Icehenge

Icehenge

First edition of Icehenge, published by Ace Books as a Mass Market paperback, with cover art by Mark Weber
Author Kim Stanley Robinson
Cover artist Mark Weber
Country United States
Language English
Genre Science fiction novel
Publisher Ace Books
Publication date
 1984
Media type Print (Paperback)
Pages 262
ISBN 0-441-35854-3
OCLC 11191345

Icehenge is a science fiction novel by American author Kim Stanley Robinson, published in 1984.

Though it was published almost ten years before Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy and takes place in a different version of the future, Icehenge contains elements which also appear in the Mars series: extreme human longevity, Martian political revolution, historical revisionism, and shifts between primary characters are all present.

Plot

Icehenge is set in three distinct time periods. The first part is the diary of an engineer caught up in a failed Martian political revolution in 2248. The middle part is narrated by an archaeologist on the project, three centuries later, that finds the engineer's diary; at the same time, a mysterious monument is found at the north pole of Pluto. In the final part, the archaeologist's great-grandson investigates the possibility that the diary and the monument were both planted by a wealthy recluse who lives in Saturn orbit.

Development history

The first part of this novel was originally published as the novella To Leave a Mark in the November 1982 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction'.[1]

The third part of Icehenge was originally published as the novella On the North Pole of Pluto in 1980 in the anthology Orbit 18 edited by Damon Knight.[2] Robinson gave the novella in rough form to Ursula K. Le Guin to read and edit while he was enrolled in her writing workshop at UCSD in the spring of 1977.[3] Views of Saturn from the space station inhabited by the character Caroline Holmes in this section were inspired by images of Saturn taken during the Voyager flybys.[4]

Publication history

References

  1. ↑ Robinson, Kim Stanley (November 1982). "To Leave a Mark". The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. 63 (5): 5–54.
  2. ↑ Robinson, Kim Stanley (1980). "On the North Pole of Pluto". In Damon Knight. Orbit 21. New York: Harper & Row. ISBN 0-06-012426-1.
  3. ↑ Robinson, Kim Stanley (2010). "Untitled". In Karen Joy Fowler. 80! Memories & Reflections on Ursula K. Le. Seattle: Aqueduct Press. p. 18. ISBN 978-1-933500-43-0.
  4. ↑ Robinson, Kim Stanley (2006). "Saturn Sublime". Saturn: A New View. New York: Abrams. p. 16. ISBN 978-0-8109-3090-2.
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