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Favorite Kim Stanley Robinson book? (lemmy.world)
submitted 4 days ago by Zombiepirate@lemmy.world to c/sciencefiction@lemmy.world
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Kim Stanley Robinson is probably my favorite living author; I don't think anyone does setting and worldbuilding better than he does, yet his stories are largely character-driven.

Here's my favorites of his that I've read:

  • Aurora, where a generation ship is on it's way to Tau Ceti
  • The Years of Rice and Salt, an alt-history where most of Europe perishes in a great plague in the 14th century
  • Shaman, a fictional narrative about the people who painted Chauvet Cave

I love how his stories are about being optimistic in times where that's a hard thing to be. I like the focus on environmentalism and the sublime (Ministry for the Future is basically a solarpunk novel). He mostly writes hard sci-fi, which is my favorite genre, but also spins off into history and philosophy like in Galileo's Dream.

I think most people know his writing from his Red/Green/Blue Mars series, which I love, but he's done so much more than that.

So what's your favorite of his books?

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[-] k48r@lemmy.world 4 points 4 days ago

He tends toward extreme optimism about humanity which can be a nice change from constant doom but also rings hollow and feels trite sometimes, depending on my mood.

[-] JustTesting@lemmy.hogru.ch 2 points 3 days ago

Actually, the optimism in ministry for the future depressed me and made me not finish it. Even though at the time I was wanting for some optimistic climate fiction.

Here we have this huge threat to humanity and way too little is done about it. But then all the 'solutions' in the book are so unrealistic, like russians using oil equipment in antarctica to help the world… it just made me more depressed about climate change that the solutions he came up with are more fever dreams.

the first chapter was very well done though and should be required reading

[-] TribblesBestFriend@startrek.website 6 points 4 days ago

That’s not why I find Stanley hard, kind of like over optimism. My problem tend to be with the flow of his writing

[-] gazter@aussie.zone 3 points 3 days ago

There's a section in the Mars trilogy where several pages are given over to describing how a farm is laid out, with the wind coming over this rise and hitting this rock, which means a little pool of moisture forms in this particular spot, making a little ridge in the soil that shelters a bit of grass. Oh and someone blew up a space station with a missile.

this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2025
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