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Red Moon Hardcover – October 23, 2018

by Kim Stanley Robinson (Author)
4.0 4.0 out of 5 stars 1,298 ratings
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Red Moon is a magnificent novel of space exploration and political revolution from New York Times bestselling author Kim Stanley Robinson.

It is thirty years from now, and we have colonized the moon.

American Fred Fredericks is making his first trip, his purpose to install a communications system for China's Lunar Science Foundation. But hours after his arrival he witnesses a murder and is forced into hiding.

It is also the first visit for celebrity travel reporter Ta Shu. He has contacts and influence, but he too will find that the moon can be a perilous place for any traveler.

Finally, there is Chan Qi. She is the daughter of the Minister of Finance, and without doubt a person of interest to those in power. She is on the moon for reasons of her own, but when she attempts to return to China, in secret, the events that unfold will change everything -- on the moon, and on Earth.
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  1. Print length
    464 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Orbit
  4. Publication date
    October 23, 2018
  5. Dimensions
    6.5 x 1.5 x 9.5 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0316262374
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0316262378
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"...fresh and exciting. Another stellar effort from one of the masters of the genre."―Booklist (starred) on Red Moon

"Enjoyable and thought-provoking...[Robinson] is one of contemporary science fiction's great scene-setters."―SF Chronicle on Red Moon

"...as convincingly textured and observant as we've come to expect from one of the finest writers of his generation."―Locus magazine on Red Moon

"...as nuanced a portrait of connection between two people - two people who may never admit out loud that they've come to care for each other even the slightest bit, even if only as partners in survival -- as we've seen in science fiction in quite some time. Robinson nails the dynamic. Bravo."―SCI-FI magazine on Red Moon

"New York may be underwater, but it's better than ever."―The New Yorker on New York 2140

"Massively enjoyable."―The Washington Post on New York 2140

"Science fiction is threaded everywhere through culture nowadays, and it would take an act of critical myopia to miss the fact that Robinson is one of the world's finest working novelists, in any genre."―Guardian on New York 2140

About the Author

Kim Stanley Robinson is a New York Times bestseller and winner of the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards. He is the author of more than twenty books, including the bestselling Mars trilogy and the critically acclaimed Forty Signs of Rain, The Years of Rice and Salt, and 2312. In 2008, he was named a "Hero of the Environment" by Time magazine, and he works with the Sierra Nevada Research Institute. He lives in Davis, California.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Orbit; First Edition (October 23, 2018)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 464 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0316262374
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0316262378
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.5 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.5 x 1.5 x 9.5 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.0 4.0 out of 5 stars 1,298 ratings

About the author

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Kim Stanley Robinson

Kim Stanley Robinson

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Kim Stanley Robinson is a winner of the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Awards. He is the author of eleven previous books, including the bestselling Mars trilogy and the critically acclaimed Fifty Degrees Below, Forty Signs of Rain, The Years of Rice and Salt, and Antarctica--for which he was sent to the Antarctic by the U.S. National Science Foundation as part of their Antarctic Artists and Writers' Program. He lives in Davis, California.

Customer reviews

4 out of 5 stars
4 out of 5
1,298 global ratings
The Expansion of the Communist System
5 Stars
The Expansion of the Communist System
The complex maneuvering in this book of all the different power groups in 21st century China, parts of the security apparatus, scientific communities, clan dynasties, and low level district officials fits with my limited knowledge of present day China. Expanded to their lunar settlements. There are revolutionaries and yet without anyone realizing it the future of the moon may rest in the strange true communal base, and the fact a healthy child is conceived and born on the moon, even though it gestates a few months under earth's gravity.
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Top reviews from the United States

Haunted Reader
5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating, Complex, SF
Reviewed in the United States on August 11, 2023
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Kim Stanley Robinson's RED MOON 🌙 [2018] is a complicated, complex, fascinating novel, very politically and scientifically aware. It also reprises some characters from his incredible 1997 novel, ANTARCTICA, including Chinese Feng Shui philosopher and poet (and "Cloudstar" for his Internet travelogue musings) Ta Shu, who is a perfect character: both Wise (intensely), calm, able to see more than one side of a situation, Poetic and accomplished in the study and practice of Feng Shui, a "geomancer." Yet he is also vulnerable and accountable: his age, his attachment to his mother, his physical ailments due to age and extensive travel, his compassion for the book's Feckless Heroes: American Neurodivergent Quantum Mechanic specialist Fred Fredericks and Moon-pregnant [Forbidden] "princessling" Chinese resistance leader Chang Qi. Although laden with political musings and cultural and historical references [China] and Geopolitics [particularly in China and the U.S.], RED MOON is also non-stop adventure...and the cliffhanger! ending left me longing for a sequel! (It's almost 5 years since Release of RED MOON!)
4 people found this helpful
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Mr. Dextrose
4.0 out of 5 stars Poly Science Fiction
Reviewed in the United States on April 15, 2019
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KSR continues to write interesting commentary on the state of world politics with a scifi framework. The science in the capitol series, the Mars series and others are reflected in this book. I was disappointed in what I saw as an abrupt ending but I assume one or two sequels will be forthcoming. I give it 4 stars instead of 5 because I'd like a bit more scifi. The current world with Trump in it is depressing enough and I'd like to get a little farther away from it when doing recreational reading.
4 people found this helpful
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Joe Karpierz
3.0 out of 5 stars Not up to the quality of Robinson's recent works
Reviewed in the United States on January 1, 2019
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Kim Stanley Robinson is something of an oddity in the field of science fiction these days. While the awards finalists lists are dominated by a group of extremely diverse relative newcomers, Robinson is old guard. He doesn't fit the demographic of today's genre writers. He's a 66 year old white male, one that is having a nice late career surge. While he's probably most well-known for his Mars Trilogy of books from back in the 1990s (RED MARS, GREEN MARS, BLUE MARS), his late period novels have garnered him a lot of attention, making the Hugo finalist list with NEW YORK 2140 and 2312 (as an aside, I think a better book, AURORA, should have made the list as well).

Robinson's latest book is RED MOON, a novel that is apparently in the same timeline as that of New York 2140. The moon has been colonized mostly by the Chinese; they basically control the south polar region of the moon, while the north polar region is left for everyone else. The year is 2047, a year that I felt was wildly optimistic to have full colonization of our satellite until I read that the Chinese are launching an expedition to the far side of the moon, and I'm now wondering just how far off Robinson really is.

The story, such as it is, kicks off with an American bringing a revolutionary (now that I think about it, that's a funny way of putting it) quantum communications device to the moon as part of a deal made with the Chinese administration there. He gets caught up in a successful assassination attempt, and thus begins the wild ride of Fred Fredericks (the American) and his unlikely involvement with a Chinese revolutionary named Qi as they traverse the moon north to south and back again, and while they're at it, travel back and forth from the Earth to the Moon as well. But all that running around the moon and the Earth have almost nothing to do with that communications device. That little item was just a way to get the story started.

Robinson recently stated in an interview in Locus magazine that RED MOON was about the Chinese colonization of the moon. Quite frankly, I don't buy that. Qi's father is involved in the latest Chinese dynastic succession on Earth. Qi is a wild card in that story. Her father is involved, but she is extremely outspoken in her opposition to the Party. She is also pregnant, which happened while on the moon and is not allowed. She is sent to earth, along with Fred, early on in the story to get her off the moon and hidden so the embarrassment to her and her father can be hidden from the authorities. From that point on, the story deviates from that of Fred and the communications device to that of the next great Chinese dynastic succession. One note about Qi's pregnancy. I'm not really sure what it adds to the story, unless I'm missing some subtle point (always a possibility). There certainly is a great deal of symbolism between her pregnancy and the new regime on Earth. But beyond that, I'm at a bit of a loss.

And this is why I don't think this book is about the Chinese colonization of the moon. Just as Robinson originally wanted to write a book about financial markets and ended up with NEW YORK 2140, he wanted to write a book about the next great Chinese dynastic succession, and he was able to do so by setting it in the future and showing how technological advances would affect that succession, while at the same time showing that the succession really still is a succession, no matter what causes and influence it.

Robinson is well known for being an ardent supporter of infodumps, and is not shy about including them in all of his novels. RED MOON is no different, although this time around the infodumps are not always about science - although we get more than our share about the colonization of the moon. They are about Chinese philosophy, government, finances, history, and motivation.
They are about Chinese society, and eventually how all these things led to where we are in RED MOON. To this reviewer, it all points to the fact that Robinson wanted to write about the succession, not about moon colonization. The colonization was just a convenient vehicle for telling his story.

Yes, I know, who I am to say what Robinson's motivation really was for writing the book? I can't argue with that point of view. To put a bit of a gentler spin on the novel, it sure seems to me that he wanted to tell the succession story, and that I could be wrong about that.

Don't get me wrong. RED MOON is well written. As was once put to me about something else entirely, it's written in a way that would make your high school literature teacher proud that you read it. But like most of Robinson's other novels recently - the notable exception being AURORA - it's light on traditional story telling structure and plot.

As with NEW YORK 2140, multiple narrators are used in the audio production. I liked the way the multiple narrators were used in that book, but not so much here in RED MOON, and I'm not sure why. I guess they just didn't work for me this time around. Also, I feel like Joy Osmanski was under-utilized. She read very few chapters in comparison to the two male narrators. In any event, the narration was serviceable and worked well enough; it just wasn't as outstanding as the narration in NEW YORK 2140.

I could say the same for the novel itself.
22 people found this helpful
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Cissa
5.0 out of 5 stars Lots of intriguing ideas about social systems- plus a solid plot
Reviewed in the United States on September 23, 2019
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I don't tend to read KSR for the plots- though I like them. I tend to read his works for the ideas.

Lots of ideas here! mostly having to do with us all being both more responsible and more represented in our various governments. I am intrigued by the idea that normal people could bring the Big Banks down by opting out; they rely on our capital to exist, and what would happen if we removed it? and put it into lo al cooperatives and credit unions instead?

I loved the brief glimpse of the moon's "free crater", where there were no secrets- but mostly people had more interesting things to do than spy on their neighbors.

I also got a better grasp of China- which is a world power, and in some ways very different from us Western powers.

The plot(s) was (were) excellent. I really liked Fred- he's clearly autistic, and his approaches and intelligence were fascinating and comprehensible.

Personally- I liked the poetry. It's terse. I like terse way more than flowery.

Very recommended, for people who like KSR's more political novels.
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R. Duncan
4.0 out of 5 stars Typically engrossing KSR writing but ends very abruptly
Reviewed in the United States on November 28, 2018
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This is written in classic KSR style - laconic pace, character driven, scientifically accurate. It’s not the best of all KSR books but it’s far from the worst either. Overall I guess it reminds me most of the “Science in the Capitol” trilogy with its mix of politics, personal, and future tech. The book ends quite abruptly - maybe a setup for a sequel, or maybe just to leave the events after the discontinuity and national upheavals triggered by the AI Little Eyeball to our imaginations?
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Top reviews from other countries

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Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars KSR é bom!
Reviewed in Brazil on November 30, 2022
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Prazer nota 10! Muito atual - Lua, China, invasões de privacidade, abusos da tecnologia...
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Chas
5.0 out of 5 stars I Enjoyed this well written story
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 2, 2022
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Geopolitical crisis, a young woman having a baby, the first birth on on the moon, an AI created by an architect of the Great Firewall, all connected in the telling of this story.
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Federico Maldonado
5.0 out of 5 stars Envolvente
Reviewed in Mexico on November 2, 2019
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Me encanta, es muy interesante, el autor es muy bueno creando un ambiente envolvente y llevando la trama
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K.A.
1.0 out of 5 stars More of a social study of China than sci-fi
Reviewed in France on September 13, 2020
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I was lured in by sci-fi premises, only to end up reading a book about Chinese culture and their Party. Not uninteresting on its own, but clearly not what I was expecting to read.
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David Badke
5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating
Reviewed in Canada on November 27, 2018
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This is not a space opera. There are no super space ships zooming around shooting at each other, no high tech armored warriors trying to kill each other. If that is what you are looking for, you will be disappointed.

This novel is brilliant and fascinating, perhaps Robinson's best work yet. It is a near future story of the chaos of a massive change in human society, involving politics and culture and history and technology (including an imergent AI). Travel to the moon is easy and quick; China has taken the lead there, and Chinese thought and culture is a major part of the story. But the characters are what makes this novel so good. Everything that happens is seen through the eyes of the three main characters and their supporters and enemies, and none of them can see it all. Events seem to be out of their control, the societal forces working for and against them seem to be more than they can handle or even survive, yet in the end the story achieves an ambiguously hopeful conclusion.

The action in this novel is usually subtle and is often seen indirectly, though it picks up pace toward the end. The action serves to support the development of the characters and gives Robinson's ideas something to hang on to; it is not the point of the book. This novel is intellectual and sometimes challenging; it will make you think about things you don't know and think differently about things you do know. As a vision of the future it is all too plausible, maybe frighteningly so, but the ending, while ambiguous, does not abandon all hope for humanity.

If you just want nonstop action, this is not your book. If you like getting your mind expanded, this book will definitely do it for you. Highly recommended.
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