Had great fun interviewing Kim Stanley Robinson, author of the award-winning Mars trilogy, which began with Red Mars. We talked a lot about his new novel, Galileo’s Dream, which is all about Galileo’s life and his fight for the truth and science against the Church, and how he occasionally gets sucked up through his telescope and transported to the year 3020 to help some tall, strange looking people on the moons of Jupiter — yes, those Galilean moons.
Stan (which is the name he goes by) also talked a lot about writing and how he got started and what sort of science fiction writer he considers himself, who his influences are, and what he hopes readers get out of reading his books. After the interview we also talked a little about Hollywood, movies, and optioning books. Stan talked about his conversations with James Cameron, who was one of the first people to option Red Mars, and how apparently Cameron had his own “Mars” story he wanted to tell, which is why he returned the option.
Stan then did a reading and had a great Q&A session, going into entertaining and at times hilarious detail about the life of Galileo Galilei, and providing some rare and unknown secrets about the scientist’s life that he discovered while researching him and passed along to us.
The interview is recorded and should be appearing in Episode 26 of BookBanter on February 15th. Thanks go to Sunny Baadkar and the Avid Reader in Davis for help setting up and hosting the interview.
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