Reviewed by Bill Sheehan

If Kim Stanley Robinson had written nothing but his celebrated Mars trilogy (Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars), he would still be one of the significant figures of contemporary SF. Those three large volumes constitute an exhaustive account of the terraforming and subsequent development of a previously uninhabitable planet. Robinson’s narrative mastery, combined with his astonishing grasp of a wide range of disciplines, resulted in a work of true epic grandeur and genuine, perhaps permanent, importance.

Fortunately for all of us, Robinson has produced a large and varied body of additional fiction, which includes thematically linked novels (The California Trilogy) and some first-rate standalone books (Antarctica, The Years of Rice and Salt), together with an impressive, equally varied body of shorter fiction. Editor Jonathan Strahan has gathered much of the best of this latter group into a single comprehensive volume that belongs on the shelf of anyone with an interest in Robinson’s work, or in literate, highly developed fiction of any sort.

The Best of Kim Stanley Robinson contains twenty-two stories and novellas arranged in roughly chronological order. The opening story, “Venice Drowned,” presages the interest in weather-related catastrophes that would dominate such later novels as Forty Signs of Rain and Fifty Degrees Below. But the story offers more than merely historical interest. Robinson’s portrait of a city–and its priceless native treasures–sinking beneath the steadily rising waters that surround it is vivid and haunting, the work of a writer in full command of his considerable narrative gifts.

Not all of these early stories hold up quite as well. For example, “Black Air,” which won a 1984 World Fantasy Award, now seems more compelling as a depiction of life in the 16th century Spanish Armada than as a credible piece of dramatic fiction. And while the 1986 novella “The Blind Geometer” offers a convincing, deeply internalized portrayal of the world of the blind, it’s a bit too overwhelmed by obscure mathematical disquisitions, as in the following passage:

I had proposed an n-dimensional topological manifold,

where 1

fluctuated between one and some finite number of

dimensions, going from a curving line to a sort of

n-dimensional Swiss Cheese, if you like, depending on

the amounts of energy displayed in the area, in any of

the four “forms” of electromagnetism, gravity, or

the strong and weak interactions.

And it goes on. Mostly, though, Robinson strikes an appropriate balance between what he knows (which is considerable) and the demands of intelligible narrative.

The rest of the stories cover an impressively wide range of scenes, themes, and subject matter. A number of them (“Glacier,” “Ridge Running,” and “Muir on Shasta”) reflect the author’s long-time fascination with the physical challenges of hiking and mountaineering, and they are all powerfully evocative. “Muir on Shasta” is a particularly striking piece. Both an homage to John Muir (Scottish-born naturalist and founder of the Sierra Club) and a harrowing adventure tale, it is Robinson’s version of Muir’s account of a nearly lethal night spent on the storm-wracked slopes of Mt. Shasta. At once an empathetic portrait of a visionary spirit and a precise rendering of a harsh natural landscape, it is a remarkable piece of writing in every respect.

Two of the stories take place in the fictional universe of the Mars novels, and they could not be more different from one another. “Sexual Dimorphism” is a bleak, unsparing account of a failed relationship and its aftermath, and a meditation on the (largely) male propensity for violent responses to emotional trauma. By contrast, “Arthur Sternbach Brings the Curveball to Mars” is a lively account of a losing Martian baseball team that finds unexpected success when its perennially awkward third baseman learns to throw a breaking pitch, something never before seen under the Martian sun. This unique twist on the traditional baseball story is funny, infectious, and suffused with its author’s obvious love of the game.

Many of the remaining stories defy categorization, reflecting a variety of moods, tones, and creative impulses. “Escape from Kathmandu,” the longest story in the book, is a screwball comedy, in the course of which an Abominable Snowman named Buddha encounters former President Jimmy Carter. “Before I Wake” offers a new and original take on the world of our dreams and on the fragile nature of human consciousness. “Zurich” is a short, surreal reflection on the transient nature of experience, as well as a heartfelt farewell to the city of the title. “The Timpanist of the Berlin Philharmonic, 1942” is an account of a performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony given in honor of Adolph Hitler’s birthday. In this never before published story, music itself serves as an act of political defiance, a way of asserting the power of the spirit in the face of a soulless despotism.

If there is one subject–one grand theme–that dominates this collection, it is that of History itself. Again and again, in many forms and from many perspectives, Robinson finds his primary inspiration in the tragic history of the 20th century. He reconstructs actual events and imagines alternatives to those events. He ponders both the mysterious, chaotic forces underlying history and our imperfect, constantly evolving attempts to understand those forces. (See “A Sensitive Dependence on Initial Conditions” for a rigorous examination of these subjects.)

“Remaking History” addresses a fundamental question: Is history driven by the large acts of Great Men, or by the smaller actions of countless, nameless Others? In “A History of the Twentieth Century, with Illustrations,” a historian reviews the carnage that dominated the early years of the century while struggling to retain a belief in the essential goodness of mankind. In “The Lucky Strike,” one of the finest, most moving examples of alternate history that I know, a complex chain of circumstances prevents the atomic bomb from falling on Hiroshima. A chain of equally complex circumstances flows from this momentous non-event, changing the future–changing history–in unexpected ways.

I suspect that many of the readers who come to this book will have read some, if not most, of these stories already. And that’s perfectly okay. The best of these stories–and there are many–offer complex pleasures that are well worth encountering over and over again. It’s good to have them available in a single volume. Thanks and appreciation go to Jonathan Strahan, for assembling a collection that actually lives up to its title, and to Kim Stanley Robinson, whose humane, elegant body of work grows better–and deeper–over time.