Combining dazzling speculation with a profoundly humanist vision, Kim
Stanley Robinson is known as not only the most literary but also the
most progressive (read "radical") of today's top rank SF authors. His
bestselling Mars Trilogy tells the epic story of the future
colonization of the red planet, and the revolution that inevitably
follows. The Years of Rice and Salt is based on a devastatingly simple
idea: If the medieval plague had wiped out all of Europe, what would our
world look like today? His novel Galileo's Dream is a stunning
combination of historical drama and far-flung space opera, in which the
ten dimensions of the universe itself are rewoven to ensnare history's
most notorious torturers.
"The Lucky Strike," the classic and controversial story Robinson has
chosen for PM's Outspoken Authors series, begins on a lonely Pacific
island, where a crew of untested men are about to take off in an untried
aircraft with a deadly payload that will change our world forever. Until
something goes wonderfully wrong ...
Plus: "A Sensitive Dependence on Initial Conditions," in which
Robinson dramatically deconstructs "alternate history" to explore what
might have been if things had gone differently over Hiroshima that day.
As with all Outspoken Author books, there is a deep interview and
autobiography: at length, in-depth, no-holds-barred, and all-bets-off:
an extended tour though the mind and work, the history and politics of
our Outspoken Author. Surprises are promised.
