Kim Stanley Robinson: Apprenticeships in Narrative

Kim Stanley Robinson remains one of the most progressive writers working today. His novels and short stories have mapped cycles of capitalist violence, economic expansion, and material despoliation, in turn proposing radical visions of social and economic justice through cooperatives, collective agreements, and stewardship of the environment. But if Robinson is readily considered a political author, less attention has been paid to his craft and composition. This book examines Robinson’s concern with literary apprenticeship. In novels such as the post-apocalyptic The Wild Shore, the intergenerational star-ship narrative Aurora, and the tale of Ice Age hunters, Shaman, Robinson creates characters who struggle with and against storytelling. In these fictions, apprentices battle against the limits of their interpretative powers as they come to recognise the real pleasures, and the intense hardships, of art and narrative.

Andrew Rowcroft is an Associate Lecturer in English at the University of Lincoln.