Icehenge

Available From:

Add to your Goodreads To-Read Shelf

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.

Reviews

“In a genre not often distinguished by strong characterization, Robinson is a welcome exception. Yet even the memorable community of his The Wild Shore did not prepare us for this brilliant triptych in which the monolithic artifact of the title and the events surrounding it are described and examined from widely different points of view. The distinct, personal voices of the narratives, as they construct and deconstruct their elegant theories, are a pleasure rare in SF.” —Publishers Weekly

“This is a book that asks questions and provides poetic experiences rather than a book that answers questions. It has a Gene Wolfe quote on the cover, and I’m not at all surprised that Gene Wolfe likes this. (I just wish T.S. Eliot could have lived to read it.) It’s odd but it’s also wonderful.” —Jo Walton, author of Among Others

“One of the greatest living science-fiction writers.” —Tim Kreider, The New Yorker

“Robinson’s works have placed him at the forefront of the science fiction genre.” —Kirkus

“Icehenge is a very well-constructed tale, designed to make the reader doubt, puzzle and think.” —Fantasy Literature

About the Author

KIM STANLEY ROBINSON is an American science fiction writer. He is the author of more than 20 books, including the international bestselling Mars trilogy: Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars, and more recently Red Moon, New York 2140, and 2312, which was a New York Times bestseller nominated for all seven of the major science fiction awards—a first for any book. 2008 he was named a “Hero of the Environment” by Time magazine, and he works with the Sierra Nevada Research Institute, the Clarion Writers’ Workshop, and UC San Diego’s Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination. He has won the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and World Fantasy awards. In 2016 he was given the Heinlein Award for lifetime achievement in science fiction, and asteroid 72432 was named “Kimrobinson.” In 2017 he was given the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Imagination in Service to Society.