When I went to Kim Stanley Robinson's Kaffeeklatch at WorldCon last year, he talked a bit about his recent book, Galileo's Dream. He said that he'd got to a stage in writing where it was a hard slog, and not enjoyable any more - but then he started writing under a canopy in his garden, and being outdoors in pleasant surroundings made it fun again. He said that Galileo's Dream had been written like this, and he'd had a lot of fun doing it.
It shows in the writing - and you can also see how much KSR likes Galileo as a character.
He's irrascible and stubborn and annoying - and fascinating and fun to be around too. And a genius, of course.
The Renaissance isn't a period I ever liked overmuch - I usually much prefer the Middle Ages - but this book takes you right inside the workings of Renaissance Italy, with Galileo's struggles to find a new sponsor (the authorities in Venice not being so generous as he had anticipated when he showed them his telescope), and also right into the household of Galileo, with the students and his mistress and his poverty stricken brother and the problem of what to do with his little girls when they grow up. And all the time, he's working on mathematical problems, and spending sleepless nights observing Jupiter and the four moons. I learnt a huge amount, quite painlessly, about the way the Vatican worked, and the arguments between the different scientists and theologians, and Galileo's relationship with his daughters who he sent off to be Poor Clare nuns. He even includes actual letters and documents from the time - he must have done a huge amount of research.
Being Kim Stanley Robinson, of course, this is not a straight biography (though I think I would have read it if it was). A mysterious stranger gives Galileo the first idea to experiment with telescopes (and there isn't even a name for them yet), and at various times in the book he is whisked away to the very moons of Jupiter that he is observing, and into the far future, where he is acclaimed as "the first scientist" and drawn into the politics of the four moons. All the technology is seen from Galileo's point of view, and has to be explained to him in terms a Renaissance man will understand, but he grasps the basics very quickly, and hungers to know more.
Readers of other KSR books will recognise certain things which also appear there - like the characters with extreme longevity, for instance. Some of them have managed to wangle their way into Galileo's household as servants, where they are protecting him as best they can, while the mysterious stranger from the opening scene is trying to manipulate Galileo's life in a way that will best serve his needs in the far future.
So, this was great fun, and I learned a lot - and I'm going to be reading more about Renaissance history in future because of this book.
Showing posts with label Kim Stanley Robinson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kim Stanley Robinson. Show all posts
Saturday, 16 May 2015
Thursday, 30 April 2015
The Memory of Whiteness
I'm slowly working my way through all the Kim Stanley Robinson titles I can find.
This one starts off with a mystery. Someone wants to kill the Master of Holywelkin's Orchestra, an 11 metre high conglomeration of instruments played by the Master from a control room half way up the tower. The Orchestra is about to go on a Grand Tour of the solar system from its home on Pluto, and the action moves slowly inwards from world to world.
But it's not just about a murder plot - the creator of the Orchestra, Holywelkin, was also a genius mathemetician who transformed physics and made it possible for all the little scattered colonies of the solar system to exist, so the story is also about the nature of reality, and the importance of music.
I think my favourite character was the journalist who wrote for a musical magazine, who becomes part of the entourage of the Orchestra and a friend of the Master. He also becomes part of the security efforts to keep the Master safe, on various worlds.
This one starts off with a mystery. Someone wants to kill the Master of Holywelkin's Orchestra, an 11 metre high conglomeration of instruments played by the Master from a control room half way up the tower. The Orchestra is about to go on a Grand Tour of the solar system from its home on Pluto, and the action moves slowly inwards from world to world.
But it's not just about a murder plot - the creator of the Orchestra, Holywelkin, was also a genius mathemetician who transformed physics and made it possible for all the little scattered colonies of the solar system to exist, so the story is also about the nature of reality, and the importance of music.
I think my favourite character was the journalist who wrote for a musical magazine, who becomes part of the entourage of the Orchestra and a friend of the Master. He also becomes part of the security efforts to keep the Master safe, on various worlds.
Tuesday, 17 February 2015
Mars - The First Hundred
This is very exciting - the first hundred people have been chosen from more than 200,000 applicants, who will be training over the next ten years to go to Mars.
By co-incidence, I've been reading a book of essays about Kim Stanley Robinson recently - Kim Stanley Robinson Maps the Unimaginable - in which various scholars discuss his Mars trilogy in some depth (but oddly, without once mentioning the word Demimonde, which is the half underground colony within a colony where some of the alternative economic ideas are worked out). That's Red Mars, Green Mars and Blue Mars, with an associated book of short stories called The Martians. In these books, the first Mars mission sends one hundred colonists - the First Hundred - who play a huge role in the way Mars is shaped over the next two hundred or so years. In KSR's future, the team was led by the Americans and the Russians (having been written towards the end of the Cold War), with other nationalities like Hiroko, the Japanese food specialist who becomes a mystic who leads a breakaway group - and a stowaway known as Coyote, after the Native American trickster god.
The Guardian has a list of the "top ten" who were chosen. They come from all over the world, including a Japanese lady who wants to open the first sushi bar on Mars! They are physicists and engineers and astronomers, a specialist in sustainable food systems and software developers. Five of them come from the UK, and fifty men and fifty women were chosen. Unlike Kim Stanley Robinson's First Hundred, though, who all went on the same flight, four astronauts will be sent at a time until there are 40 people living on Mars. Once there, they'll never be able to come back.
[Edited to add: On a second look at the news, it looks as if they might not make it off the ground, but at least they're trying!}
By co-incidence, I've been reading a book of essays about Kim Stanley Robinson recently - Kim Stanley Robinson Maps the Unimaginable - in which various scholars discuss his Mars trilogy in some depth (but oddly, without once mentioning the word Demimonde, which is the half underground colony within a colony where some of the alternative economic ideas are worked out). That's Red Mars, Green Mars and Blue Mars, with an associated book of short stories called The Martians. In these books, the first Mars mission sends one hundred colonists - the First Hundred - who play a huge role in the way Mars is shaped over the next two hundred or so years. In KSR's future, the team was led by the Americans and the Russians (having been written towards the end of the Cold War), with other nationalities like Hiroko, the Japanese food specialist who becomes a mystic who leads a breakaway group - and a stowaway known as Coyote, after the Native American trickster god.
The Guardian has a list of the "top ten" who were chosen. They come from all over the world, including a Japanese lady who wants to open the first sushi bar on Mars! They are physicists and engineers and astronomers, a specialist in sustainable food systems and software developers. Five of them come from the UK, and fifty men and fifty women were chosen. Unlike Kim Stanley Robinson's First Hundred, though, who all went on the same flight, four astronauts will be sent at a time until there are 40 people living on Mars. Once there, they'll never be able to come back.
[Edited to add: On a second look at the news, it looks as if they might not make it off the ground, but at least they're trying!}
Thursday, 4 September 2014
Kaffeeklatches and Literary Beers
I don't think this had been thought of back in 1987, but it's certainly a thing now - you could sign up at the information desk the day before to have coffee in a small group with the author of your choice, or in the case of a literary beer, hang out at the bar with the author of your choice. I put my name down for Kim Stanley Robinson - I greatly admire his work, but then I had a bit of a panic because I haven't actually read any of his books for long enough that the details had got a bit fuzzy. I wondered if I should do some homework to get up to speed.
As it happened, none of that was needed. It was a very relaxed affair, with people chatting around a table - and there were so many of these scheduled that there were two tables going at the same time in the London Suite where we were. It was also quite interesting that everyone around the table, as they introduced themselves, was either a writer, aspiring writer or computer programmer!
So we talked about the inadvisability of basing major characters in your book on members of your own family, as KSR did in Forty Signs of Rain. The toddler is heavily based on both his own sons, and for the later books he shifted the focus from that family to another character because it was a bit awkward at home.
He also talked about the new lease of writing life he's got from writing outdoors, which he's been doing for five or six years now. Of course, he lives in California, rather than Wales, and has a tarpaulin to shelter under if it rains, and bird feeders with humming birds visiting them right by where he's sitting. He wrote Galileo's Dream like that, and it had been the most enjoyable writing experience he'd had for years, which made me happy because I'd just bought it at the dealers' hall.
Later, I bought Kim Stanley Robinson Maps the Unimaginable, critical essays edited by William J Burling and published by McFarland, who had a stand in the dealers' hall with a range of scholarly works about SF authors and subjects. I was tempted by several there, but they weren't cheap. I think I made a good choice with this one, though.
As it happened, none of that was needed. It was a very relaxed affair, with people chatting around a table - and there were so many of these scheduled that there were two tables going at the same time in the London Suite where we were. It was also quite interesting that everyone around the table, as they introduced themselves, was either a writer, aspiring writer or computer programmer!
So we talked about the inadvisability of basing major characters in your book on members of your own family, as KSR did in Forty Signs of Rain. The toddler is heavily based on both his own sons, and for the later books he shifted the focus from that family to another character because it was a bit awkward at home.
He also talked about the new lease of writing life he's got from writing outdoors, which he's been doing for five or six years now. Of course, he lives in California, rather than Wales, and has a tarpaulin to shelter under if it rains, and bird feeders with humming birds visiting them right by where he's sitting. He wrote Galileo's Dream like that, and it had been the most enjoyable writing experience he'd had for years, which made me happy because I'd just bought it at the dealers' hall.
Later, I bought Kim Stanley Robinson Maps the Unimaginable, critical essays edited by William J Burling and published by McFarland, who had a stand in the dealers' hall with a range of scholarly works about SF authors and subjects. I was tempted by several there, but they weren't cheap. I think I made a good choice with this one, though.
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