Kim Stanley Robinson
Books by Kim Stanley Robinson
“Hard sci-fi is normally not my favorite genre—I want a little more depth into the characters—but he does such a fantastic job of looking at the different ideologies that you would see if you were creating a settlement on a new planet. So some of characters are settlers who are excited about terraforming and they want to turn Mars into a Green Mars—that’s where the name comes from. They want to make it as habitable as possible, as fast as possible. At the same time, you have other characters, geologists in particular, who want to preserve the pristine Martian environment, the Red Mars. They create these political factions. There is even political violence about this. And this is happening at the same time as they are all trying to figure out the actual politics of, ‘How do we govern ourselves? Are we part of Earth? Do we want to be independent?’” Read more...
The Best Sci Fi Books on Space Settlement
Erika Nesvold, Physicist
Those who enjoyed Dune primarily for its sense of place—those searing days of relentless heat, the shifting sands, the blinding dust storms—may be interested in Kim Stanley Robinson’s Red Mars, the first of his acclaimed Mars trilogy, in which an international expedition lands on the cold and barren planet with ambitious plans to establish new human colonies there. Red Mars is much more of a hard science fiction book, greatly taken up with the practicalities of terraforming—there are diagrams—but if you like your political wrangling and acts of war interspersed with planetary physics, this is the book for you. (If so, I think you will also enjoy this impressive visualisation of the Arrakis climate, as modelled by research scientists from the data Herbert provides in Dune.)
From our article Books like Dune
“What he finally paints as the outcome is interesting. It’s a really re-wilded world, with a much slower pace. People use much less energy. I have some questions about whether the planet will accept that, whether politics will allow that to happen, but I think it’s worth a read for anyone really.” Read more...
Azeem Azhar, Technologist
Aurora
by Kim Stanley Robinson
Despite its deliberate dismantling of so many of science fiction’s core assumptions, Aurora is simultaneously a celebration of the possibilities of both science fiction and the spirit of human endeavour that animates so much of it
Interviews where books by Kim Stanley Robinson were recommended
The Best Books for Long-Term Thinking, recommended by Roman Krznaric
We would all love our economic and political systems to be less short-termist in approach, but how do we set about encouraging a more long-term ethos? Cultural thinker Roman Krznaric, author of The Good Ancestor, recommends five books to get us thinking about the long term, up to ten millennia in the future.
The Best Climate Change Novels, recommended by James Bradley
The best fiction allows us to hold ideas in our heads about time and space and causality and connection that are difficult to articulate in other ways, argues the Australian author James Bradley. It helps its readers engage with dangers and possibilities that are at the very edge of imagination
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Atlas of AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence
by Kate Crawford -
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The Planet Remade
by Oliver Morton -
3
Learning by Doing: The Real Connection between Innovation, Wages, and Wealth
by James Bessen -
4
The Ministry for the Future: A Novel
by Kim Stanley Robinson -
5
How Solar Energy Became Cheap: A Model for Low-Carbon Innovation
by Gregory F. Nemet
The Best Books on Tech, recommended by Azeem Azhar
The Best Books on Tech, recommended by Azeem Azhar
Technology is already running our lives and unless regulations are updated to keep up, it could upend our way of life completely, warns Azeem Azhar, entrepreneur, investor, and creator of the Exponential View newsletter. Here, he recommends his five top tech books to help us navigate the near future, from a technical tome to a science fiction novel.
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The Sixth Extinction
by Elizabeth Kolbert -
2
Frankissstein: A Novel
by Jeanette Winterson -
3
The Ministry for the Future: A Novel
by Kim Stanley Robinson -
4
Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World
by Jason Hickel -
5
Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming
by Paul Hawken (editor)
The best books on Global Challenges, recommended by Rowan Hooper
The best books on Global Challenges, recommended by Rowan Hooper
Which are the most pressing global challenges we face today? In How to Spend a Trillion Dollars Rowan Hooper, a senior editor at the New Scientist, makes the case for the ones he considers the most urgent. Here, he recommends books that help illuminate some of those challenges—including the amazing resource that is ‘Project Drawdown’.
The Best Sci Fi Books on Space Settlement, recommended by Erika Nesvold
We look to the stars and imagine a new home for humanity, an escape from the troubles that plague us here on Earth, but as astrophysicist Erika Nesvold points out, many of our problems will join us on our voyage. Here, she selects five science fiction books that illuminate the challenges and possible conflicts we’ll face if we head for this new frontier.