Kim Robinson: The Lucky Strike

“Remaking History”

What Might Have Been, ed. Gregory Benford, Bantam Books 1989.

“Zurich”

The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, March 1990.

“Muir On Shasta”

A Sensitive Dependence on Initial Conditions, Pulphouse Press, 1990.

“A History of the Twentieth Century, With Illustrations”

Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, April 1991.

“The Translator”

Universe One, ed. Robert Silverberg and Karen Haber, Doubleday, 1990.

“Vinland the Dream”

Nebula Award nominee.

Alternate Americas, ed. Gergory Benford, Tor Books, 1992.

“Sexual Dimorphism”

Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, June 1999.

“Arthur Sternbach Brings the Curveball to Mars”

Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, September 1999.

“A Martian Romance”

Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, October/November 1999.

“Review: Science in the Third Millennium”

Nature, January 6, 2000.

“UCSD and Permaculture, a Science Fiction Story”

Perspectives, UCSD alumni magazine, excerpts.

“Prometheus Unbound, At Last, and None Too Soon”

Nature, June 2005.

Kim Stanley Robinson (b. 1952) was raised in Orange County, California, and despite obtaining a PhD in literature (UC San Diego) has been a successful novelist since the early 1980s. Describing himself as a “green socialist,” he is one of today’s most prominent SF authors, and along with his friend Ursula LeGuin, one of the most consistently radical in humanist outlook and literary practice. His newest work is Galileo’s Dream .

Hugo and Nebula award-winner Terry Bisson is best known for his short stories, which range from the southern sweetness of “Bears Discover Fire” to the alienated aliens of “They’re Made out of Meat.” He is also a 1960s’ New Left vet with a history of activism and an intact (if battered) radical ideology.

The Left Behind novels (about the so-called “Rapture” in which all the born-agains ascend straight to heaven) are among the bestselling Christian books in the US, describing in lurid detail the adventures of those “left behind” to battle the Anti-Christ. Put Bisson and the Born-Agains together, and what do you get? The Left Left Behind —a sardonic, merciless, tasteless, take-no-prisoners satire of the entire apocalyptic enterprise that spares no one-predatory preachers, goth lingerie, Pacifca radio, Indian casinos, gangsta rap, and even “art cars” at Burning Man.

Plus: “Special Relativity,” a one-act drama that answers the question: When Albert Einstein, Paul Robeson, J. Edgar Hoover are raised from the dead at an anti-Bush rally, which one wears the dress? As with all Outspoken Author books, there is a deep interview and autobiography: at length, in-depth, no-holds-barred and all-bets of: an extended tour though the mind and work, the history and politics of our Outspoken Author. Surprises are promised.

The explosion of wealth and development in downtown L.A. is a thing of wonder. But regardless of how big and shiny our buildings get, we should not forget the ones this wealth and development has overlooked and pushed out. This is the context for Phillips’ novella The Underbelly, as a semi-homeless Vietnam vet named Magrady searches for a wheelchair-bound friend gone missing from Skid Row - a friend who might be working a dangerous scheme against major players. Magrady’s journey is a solo sortie in which the fashback-prone protagonist must deal with the impact of gentrifcation; take-no-prisoners community organizers; an unfinching cop from his past in Vietnam; an elderly sexpot out for his bones; a lusted-after magical skull; chronic-lovin’ knuckleheads; and the perils of chili cheese fries at midnight. Combining action, humor and a street level gritty POV, Underbelly is illustrated with photos and drawings.

Plus: a rollicking interview wherein Phillips rifs on Ghetto Lit, politics, noir and the proletariat, the good negroes and bad knee-grows of pop culture, Redd Foxx and Lord Buckley, and wrestles with the future of books in the age of want.

When President Tomas Jeferson sent Lewis and Clark to explore the West, he told them to look especially for mammoths. Jefferson had seen bones and tusks of the great beasts in Virginia, and he suspected—he hoped!—that they might still roam the Great Plains. In Eleanor Arnason’s imaginative alternate history, they do: shaggy herds thunder over the grasslands, living symbols of the oncoming struggle between the Native peoples and the European invaders. And in an unforgettable saga that soars from the badlands of the Dakotas to the icy wastes of Siberia, from the Russian Revolution to the American Indian Movement protests of the 1960s, Arnason tells of a modern woman’s struggle to use the weapons of DNA science to fulfll the ancient promises of her Lakota heritage.

Plus: “Writing During World War Tree,” a politically un-correct take on multiculturalism from an SF point-of-view; and an Outspoken Interview that takes you straight into the heart and mind of one of today’s edgiest and most uncompromising speculative authors.

In the year since its founding—and on a mere shoestring—PM Press has risen to the formidable challenge of publishing and distributing knowledge and entertainment for the struggles ahead. With over 40 releases in 2009, we have published an impressive and stimulating array of literature, art, music, politics, and culture. Using every available medium, we’ve succeeded in connecting those hungry for ideas and information to those putting them into practice.

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PM PRESS was founded at the end of 2007 by a small collection of folks with decades of publishing, media, and organizing experience. PM cofounder Ramsey Kanaan started AK Press as a young teenager in Scotland almost 30 years ago and, together with his fellow PM Press coconspirators, has published and distributed hundreds of books, pamphlets, CDs, and DVDs. Members of PM have founded enduring book fairs, spearheaded victorious tenant organizing campaigns, and worked closely with bookstores, academic conferences, and even rock bands to deliver political and challenging ideas to all walks of life. We’re old enough to know what we’re doing and young enough to know what’s at stake.