“Black Air” tells the story of the Spanish Armada from the point of view of a young boy able to sense the impending death of other people.

Red Mars , the kickoff to Robinson's epic Mars trilogy, won the Nebula for best SF novel of 1992; its follow-up, Green Mars , won the parallel Hugo for 1994. The conclusion to the saga is not unlike the terrain of Robinson’s Red Planet: fertile and fully developed in some spots, vast and arid in others but, ultimately, it’s an impressive achievement. Using the last 200 years of American history as his template for Martian history, Robinson projects his tale of Mars’s colonization from the 21 st century, in which settlers successfully revolt against Earth, into the next century, when various interests on Mars work out their differences on issues ranging from government to the terraforming of the planet and immigration. Sax Russell, Maya Toitovna and others reprise their roles from the first two novels, but the dominant “personality” is the planet itself, which Robinson describes in exhaustive naturalistic detail. Characters look repeatedly for sermons in its stones and are nearly overwhelmed by textbook abstracts on the biological and geological minutiae of their environment. Not until the closing chapters, when they begin confronting their mortality, does the human dimension of the story balance out its awesome ecological extrapolations. Robinson's achievement here is on a par with Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles and Herbert’s Dune , even if his clinical detachment may leave some readers wondering whether there really is life on Mars. ( Piblishers Weekly )

The autobiographical story about author’s time in Switzerland; published in the fenzine Flurb (http://www.flurb.net/4/4robinson.htm).

Liner Notes “They sailed out of Lisbon harbor with the flags snapping and the brass culverins gleaming under a high white sun, priests proclaiming in sonorous Latin the blessing of the Pope, soldiers in armor jammed on the castles fore and aft, and sailors spiderlike in the rigging, waving at the citizens of the town who had left their work to come out on the hills and watch the ships crowd out the sunbeaten roads, for this was the Armada, the Most Fortunate Invincible Armada, off to subjugate the heretic English to the will of God. There would never be another departure like it” And aboard one of the ships was Manuel Tetuan, a young Moroccan orphan shanghaied from a Franciscan monastery. “Black Air” is the multiple award nominated and World Fantasy Award-winning novelette of Manuel’s beatific innocence, of his compassion in me face of war, and of the miracles that enabled him to survive the tragedy of the doomed Armada. Since the unanimous critical acclaim that greeted his first novel, The Wild Shore, Kim Stanley Robinson has firmly established a reputation for gripping prose, compassionate human insight, and otherworldly visions imbued with a sharply focused sense of vivid, hard reality. Robinson’s extraordinary range of interests is demonstrated in haunting stories of: tourists tooling the beautiful, sunken ruins of Venice: an amoral future sleuth who, with her bumbling Watson, must find the forger of Monets on a planet of wealthy esthetes; three friends, one brain damaged, who confront eternity and subtle magic in the snowbound Sierras; a repertoire company of hypnotically trained, surgically altered actors, and an unknown psychopath whose murders mock the scripts of Elizabethan and Jacobean drama; the historic effects of the Second World War’s last traitor, the pilot who deliberately fails to A-bomb Hiroshima; impoverished Uranian miners who seek fame in an interplanetary music competition by reviving an ancient, lost form—Dixieland Jazz; and a dilapidated Arizona grill-souvenir shop that becomes the focus of a drifter’s encounters with Time and destiny. The Planet on the Table, a rare collection filled with the deftness, honesty and warmth that have propelled Kim Stanley Robinson so quickly into the forefront of modern SF. Kim Stanley Robinson is the author of the Hugo and Nebula nominated novel, The Wild Shore, Icehenge; and the current Nebula nominee, The Memory of Whiteness. His short fiction has been frequently nominated for awards, and he is the winner of the World Fantasy Award for “BIack Air.” His doctoral thesis on Philip K. Dick was recently published by UMI Press. A native of Southern California, Robinson presently lives in Switzerland with his wife, Lisa, an environmental chemist. Contemporary Reviews %ldquo;A quietly haunting tale, ‘Black Air’ is only incidentally an alternate-world story of the Spanish Armada; its true subject is a young boy’s vision, awakened in impressionistic waves of language that verge on synesthesia,” — The Village Voice “Robinson has been known for several years as one of the finest short story writers around.” —Locus “[Robinson] has shown in his short fiction a genuine love for the word as artifact, for depth of characterization and for the potential of the science fiction genre as an art form.” — Fantasy Review “Robinson’s narrative technique is impressive and the richness of his concepts and language extraordinary.” — Booklist “If a better single-author short story collection comes out this year, its going to be one hell of a year.” — Locus From Publishers WeeklyIn the past two years Robinson has published three well-received novels. This, his first collection of shorter work, is comprised of eight stories, including a World Fantasy Award winner and several Hugo and Nebula nominees. Robinson's strengths are a clean, clear style and a depth of characterization unusual for science fiction. Among the stories are "The Lucky Strike," which tells about bombardier Frank January, who in an alternate World War II, refuses to drop the Hiroshima bomb, a gesture that lands him in front of a firing squad and eventually ignites a world-wide peace and disarmament movement. In the award-winning novelette, "Black Air," a boy pressed into service on La Lavia, a galleon in the Spanish Armada, witnesses death in many forms when the Armada is smashed and La Lavia helplessly sails ever northward. The other tales here are similarly strong and imaginative.

The second of three linked novels set in the strife-torn world of big science, operating out of the corrupt political heart of the developed world. In the interface between big science and big business lies the potential for the absolute destruction or salvation of our world, as new discoveries open ever more remarkable doorways into the future. And while good intentions may underlie the science that leads to these discoveries, human greed, on an individual, political or corporate basis, will always seek a way to exploit each and every new development. Combining superb narrative and beautiful writing, these will not only be highly entertaining thrillers but will also offer the reader a privileged insight into and greater understanding of the bigger picture and how the jigsaw pieces of science, politics and business operate in the modern world. The events of the books will focus on: a science-industrial spy, based in part on the amazing multiple-lives of FBI spy Ronal Hansen; a US patent office lawyer; a venture capitalist; a Washington lobbyist; a Congressional aide; a Buddhist scientist, recently arrived in the West; a Senator and several scientists at a biotech lab outside Washington.

Red Moon is a magnificent novel of space exploration and political revolution from New York Times bestselling author Kim Stanley Robinson.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.For more from Kim Stanley...

By the time Phil Chase is elected president, the world’s climate is far on its way to irreversible change. Food scarcity, housing shortages, diminishing medical care, and vanishing species are just some of the consequences. The erratic winter the Washington, D.C., area is experiencing is another grim reminder of a global weather pattern gone haywire: bone-chilling cold one day, balmy weather the next. But the president-elect remains optimistic and doesn’t intend to give up without a fight. A maverick in every sense of the word, Chase starts organizing the most ambitious plan to save the world from disaster since FDR—and assembling a team of top scientists and advisers to implement it. For Charlie Quibler, this means reentering the political fray full-time and giving up full-time care of his young son, Joe. For Frank Vanderwal, hampered by a brain injury, it means trying to protect the woman he loves from a vengeful ex and a rogue “black ops” agency not even the president can control—a task for which neither Frank’s work at the National Science Foundation nor his study of Tibetan Buddhism can prepare him. In a world where time is running out as quickly as its natural resources, where surveillance is almost total and freedom nearly nonexistent, the forecast for the Chase administration looks darker each passing day. For as the last—and most terrible—of natural disasters looms on the horizon, it will take a miracle to stop the clock… the kind of miracle that only dedicated men and women can bring about.

First published in Asimov’s Science Fiction in Sep 1986. Later published as part of Escape from Kathmandu collection (Tor Books, 1989).