The Best of Kim Stanley Robinson

by Kim Stanley Robinson

Overview

Kim Stanley Robinson has been an ongoing force in the Science Fiction genre for over twenty years, with his novels (Year’s of Rice and Salt, Forty Signs of Rain) crossing over to the mainstream, and routinely appearing on the New York Times best sellers list. During the 80s and early nineties, his short fiction continued to push the boundaries of science fiction, defining the science-focused side of the science fiction genre.

Award-winning editor Jonathan Strahan worked with Kim Stanley Robinson to select the stories that make up this landmark volume. In addition to these reprints, The Best of Kim Stanley Robinson features a brand-new short story, "The Timpanist of the Berlin Philharmonic, 1942."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781597802512
Publisher:	Night Shade Books
Publication date:	08/01/2010
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	300
File size:	568 KB

About the Author

Kim Stanley Robinson is a winner of the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards. He is the author of nineteen previous books, including the bestselling Mars Trilogy and the critically acclaimed Forty Signs of Rain, Fifty Degrees Below, Sixty Days and Counting, The Years of Rice and Salt, and Antarctica—for which he was sent to the Antarctic by the U.S. National Science Foundation as part of their Antarctic Artists and Writers Program. In 2008 he was named a “Hero of the Environment” by Time magazine, and he recently joined in the Sequoia Parks Foundation’s Artists in the Back Country program. He lives in Davis, California.

Table of Contents

Venice Drowned 1

Ridge Running 19

Before I Wake 33

Black Air 43

The Lucky Strike 67

A Sensitive Dependence on Initial Conditions 99

Arthur Sternbach Brings the Curveball to Mars 109

The Blind Geometer 119

Our Town 157

Escape from Kathmandu 163

Remaking History 211

The Translator 223

Glacier 237

The Lunatics 257

Zürich 281

Vinland the Dream 291

"A History of the Twentieth Century, with Illustrations" 301

Muir on Shasta 329

Sexual Dimorphism 339

Discovering Life 353

Prometheus Unbound, At Last 361

The Timpanist of the Berlin Philharmonic, 1942 365

Afterword Kim Stanley Robinson 381

Editorial Reviews

Robinson's award-winning novels (the Mars Trilogy, Galileo's Dream) often unjustly overshadow his brilliant short stories, an error that this impressive collection will do much to correct. "Venice Drowned" chronicles Carlo Tafur's heartbreak as he saves Venice's treasures from the rising waters by selling them to foreigners. The profound and profoundly emotional "Lucky Strike" describes one man's struggle with his conscience during WWII. A family faces a variety of uncertainties at the onset of a new ice age in "Glacier," and the title character of "The Blind Geometer" works his way through a mathematical mystery that may prove lethal. Robinson is equally at home in the furthest reaches of the cosmos and among scotch-swilling NASA scientists stuck in traffic, and every story pivots around a different fascinating idea that will hit readers right in that "sense of wonder" SF sweet spot. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly