A Weird, Wonderful Conversation With Kim Stanley Robinson

Kim Stanley Robinson is one of the great living science fiction writers and one of the most astute observers of how planets look, feel and work. His Mars Trilogy imagined what it might be like for humans to settle on the red planet. His best-selling novel “ The Ministry for the Future ” is a masterful effort at envisioning what might happen to Earth in a future of unchecked climate change. Robinson has a rare command of both science and human nature, and his writing crystallizes how the two must work together if we are to rescue our collective planetary future from possible ruin. In his most recent book, a rare turn to nonfiction called “ The High Sierra: A Love Story ,” Robinson trains his attention on the planet we inhabit in the here and now, particularly on one of his favorite places on Earth: the Sierra Nevada mountain range in California and Nevada. The new book is part memoir, part guidebook, part meditation on how time, space and even politics take shape in a wondrous geological landscape. We discuss why Robinson decided to start writing outdoors, what it was like to experience the Sierras on psychedelics in his youth, what “actor-network theory” is and how it helps us unde…