Talk:Kim Stanley Robinson

message: Sorry for the rv. I understand why you did your edit but I felt it was heavy-handed, there was some factual basis that was worth preserving. I hope my attempt is NPOV enough. Jon Dowland 20:58, 9 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  10:01, 9 May 2005 203.213.143.122 

message: I think the ratio of published to 'important' works is weighted too heavily on the important side. I plan to remove at least The Martians, which compared with TYORAS or the mars trilogy is hardly important (IT could be considered part of the mars trilogy). I also have reservations over Antarctica. Remember that when book 2 or 3 of the capital code trilogy are published that will almost certainly considered important.
:I have not examined critical or commercial aspects of the collection, though it seems to be of lesser importance and is probably best treated as an addendum to the trilogy.  So I've moved The Martians under the trilogy but still under its own (rather prominent) header.  A-giau 01:06, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Important works 

message: It may or may not be worth mentioning that at least two of the novels (Icehenge and the Mars trilogy) explore the impact of greatly extended human life and, the part I find interesting, the implications of limited memory where people only know the past X years of their own life and can only discover it by researching what they have done in the past. Near the end of Icehenge there is a very nice summary of the ideas. 
Perhaps someone can add to the list of themes, impact on humans of greatly extended life. However as it's only discussed much in two of the novels that I'm aware of, and briefly in The Martians, it's a judgement call I will leave to others--and I'll leave the actual writing to others, since I would be embarassed to see my own prose in an article about KSR ;) 
Astrophil 07:58, 6 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Themes - one to add?

message: I recently removed a sentence from the criticism section that was subsequently reverted. I re-reverted it. Here's my reasoning: Like most 'criticism' sections in wikipedia, once someone has written in some criticism, supporters come along and add multiple sentences of 'counter' to the criticism. This one is no different, there is 1 sentence of criticism and 5 sentences of counter-criticism. 
Also, the 'Christian Republicans in Space' comment, while amusing, is, I think, as bit to snarky for an encyc article (especially as it is attributed to 'some critics' rather than an actual person).
Finally, the sentence I removed doesn't really add any new information, but is really just an opinion that the reader could form themselves upon reading the criticism.
Let's keep the Criticism section about actual criticism, not apologetics.
Ashmoo 23:31, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree.  As I mentioned elsewhere on this page, the entire criticism section currently sounds to me like someone's own POV being represented as the opinion of some vague, unnamed contingent of the general public.  Amazon readers doesn't cut it.  Someone could get their own POV in by posting a review on Amazon and then referring to their own review as criticism by "Amazon readers".  I don't want to have to read every reader review on Amazon to see if the phrase "Marxist and Green propaganda" shows up even once, let alone more than once, in order to get to the bottom of this.  It may seem rash, but for now I'm gonna go ahead and remove the entire Criticism section from the current article until someone can come up with something more serious.  By all means, if there is serious criticism out there (and I'm sure it can be found) then a serious article should include it.  I would suggest looking into the way society looks down upon utopian literature as a starting point for a section on criticism of Robinson's themes or methods (Robinson has responded to such attitudes in interviews, so let's find the attitudes he's responding to.)  "Marxist and Green propaganda" just doesn't sound like something a serious person would say and it's about time for it to go.  thoreaubred 03:25, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Criticism 

message: The three volume work, Red Mars/Green Mars/Blue Mars, is widely known as a "trilogy".  However, in multiple interviews the author has saiud that he considers it one novel in three volumes, and had casually referred to it as "the Mars novel".  I plan on finding sources online and changing references to the "Mars trilogy" to something like "the three-volume Mars novel".  Another tricky aspect of this, which I'm not entirely sure what to do about because I'm not an expert on every aspect of Wikipedia, is how to go about changing the separate article on the "Mars trilogy" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_trilogy) to an article about the "Mars novel."  In both cases, I will include something like, "While the author considers Mars to be one novel in three volumes, most people know it as a trilogy and it is popularly referred to as "the Mars trilogy". thoreaubred 00:12, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: My advice is to say that he views it as an extended novel, but not try to tell people they're in error if they call it a trilogy.  It is sold as three books, after all, and I think it's fair to say that *most* trilogies make sense when viewed as one long novel.  JM2C.
Mark Foskey 05:03, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mars:  Trilogy or Novel? 

message: Mr. Robinson has also said in multiple interviews that the Three Californias series is not a trilogy but is something more like a "triptych".  I will find these sources and change the word to triptych in the article.  thoreaubred 00:12, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: But why should the word "trilogy" be retained when it's not officially considered a trilogy?  The books themselves don't say "Three Californias Trilogy" on them, they just say "Three Californias".  The only official source as to what they should be called is Robinson himself who calls them a triptych.  A possible compromise would be to add the line about how he calls it a triptych but also remove the word "trilogy" from the heading, so the heading simply says "Three Californias".  thoreaubred 00:37, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Well to be honest, I'm not that familiar with the California books, my comments were more for the Mars books. My concern is the use of idiosyncratic terms when a more standard term will convey the meaning. I think calling it a 'series' may be better. 'Triptych' is a term only used by Robinson. By analogy, Spike Lee would often called his movies 'joints' (including on the ad material), but we wouldn't expect the wiki article to refer to consistently refer to them as such. Ashmoo 02:17, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: However, "joint" is far more idiosyncractic than "triptych" or "three-volume novel", as Spike Lee is probably the only person to call any kind of artistic work a joint.  A triptych (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triptych) is a type of visual art that Robinson is transferring over to literature (it wouldn't be the first time that terms originally describing visul art were used to describe written art).  Robinson wouldn't make the disction that it's a trypich vs. a trilogy in the first place if he didn't believe that the word trilogy isn't an accurate description of the structure of Three Californias, and that triptych does a better job describing the work.  There is a first time for everything, and just because Robinson may be the first to use the word triptych to describe a written work doesn't make it idiosyncratic in the way that "joint" is.  In the case of the Mars novel, the three-volume novel is an actual form, though it was far more common in previous centuries than it is today.  Again, Robinson makes the distinction because he feels that the word trilogy is wrong for the work, as he wrote it as one novel and thinks of it as one novel.  Perhaps I'll track down his own words about this stuff and post them here on the talk page so that you can see for yourself his reasons for making the distinctions. thoreaubred 03:25, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

text: Well 'joint' is a term often used by African-American artists for their work, so it would actually be less idiosyncratic. I've read the Mars books and they seem as much a trilogy as many other 'trilogies' I've read. For instance, how is Mars any less of a trilogy than Lord Of The Rings? Even amazon sells them as 'The Mars Trilogy'. Ashmoo 04:00, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, Lord Of The Rings was written as one novel and was divided into three volumes by the publisher.  So indeed, whether to call Lord Of The Rings a trilogy is also up for debate.  The difference between LOTR and Mars is that while Tolkien wrote the entire novel before giving it to the publisher, Robinson anticipated that publishers would never publish a 2,000-page work as one novel, knew he was going have to make it three volumes, and went ahead and published the earlier volumes as he was still writing the later volumes.  The other difference is that, according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_of_the_rings , Tolkien sometimes referred to LOTR as a trilogy and other times rejected the word, whereas Robinson has more consistently rejected the word in favor of the word novel.  thoreaubred 04:17, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I say that things are what they are, whatever the author chooses to call them.  The 3 Californias books are not a typical trilogy precisely because they *are* 3 different novels, happening in 3 different futures starting from the same "present" (ca 1982).  I think that's why he calls them a triptych.  But you can't just go calling them a triptych as if that's the term for that sort of thing, since it's a usage that he made up. Mark Foskey 05:12, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Three Californias:  Trilogy or Triptych? 

message: There has long been controversy over how to describe Robinson's work, as many people have felt that its quality stands out from other science fiction in various ways.  People have called it things such as "literary science fiction" while Robinson himself has rejected such labels and defended plain old "science fiction".  I previously addressed this in a minor edit, but I would like to also add a small section in the article that outlines Robinson's philosophy of science fiction and perhaps of literature in general, using quotes from interviews, from his doctoral thesis on Philip K. Dick, and from other things he's written about science fiction and literature in general.  This section would address the reasons so many people want to call his work something other than science fiction, and then would answer those reasons with quotes from the author himself.  This section would also propose "utopian fiction" or "utopian science fiction" as another legitimate label that the author would arguably not have a problem with, as it describes the leaning of his work without implying a superiority to other science fiction.  thoreaubred 00:12, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think this idea is sound, apart from the "utopian fiction" idea, which would be speculative, OR and also doesn't accurately describe all of KSR's work at all, just the well-known ones. -- Jon Dowland 13:24, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

text: Since nobody really agrees on what a definition of Hard SF is, it's not worth really worrying about. -- Jon Dowland 13:24, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Science Fiction 

message: Someone previously pointed out that too many of Robinson's works were included as "major works".  That person proposed removing The Martians, which I agree with, though it should be mentioned briefly at the end of the Mars section.  I would also propose removing The Years of Rice and Salt.  What qualifies a work as a major work?  Perhaps the "major works" section should be removed completely, and replaced with a "multi-volume works" section, which would contain Mars, Three Californias, and the current trilogy (sometimes called the Capital Code series, sometimes called the Science In The Capital series; neither has been verified.  thoreaubred 00:12, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Major Works? 

message: I don't like the way that instead of having a list of novels in bibliography format, there is the Major Works section and then the Other Novels section.  I would like to keep the Major Works section but remove the Other Novels section and replace it with a complete bibliography.  thoreaubred 00:12, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: From the perspective of someone porting elements of this article to another Wikipedia language (zh-min-nan:), I too favor a complete bibliography, at least of significant works.  The "major themes" section could also come earlier rather than trailing a lengthy bibliography.  A-giau 03:50, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Complete Bibliography 

message: Wikipedians who enjoy Kim Stanley Robinson's work should consider deploying this userbox  on their user page to be included in :Category:Wikipedians who read Kim Stanley Robinson.  This userbox and category were started to create a wikicommunity that will strive to keep articles about KSR and his work up-to-date and up to Wikipedia standards.  -- Erielhonan 23:00, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Userbox 

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thread_title: Fair use rationale for Image:Sciinthecap.jpg

message: Shouldn`t the passage about the paleolithic activities in Fifty Degrees Below be moved to the article about the book? I don`t think that it fits in here! --Meile (talk) 17:39, 25 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Science in the Capital series 

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thread_title: Fair use rationale for Image:Rgbmars.jpg

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thread_title: Fair use rationale for Image:Thcalifs.jpg

message: I have uploaded two images of Mr. Robinson that are copyleft.  --AllyUnion (talk) 08:56, 18 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Images 

message: Do we really need the middle of the article to be an enormous list of short stories? I would prefer to have these in their own article or radically trimmed back. Euchrid (talk) 03:38, 10 April 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Short stories 

message: The links in references three and five are broken. Posted by anonymous coward, not a wiki-editor, just someone who came across this page. 1:51, 9 November 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Updated links. AlbinoFlea (talk) 20:06, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: Broken links

message: I'm not sure that the mountaineering comment is relevant to the career section. Considering deletion. Although I have seen that KSR is an avid backpacker and that has influenced his works. Jaldous1 (talk) 03:36, 6 September 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: Career

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thread_title:  External links modified 

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thread_title:  External links modified (January 2018) 

message: Hi,
The sentence in this article: "In the 1980s Robinson also spent time with a National Science Foundation team at a research base in Antarctica.[7]"
is not supported by the attached reference [7] where it is clear KSR is simply relaying a story without any reference to himself having had any part in that story. However, I have found other references mentioning that he was in Antarctica in 1995 (and again in 2016/2017?), e.g.:
http://www.sactownmag.com/February-March-2017/The-Man-Who-Fell-for-Earth/
http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/robinson_interview/
http://www.kimstanleyrobinson.info/node/344
I suggest to either remove the sentence and source I have quoted or have someone who is more familiar with the matter correct it.
Thanks ☺
P.S. I am new here so apologies if this wasn't the correct place to post this and feel free to move/delete as preferred.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Xenoturbella (talk • contribs) 20:30, 13 March 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Time in Antarctica – error? 

message: The very first sentence of this bio currently reads "Kim Stanley Robinson (born March 23, 1952) is an American socialist writer of science fiction." While his political perspective is certainly within the scope of this article, labeling him with it like this seems to imply bias and political agenda in the article. No one would introduce a biography of Robert A. Heinlein by saying he "was an American libertarian writer of science fiction" unless they were explicitly writing from either a pro- or anti-libertarian perspective. 
2601:602:8C80:6A80:9901:B6E3:6B8E:9F39 (talk) 03:26, 20 June 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Implied Bias 

message: A chemist? MaynardClark (talk) 00:33, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: I cannot make sense of that question. :-) Robby.is.on (talk) 09:01, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Marriage 

message: The section titled Career is pathetically bad.
It completely fails to cover Robinson's career, and instead includes several irrelevant anecdotes.
I hope someone knowledgeable about this subject can fix this. 2601:200:C082:2EA0:851C:7AE8:1182:1566 (talk) 17:29, 4 March 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pathetically bad section