The best science-fiction nonfiction novel I've ever read. --Jonathan Lethem

If I could get policymakers, and citizens, everywhere to read just one book this year, it would be Kim Stanley Robinson's The Ministry for the Future. --Ezra Klein (Vox)

The Ministry for the Future is a masterpiece of the imagination, using fictional eyewitness accounts to tell the story of how climate change will affect us all. Its setting is not a desolate, postapocalyptic world, but a future that is almost upon us. Chosen by Barack Obama as one of his favorite books of the year, this extraordinary novel from visionary science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson will change the way you think about the climate crisis.

One hopes that this book is read widely--that Robinson's audience, already large, grows by an order of magnitude. Because the point of his books is to fire the imagination.―New York Review of Books

If there's any book that hit me hard this year, it was Kim Stanley Robinson's The Ministry for the Future, a sweeping epic about climate change and humanity's efforts to try and turn the tide before it's too late. ―Polygon (Best of the Year)

Masterly. --New Yorker

[The Ministry for the Future] struck like a mallet hitting a gong, reverberating through the year ... it's terrifying, unrelenting, but ultimately hopeful. Robinson is the SF writer of my lifetime, and this stands as some of his best work. It's my book of the year. --Locus

Science-fiction visionary Kim Stanley Robinson makes the case for quantitative easing our way out of planetary doom. ―Bloomberg Green

A staggering book . . . the best novel on the colonization of Mars that has ever been written.--Arthur C. Clarke

For centuries, the barren, desolate landscape of the red planet has beckoned to humankind. Now a group of one hundred colonists begins a mission whose ultimate goal is to transform Mars into a more Earthlike planet. They will place giant satellite mirrors in Martian orbit to reflect light onto its surface. Black dust sprinkled on the polar caps will capture warmth and melt the ice. And massive tunnels drilled into the mantle will create stupendous vents of hot gases. But despite these ambitious goals, there are some who would fight to the death to prevent Mars from ever being changed.

A sublime and radically original exploration of the Sierra Nevadas, the best mountains on Earth for hiking and camping, from New York Times bestselling novelist Kim Stanley Robinson (Bill McKibben, Gary Snyder).

Over the course of a vivid and dramatic narrative, Robinson describes the geological forces that shaped the Sierras and the history of its exploration, going back to the indigenous peoples who made it home and whose traces can still be found today. He celebrates the people whose ideas and actions protected the High Sierra for future generations. He describes uniquely beautiful hikes and the trails to be avoided. Robinson's own life-altering events, defining relationships, and unforgettable adventures form the narrative's spine. And he illuminates the human communion with the wild and with the sublime, including the personal growth that only seems to come from time spent outdoors.

The High Sierra is a gorgeous, absorbing immersion in a place, born out of a desire to understand and share one of the greatest rapture-inducing experiences our planet offers. Packed with maps, gear advice, more than 100 breathtaking photos, and much more, it will inspire veteran hikers, casual walkers, and travel readers to prepare for a magnificent adventure.

One of the major sagas of the [latest] generation in science fiction.--Chicago Sun-Times

Nearly a generation has passed since the first pioneers landed on Mars, and its transformation to an Earthlike planet is under way. But not everyone wants to see the process through. The methods are opposed by those determined to preserve their home planet's hostile, barren beauty. Led by the first generation of children born on Mars, these rebels are soon joined by a handful of the original settlers. Against this cosmic backdrop, passions, partnerships, and rivalries explode in a story as spectacular as the planet itself.

A thoughtful, magisterial alternate history from one of science fiction's most important writers.--The New York Times Book Review

It is the fourteenth century and one of the most apocalyptic events in human history is set to occur--the coming of the Black Death. History teaches us that a third of Europe's population was destroyed. But what if the plague had killed 99 percent of the population instead? How would the world have changed? The Years of Rice and Salt is a look at the history that could have been--one that stretches across centuries, sees dynasties and nations rise and crumble, and spans horrible famine and magnificent innovation.

Through the eyes of soldiers and kings, explorers and philosophers, inventors and exiles, renowned storyteller Kim Stanley Robinson navigates a world where Buddhism and Islam are the most influential and practiced religions, while Christianity is a mere historical footnote. Probing the most profound questions as only he can, Robinson shines his extraordinary light on the place of religion, culture, power--and even love--in this bold new world.

As the sea levels rose, every street became a canal. Every skyscraper an island. For the residents of one apartment building in Madison Square, however, New York in the year 2140 is far from a drowned city.

There is the market trader, who finds opportunities where others find trouble. There is the detective, whose work will never disappear -- along with the lawyers, of course.

There is the internet star, beloved by millions for her airship adventures, and the building's manager, quietly respected for his attention to detail. Then there are two boys who don't live there, but have no other home -- and who are more important to its future than anyone might imagine.

Lastly there are the coders, temporary residents on the roof, whose disappearance triggers a sequence of events that threatens the existence of all -- and even the long-hidden foundations on which the city rests.

The best science-fiction nonfiction novel I've ever read. --Jonathan Lethem

If I could get policymakers, and citizens, everywhere to read just one book this year, it would be Kim Stanley Robinson's The Ministry for the Future. --Ezra Klein (Vox)

The Ministry for the Future is a masterpiece of the imagination, using fictional eyewitness accounts to tell the story of how climate change will affect us all. Its setting is not a desolate, postapocalyptic world, but a future that is almost upon us. Chosen by Barack Obama as one of his favorite books of the year, this extraordinary novel from visionary science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson will change the way you think about the climate crisis.

One hopes that this book is read widely--that Robinson's audience, already large, grows by an order of magnitude. Because the point of his books is to fire the imagination.―New York Review of Books

If there's any book that hit me hard this year, it was Kim Stanley Robinson's The Ministry for the Future, a sweeping epic about climate change and humanity's efforts to try and turn the tide before it's too late. ―Polygon (Best of the Year)

Masterly. --New Yorker

[The Ministry for the Future] struck like a mallet hitting a gong, reverberating through the year ... it's terrifying, unrelenting, but ultimately hopeful. Robinson is the SF writer of my lifetime, and this stands as some of his best work. It's my book of the year. --Locus

Science-fiction visionary Kim Stanley Robinson makes the case for quantitative easing our way out of planetary doom. ―Bloomberg Green

Brilliantly imagined and beautifully told, it is the work of a writer at the height of his powers.

Our voyage from Earth began generations ago.

Now, we approach our new home.

AURORA.

SF titan Kim Stanley Robinson's breakout novel, now in a Tor Essentials edition with a new introduction by Henry Farrell

Tor Essentials presents new editions of science fiction and fantasy titles of proven merit and lasting value, each volume introduced by an appropriate literary figure.

Decades before his massively successful The Ministry for the Future (2020), Kim Stanley Robinson wrote one of SF's greatest meditations on extended human lifespan, the limitations of human memory, and the haunted confabulations that go with forgetting.

On the North Pole of Pluto there stands an enigma: a huge circle of standing blocks of ice, built on the pattern of Earth's Stonehenge--but ten times the size, standing alone at the edge of the Solar System. What is it? Who could have built it?

The secret lies in the chaotic decades of the Martian Revolution, in the lost memories of those who have lived for centuries.

This new Tor Essentials edition of Icehenge includes a new introduction by Henry Farrell, co-author of Underground Empire: How America Weaponized the World Economy.

The year is 2312. Scientific and technological advances have opened gateways to an extraordinary future. Earth is no longer humanity's only home; new habitats have been created throughout the solar system on moons, planets, and in between. But in this year, 2312, a sequence of events will force humanity to confront its past, its present, and its future.

The first event takes place on Mercury, on the city of Terminator, itself a miracle of engineering on an unprecedented scale. It is an unexpected death, but one that might have been foreseen. For Swan Er Hong, it is an event that will change her life. Swan was once a woman who designed worlds. Now she will be led into a plot to destroy them.

From the internationally bestselling author of the Mars Trilogy and New York 2140

Before Kim Stanley Robinson terraformed Mars, he wrote three science fiction novels set in Orange County, California, where he grew up. These alternate futures--one a post-apocalypse, one an if-this-goes-on future reminiscent of Philip K. Dick, and one an ecological utopia--form a whole that illuminates, enchants, and inspires--collected here as Three Californias.

What if... there was a limited nuclear war that left the United States blockaded, fragmented, the few survivors living in the ruins of a once-great nation?

What if... this goes on, and technology continues to accelerate, and power continues to be consolidated into corporate culture, a developer's dream world gone mad: an endless sprawl of condos, freeways, and malls, and designer drugs?

What if... a revolution happens, and the US addresses climate change in a responsible way. Is a future green Utopia all that great when you're young and in love?

This Tor Essentials edition of Three Californias includes an introduction by Francis Spufford, bestselling author of Golden Hill and Red Plenty.

Robinson] invites us to share his characters' intensely personal, intensely local attachment to what they have. The result may shame you into entertaining new hope for the future.
--The New York Times on Pacific Edge

From a training mission in Antarctica to blistering sandstorms sweeping through labyrinths of barren canyons, the interwoven stories of The Martians set in motion a sprawling cast of characters upon the surface of Mars. As the planet is transformed from an unexplored and forbidding terrain to a troubled image of a re-created Earth, we meet the First Hundred explorers--men and women who are bound together by Earth's tenuous toehold on Mars. Presenting unforgettable stories of hope and disappointment, of fierce physical and psychological struggles, The Martians is an epic chronicle of a planet that represents one of humanity's most glorious possibilities.

Praise for The Martians

A uniquely rewarding experience of state-of-the-art science fiction.--The New York Times Book Review

No one familiar with Robinson's trilogy can read through these final, valedictory stories without feeling moved.--The Washington Post

The stories are beautifully written, the characters are well developed and the author's passion for ecology manifests itself on every page.--Publishers Weekly (starred review)

It's a muggy summer in Washington, D.C., as Senate environmental staffer Charlie Quibler and his scientist wife, Anna, work to call attention to the growing crisis of global warming. But as they fight to align the extraordinary march of modern technology with the awesome forces of nature, fate puts an unusual twist on their efforts--one that will pit science against politics in the heart of the coming storm.

Praise for the Science in the Capital trilogy

Perhaps it's no coincidence that one of our most visionary hard sci-fi writers is also a profoundly good nature writer--all the better to tell us what it is we have to lose.--Los Angeles Times

An unforgettable demonstration of what can go wrong when an ecological balance is upset.--The New York Times Book Review

Absorbing and convincing.--Nature

It is thirty years from now, and we have colonized the moon.

American Fred Fredericks is making his first trip, his purpose to install a communications system for China's Lunar Science Foundation. But hours after his arrival he witnesses a murder and is forced into hiding.

It is also the first visit for celebrity travel reporter Ta Shu. He has contacts and influence, but he too will find that the moon can be a perilous place for any traveler.

Finally, there is Chan Qi. She is the daughter of the Minister of Finance, and without doubt a person of interest to those in power. She is on the moon for reasons of her own, but when she attempts to return to China, in secret, the events that unfold will change everything -- on the moon, and on Earth.

When the Arctic ice pack was first measured in the 1950s, it averaged thirty feet thick in midwinter. By the end of the century it was down to fifteen. One August the ice broke.

The next year the breakup started in July. The third year it began in May.

That was last year.

It's a muggy summer in Washington, D.C., as Senate environmental staffer Charlie Quibler and his scientist wife, Anna, work to call attention to the growing crisis of global warming. But as these everyday heroes fight to align the awesome forces of nature with the extraordinary march of technology, fate puts an unusual twist on their efforts--one that will place them at the heart of an unavoidable storm.

Antarctica may well be the best novel of the best ecological novelist around.--Locus

It is a stark and inhospitable place, where the landscape itself poses a challenge to survival, yet its strange, silent beauty has long fascinated scientists and adventurers.

Now Antarctica faces an uncertain future. The international treaty which protects the continent is about to dissolve, clearing the way for Antarctica's resources to be plundered, its eerie beauty to be savaged. As politicians wrangle over its fate, major corporations begin probing for its hidden riches. Adventurers come, as they have for more than a century, seeking the wild, untamed land even as they endanger it with their ever-growing numbers. And radical environmentalists carry out a covert campaign of sabotage to reclaim the land from those who would destroy it for profit. All who come here have their own agenda, and all will fight to ensure their vision of the future for the remote and awe-inspiring world at the South Pole.

Praise for Antarctica

Forbidding yet fascinating, like the continent it describes . . . echoes Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air.--People

Antarctica] should be included in any short-list of books about the frozen continent.... Compelling characters...a rich and dense story...Robinson has succeeded not only in drawing human characters but also in bringing Antarctica to life. Whatever happens in the outer world, Antarctica--both the book and the continent--will become part of the reader's interior landscape.--The Washington Post Book World

The epic of Antarctica. This is the James A. Michener novel of the South Pole. If the meaty one-word title didn't give it away, the writing would. The whole human history of the continent is here.--Interzone

Antarctica will take your breath away.--Associated Press

A gripping tale of adventure on the ice.--Publishers Weekly

Passionate, informed...vastly entertaining.--Kirkus Reviews

Robinson writes about geography and geology with the intensity and unhurried attention to detail of a John McPhee.--The New York Times Book Review