Kim Stanley Robinson Quotes

Quotes from the science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson and his works. Get his books here This blog has no affiliation with KSR and does not claim ownership of any works posted

[medievalpoc]

[Tweet from @orbitbooks reads: Congratulations to all the winners at @TheHugoAwards  last night, and particularly to @nkjemisin for being the FIRST AUTHOR EVER to win the Hugo Award for Best Novel three years in succession - an incredible achievement for the truly ground-breaking Broken Earth series.]

Hugo awards: women clean up as NK Jemisin wins best novel again

“This has been a hard year … a hard few years, a hard century. For some of us, things have always been hard, and I wrote the Broken Earth trilogy to speak to that struggle, and what it takes to live, let alone thrive, in a world that seems determined to break you. A world of people who constantly question your competence, your relevance, your very existence. […]

As this genre finally, however grudgingly, acknowledges that the dreams of the marginalized matter, and that all of us have a future, so will the world.”

[thesnadger]

When I was in school, one of my art teachers used to say “this world needs more creators. There’s more than enough destroyers in the world today.”

Just a reminder, if you create anything–art, writing, food, machines, ideas, equations, knits, tools, gardens–the world needs you.

[sylviawitch]

This makes me happy.

Happy creating, everyone

[vampireapologist-archive-deacti]

nature “lovers” who hate their hometowns

so here’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while now, and I’m actually likely to make a video addressing it in-depth here in the near future.

recently I made some posts about the beautiful nature you can find in Ohio. I focused on Southeastern Ohio, since that’s where I’m from and where I studied, but people from all parts of Ohio responded with their own pieces of beauty.

I did this is response to the never-ending hate I see for Ohio, mostly from people in or from Ohio.

“it’s ugly,” “there’s just corn here,” “i’d rather die than live in ohio,” “i can’t wait to go somewhere that’s actually pretty.”

and you know, Ohio has a lot of problems. Politically, financially, and socially. But that’s not what these comments are about. The ones I addressed were all from “nature-lovers” who are tired of their ugly state. Useless, boring, corn-infested Ohio.

So y’all can’t wait to get out. You can’t wait to go to another state, or even another country, full of Nature you deem actually beautiful. Nature that meets your standards, Nature you deem worthy of protection and acknowledgment.

You say you want to save the world. You say you love nature. You love wildlife. You love trees. But here’s the thing: whether you know it or not,

you’re full of shit.

Because Ohio, or any other “ugly,” “shitty” state you live in does have nature in it. There are natural areas and wildlife species and plants DESPERATELY in need of some “nature lovers” to notice them, to fight for their protection, and to generally just give a shirt about them.

But instead, you fetishize some distant idea of wilderness and nature that’s foreign to you and therefore more attractive.

You dream of abandoning the land you live on that needs your help to go visit some other land that’s often being damaged by tourism.

All for the sake of escaping modern living for a while and experiencing wilderness. But here’s the thing.

There is no such thing as wilderness.

Not in the jungles, not in the deserts, not in the poles. People have lived everywhere. Everything on the planet has been touched by humans.

“Wilderness” is a trick played on us all. We call some place empty of humans “wilderness,” but if you look into it, you often find that just 150 years ago, indigenous people were chased out after having occupied and affected those lands for hundreds or thousands of years, all so we could enjoy our “wilderness.”

Nothing. In Nature. Is. Untouched. By. Humans.

But everything in nature needs our help.

Listen. I’m not saying that on an individual level any of us are responsible for the downfall of Nature. No. Nature’s enemies and attackers are big. They’re corporations, politicians, wealthy greed.

But nature can’t fight for itself. We have to fight for it. It isn’t hopeless unless we abandon it.

That oak tree behind your house in West Virginia, that little swamp down the road in Ohio, with a cornfield on one side and a Walmart potentially going in on the other.

They’re not a rain forest. They’re not a coral reef. They’re not the faraway beauties you see in National Geographics. But they’re important. And they need you to start giving a damn about them.

So I’m begging you to stop looking at the nature in your backyard or your city park through such a jaded lens. I’m begging you to stop only looking for Nature somewhere faraway.

Because it’s Everywhere and it needs us.

[cicatricks]

Sometimes your favorite author answers questions from his Facebook fans and sometimes you spend half an hour writing and rewriting your question AND SOMETIMES he answers!

In this case my question was:

“In what ways do you feel your works can be used as a guide post for individuals hoping to make the present world a better place to live?”

[cicatricks]

Yes, science itself is the genius AI that we fear to create; it’s already up and running. Attend to it and act on what you learn. It’s the science fiction way.

Kim Stanley Robinson, Green Earth (forward)

[ksraday]

Righteous indignation is like some kind of drug or religious mania, addictive and stupidifying

Kim Stanley Robinson, Aurora

[ksraday]

The command to be free is a double bind

Kim Stanley Robinson, 2312

[ksraday]

What was personal gain but the freedom to do what you wanted to do? And what was power but the freedom to do what you wanted to do? And once you had that freedom, any more wealth or power actually began to restrict one's options, and reduce one's freedom. One became a servant of one's wealth or power, constrained to spend all one's time protecting it.

Kim Stanley Robinson, Green Mars

[ksraday]

Sometimes I think it's only post-scarcity that evil exists. Before that, it could always be put down to want or fear. It was possible to believe, as apparently you did, that when fear and want went away, bad deeds would too. Humanity would be revealed as some kind of bonobo, an altruistic cooperator, a lover of all.

Kim Stanley Robinson, 2312

[ksraday]

In a capitalist world, the word capital has taken on more and more uses. . . . human capital, for instance, which is what labor accumulates through education and work experience. Human capital differs from the classic kind in that you can't inherit it, and it can only be rented, not bought or sold.

Kim Stanley Robinson, Green Mars

[ksraday]

But no. That was analogy rather than homology. What in the humanities they would call a heroic simile, if he understood the term, or a metaphor, or some other kind of literary analogy. And analogies were mostly meaningless — a matter of phenotype rather than genotype (to use another analogy). Most, of poetry and literature, really all the humanities, not to mention the social sciences, were phenotypic as far as Sax could tell. They added up to a huge compendium of meaningless analogies, which did not help to explain things, but only distorted perception of them. A kind of continuous conceptual drunkenness, one might say. Sax himself much preferred exactitude and explanatory power, and why not? If it was 200 Kelvin outside why not say so, rather than talk about witches’ tits and the like, hauling the whole great baggage of the ignorant past along to obscure every encounter with sensory reality? It was absurd.

Kim Stanley Robinson, Green Mars

[ksraday]

That is what capitalism is—a version of feudalism in which capital replaces land, and business leaders replace kings. But the hierarchy remains. And so we still hand over our lives’ labor, under duress, to feed rulers who do no real work.

Kim Stanley Robinson, Blue Mars

[ksraday]

We are here to inscribe ourselves on the universe, and it is not inappropriate to remind ourselves of this when blank slates are given us

Kim Stanley Robinson, 2312

[ksraday]

So, you know, Fermi’s paradox has its answer, which is this: by the time life gets smart enough to leave its planet, it’s too smart to want to go. Because it knows it won’t work. So it stays home. It enjoys its home. As why wouldn’t you? It doesn’t even bother to try to contact anyone else. Why would you? You’ll never hear back. So that’s my answer to the paradox. You can call it Euan’s Answer.

Kim Stanley Robinson, Aurora

[ksraday]

One acts, and thus finds out what one has decided to do.

Kim Stanley Robinson, Aurora

[ksraday]

And so sometimes when you feel strange, when a pang tugs at your heart or it seems like the moment has already happened- or when you look up in the sky and are surprised at the sight of bright Jupiter between clouds, and everything suddenly seems stuffed with a vast significance-consider that some other person somewhere is entangled with you in time, and is trying to give some push to the situation, some little help to make things better. Then put your shoulder to whatever wheel you have at hand, whatever moment you're in, and push too! Push like Galileo pushed! And together we may crab sideways toward the good.

Kim Stanley Robinson, Galileo's Dream

[ksraday]

Make up a recipe for a successful revolution.“ "Take large masses of injustice, resentment and frustration. Put them in a week or failing hegemon. Stir in misery for a generation or two, until the heat rises. Throw in destabilizing circumstances to taste. A tiny pinch of event to catalyze the whole. Once the main goal of the revolution is achieved, cool instantly to institutionalize the new order.

Kim Stanley Robinson, 2312