that would tell the story of the colonization and terra forming of our neighbor planet Mars. These stories are breathtaking in their scope, in the depth of knowledge revealed about Mars, and in the plausibility of the future he describes. In many respects, this is a work of genius.

But the first two novels are flawed. In the first two novels, each chapter continues a roughly sequential narrative by telling the story of a different person. Since each chapter has a different narrator and a different focus, the result is somewhat confusing and very irritating. I understand that Robinson is trying to tell a big story, but he has a lot of space to work with (the total length of the three books together is over 1500 pages). His decision to use different people for each chapter makes the over-all novel wildly uneven. I wish he had stayed with just a few people (like three or four) and told their stories over time. I wish he hadn't killed off his most interesting characters at the end of the first book. I wish he would spend more time dealing with how Earth is reacting to and part of the terraforming of Mars.

There is no question that some of the chapters in both books are absolutely fascinating and represent writing of the highest order. But I fail to see why Robinson has turned his back on the conventions of the novel to tell this story.

Blue Mars

Blue Mars, published in 1996, is a magnificent novel and rather different from the first two. Unlike the first two novels, Blue Mars concentrates on just a few characters (Sax, Nirgal, Ann, Nadia, Michael, Maya, and Zo). Also, unlike the first two, Blue Mars doesn't keep one character per chapter, we return to several characters over the course of the book. Lastly, Blue Mars shows Mars in the context of the solar system as a whole. We learn more about events on the Earth, and on other inhabited worlds and moons. In many ways, Blue Mars is a conventional novel, in structure, and I think it works better as a result.

Considered as a novel, it is more a work of political philosophy than a story with drama. Readers who like a strong plot to carry them through a book will not like this novel at all. Fundamentally, the conflict in the book is how mankind should live with the environment. There is no violence, but a lot of thought; no battleships, but a lot of terraforming. This book reminded me a great deal of Pacific Edge (which I talk about below). I liked Pacific Edge a great deal but Blue Mars goes way beyond Pacific Edge in the depth of Robinson's political thinking.

I do have a few criticisms of Blue Mars. First, the book assumes absolute knowledge of the previous two books. There is no index of main characters, no summary of what has gone before, in short, no concession to readers with incomplete memories of the first two books. No doubt this book took a great deal of effort to make, but Robinson should have gone the extra mile and made it easier for his readers to understand this, the final novel in the series. Second, Robinson's choices of events to describe seems questionable. Specifically the chapter on Nirgal's crater seems fairly pointless. What was the point to this chapter? That terraforming is hard work? That biological systems are remarkably complex? I rather think that this idea has penetrated the reader's head by this point in the series. A third weakness revolves around Nirgal himself. He is one of the main characters, yet he seems essentially implausible. His behavior in his relations with women and his relations to the new Mars government are both unbelievable. I could go into it, but won't.

Conclusions

I think that these three novels will be considered: A) the high point in Kim Stanley Robinson's career B) the most realistic novels about the future of Mars ever published and C) the foundation of a new political philosophy that will one day challenge modern capitalism. Guess (A) is fairly straight forward, these three books are monumental in scope and in depth of research displayed. I find it hard to believe that Robinson can top this series. Guess (B) is easy, I doubt that anyone will even try and do a terraforming Mars novel for at least the next 15 years. Guess (C) is iffy. It really depends on whether people actually read these novels in any numbers. I hope people do read these novels and I hope that humans do go to Mars and start trying to make it habitable. More planets for humanity!

The Gold Coast, Pacific Edge

These novels (along with The Wild Shore which I haven't read) are collectively known as the "Orange County Novels". They don't share characters in common, instead they share a common landscape, namely Orange County California. Although Gold Coast is not a super novel, Pacific Edge is. Pacific Edge is the finest utopia novel I have ever read. Why? Because it is completely plausible, and it has real conflicts, and it has a great love story.

The average utopia novel has no internal conflict and is completely implausible. Love stories are good thing in general and this serves to give a human element to the (sometimes) curious interactions of the people living in, what I would call, an ideal society. Compared to Blue Mars, Pacific Edge is not quite as well thought out. On the other hand, it is closer to home and more practicle.

Other Robinson Books

• The Memory of Whiteness. I read this a number of years ago when it was first published and all I remember now is a story about music and light. I think it was a good book.
• Escape from Kathmandu. An interesting group of four stories that move from the comic to the near tragic. Not really science fiction, more like modern fiction, as practiced by G. G. Marquez.
• Icehenge. A curious story about the discovery of a henge-like structure on Pluto. My memory of this novel is poor.

You can visit this small article about Robinson right here.

Next author: Vernor Vinge