Early Robinson: Memory, History, and the Local

ABSTRACT:This essay discusses Kim Stanley Robinson's early fiction: short stories and novellas, Icehenge (1984), and the trilogy set in Orange County (1984-1990). Robinson's early fiction is varied, exploratory, and experimental. Discussion begins by sketching his take on some common genres and topics in sf (for instance, settlement off-Earth), and then focuses on his varied treatment of memory and history. Memory is unreliable or missing; history is uncertain, faked, controverted. The short stories examine these issues from multiple angles. Icehenge depicts memory as haunted and the truth of the past as elusive, controverted, and arguably faked. The main characters are isolates and anomie prevails in the novel's world. With the Orange County trilogy, Robinson realigns his fiction. The setting is now local and restricted; the central characters are young and have scope for both follies and development. Each embarks on a narrative which has an oblique relation to the past. History is both a burden and a blank in The Wild Shore; crowded contemporary society entraps and overwhelms the protagonists in The Gold Coast, but a history reaching back into deep time is achieved; a community in which free life in the present can be enjoyed is achieved by the time of Pacific Edge, but it is bounded by death and unhappiness.