Kim Stanley Robinson is the award winning author of several science fiction novels; including the novels that make up the "Three Californias" series, "The Mars" trilogy (an award winning series for which he is probably best known for writing), and the "Science in the Capital" series. Robinson has also written other short stories and other standalone novels. Robinson has won many awards in his career as an author; the awards he has won include: British Science Fiction Association Award, World Fantasy Award, Nebula, Ignotus Award, Seium Award, Hugo, John W. Campbell Award for Best Science Fiction Novel, and Locus Awards (which he has won six times: 1985, 1991, 1994, 1997, 2000, 2003). Robinson has been nominated for many others. He was born in …show more content…
Waukegan, Illinois on March 23, 1952. He obtained his BA in literature from University of California- San Diego, in 1974, and the next year, earned his MA in English from Boston University; Robinson would later go on to get his PhD in English from University of California- San Diego. His doctoral thesis was called "The Novels of Phillip K. Dick", after his first PhD adviser told him to read the works of Phillip K. Dick, that later got published, a hardcover version was even released. A lot of his stories deal with ideas of ecological and nature issues.
In "The Gold Coast" he talks about over development and the drawbacks. The rest of the "Southern California" trilogy explores ideas of nature and technology intersecting, asserting that it is highly important that the two are separate from one another. Sustainability is his biggest themes and the nature of a plausible utopia.
'The Wild Shore" is the first book in Kim Stanley Robinson's "Three Californias" trilogy. This book is set in 2047 and is set in San Onofre, a small town on the Pacific Coast. Living life after a nuclear attack is a day to day struggle to live. Hank Fletcher is a dreamer, someone who wonders what the world was and what it might be again. He tries to imagine what it might be like to remake America and turn it into something worthwhile again. A man named Tom tells people what the world was like before all the bombs were dropped. Books are in high demand and of high trade value, as they are
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rare. Fans of this book praised it for its believeable premise that an attack on America involving nuclear missiles being dropped, the novel has great plot, fascinating characters, and the depiction of a realistic future world.
Fans of the book also liked that the book has some of Robinson's best writing, including some of the best lines that have ever appeared in a novel that close out the book. Readers who did not like the book said that the story goes bad, and becomes incoherent. Some felt like this book resembled a whodunnit but it never tells the reader who the killer was. Some readers were disappointed in Robinson's storytelling in this novel.
'The Gold Coast" is the second book in Kim Stanley Robinson's "Three Californias" trilogy. This book is set in 2027, and features a Southern California that is nothing but freeways, malls, and condos. A young man, Jim McPherson, is a wealthy man's son, a budding poet, and is lost in a world of great drugs, casual sex, and fast cars. He is brought to a confrontation with his family and everything he believes in when he goes through the underground of industrial terrorism. Jim cannot focus on things for long periods of time, nor can he remember to do things. His dad works in developing high precision
munitions. Fans of this book praised Robinson's ability to be knowledgeable about something but use it wisely without rubbing the readers's faces in the fact that he knows about something, and keep the story moving forward. The readers found the book to feature defense industry and over development as something that was alive and had its hold on the characters with an independent will. Readers who did not enjoy this book felt that Robinson takes a long time to find out where he wants to go with the book, the ecological aspect is too strident at times, and when Robinson bashes capitalism he does not have enough evidence to support his claims. They did not like when the book focused on Jim as those scenes are boring and too technical, and some found the characters in the book to be useless, as all they seem to do is party and do drugs for most of the book. The rights to the "Mars" trilogy were bought, plans to make the novel into a television series on Spike were set in motion. Many people held the rights to the series at one point or another (James Cameron Gale Ann Hurd, and AMC had them), each having their own plans with the stories, before Spike got a hold of them and got J. Michael Straczynski to adapt them for the screen.
I found the book to be easy, exciting reading because the story line was very realistic and easily relatable. This book flowed for me to a point when, at times, it was difficult to put down. Several scenes pleasantly caught me off guard and some were extremely hilarious, namely, the visit to Martha Oldcrow. I found myself really fond of the char...
In conclusion, the theme of the book is, people of another race tend to do and say hurtful and discouraging things. These events showed how each character reacted towards everything. This book could be based on the famous quote: “It ain’t about hard you can hit, it’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward” (Rocky Balboa- Sylvester Stallone). The Robinson family shows wit and integrity at the end of the
Unknown, author. "The California Gold Rush." North Carolina Digital History. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Web. 2 Mar 2014. .
Located in central Monterey Rey, California, the real city of Cannery Row is home to thousands of current residents, but is really home to a small, concentrated sense of nostalgia for the characters of John Steinebeck’s American Classic. Cannery Row, written in 1945 by Steinbeck, faintly touches on the idea of the American dream, on what it has to offer to a crookedly, quaint town in the middle of central California. The characters in Cannery Row are initially perceived as inappropriate, childish, slavish, ignorant, and a general mistake of humanity, with disgusting morals and a true burden to the world. As the story starts to unfold upon it self, and not only does this compelling plot line seem to start to come into place, the audience comes to revelation and comes to an understanding as to what the American dream really is. Mixed with his stylistic diction writing, Steinbeck convolutes the idea the American dream with a grim sense of realism on how it's unattainable, from society's basic perception. The characters in Cannery Row, represent perseverance through strife in spite of a ...
...and. Certainly he has pictured a place so awful, so replete with destruction, that as readers, we want no part of it. We can imagine easily that Bradbury is responding not only to his authorial need to show us how similar our decline can be to the decline of Mars in the book. (Robert Peltier)
In Nathanael West’s “The Day of the Locust,” multiple characters are introduced within Hollywood, California, which is widely regarded as the national capital of the film industry. One main character focused on throughout the novel is Tod Hackett, who West portrays as being superior to the fantasy observed around him. Many of the characters have traveled to Hollywood in pursuit of a personal, ambitious goal. However, there is a reoccurring theme of failure in their pursuits due to the fictitious personalities and actions they have created for themselves influenced by a setting full of artificialness.
Rohrbough, Malcolm J. Days Of Gold: The California Gold Rush And The American Nation. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. eBook (EBSCOhost). Web. 26 Mar. 2014.
I think my favorite thing about this novel was the realistic ending. Some books try to just give you a fairy tale but this book had an ending that mad you think in the end if I was in the same position would I do the same thing. I didn’t like the fact that the novel portrayed mental illness in a way to say that it needed to be hidden and protected. I thought this novel was very believable for the time period that it was set in. I think the ending to this novel was perfect it was an accurate ending to this
Ray Bradbury, from small town America (Waukegan, Illinois), wrote two very distinctly different novels in the early Cold War era. The first was The Martian Chronicles (1950) know for its “collection” of short stories that, by name, implies a broad historical rather than a primarily individual account and Fahrenheit 451 (1953), which centers on Guy Montag. The thematic similarities of Mars coupled with the state of the American mindset during the Cold War era entwine the two novels on the surface. Moreover, Bradbury was “preventing futures” as he stated in an interview with David Mogen in 1980. A dystopian society was a main theme in both books, but done in a compelling manner that makes the reader aware of Bradbury’s optimism in the stories. A society completely frightened by a nuclear bomb for example will inevitably become civil to one another. Bradbury used his life to formulate his writing, from his views of people, to the books he read, to his deep suspicion of the machines. . The final nuclear bombs that decimate the earth transform the land. The reader is left with the autonomous house and its final moments as, it, is taken over by fire and consumed by the nature it resisted. Bradbury used science fantasy to analyze humans themselves and the “frontiersman attitude” of destroying the very beauty they find by civilizing it.
Thirdly, the setting of the story is set in Salinas, California. Ironically, the author was born in Salinas. It is the time of the Great Depression and middle-class has been hit hard. The story begins in Weed, a California mining town.
...in apocalyptic future where a road is no longer used to get from one place to another, but is used to remember the past that had once been important. The title itself has a focus and highlights the theme of transience. The characters in the book never stay longer than a week in any house/shelter before moving back to the road. The majority of all of the homes have been abandoned, domestic life itself has been destroyed and forgotten. The destinations in the novel also link back to the title, if the title itself is supposedly pointing us towards the american highway, then it is useful to think about where the characters may potentially end up, they may or may not end up anywhere. They have a goal of reaching the coast, but this may appear to be too much for them to achieve. The title is symbolic of the journey the boy and the dad take to reach the ocean.
...nding life skills to pursue the better life by themselves. I can see that the newcomers spent their effort to reach their California dreams as work hard as they could. During the time, they transformed the beginning as a gold miner to explore different kinds of business then developed to the agriculture with the good weather condition. Even though women just used their hands to do the simple works to get rich. Through their creativity business mind, the people aggressive ……………. to look for a fortune and luck in California.
Starr, Kevin. Embattled Dreams: California in War and Peace, 1940-1950. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.
"Ecotopia" is a futuristic novel about a country based on a "stable-state ecosystem." Ecotopia was formed when Northern California, Washington and Oregon seceded from the union of the United States. The new nation is an economical utopia with advanced methods of energy conservation and work ethics. Since its secession from the United States no American tourists have been allowed to cross its border. Now, twenty years later, Ecotopia has officially allowed the first American visitor into the country. The Times Post has sent international affairs reporter William Weston on a six-week investigative mission into Ecotopia where he will report on the economy and the lifestyle and dispel what will prove to be outlandish rumors regarding life in Ecotopia.
The Road by Cormac McCarthy, is set in a post-apocalyptic United States. A father and his son have survived the event that cause the destruction and death of so many. The two of them follow a road that will lead them to the coast where they hope to find and untouched landscape that they can live in. Through their journey they encounter others that are just trying to stay alive, one’s who will steal, enslave them, or even kill them.