Robert Charles Wilson Books In Order

Spin Saga Books In Publication Order

  1. Spin (2005)
  2. Axis (2007)
  3. Vortex (2011)

Standalone Novels In Publication Order

  1. A Hidden Place (1986)
  2. Memory Wire (1987)
  3. Gypsies (1988)
  4. The Divide (1989)
  5. A Bridge of Years (1991)
  6. The Harvest (1992)
  7. Mysterium (1994)
  8. Darwinia (1998)
  9. Bios (1999)
  10. The Chronoliths (2001)
  11. Blind Lake (2003)
  12. Julian Comstock (2009)
  13. Burning Paradise (2013)
  14. The Affinities (2015)
  15. Last Year (2016)

Short Stories/Novellas In Publication Order

  1. Julian (2006)

Collections In Publication Order

  1. The Perseids and Other Stories (1995)

The Year’s Top Ten Tales of Science Fiction Anthology Books In Publication Order

  1. The Year’s Top Ten Tales of Science Fiction 2 (2010)
  2. The Year’s Top Ten Tales of Science Fiction 3 (2011)
  3. The Year’s Top Ten Tales of Science Fiction 4 (2012)
  4. The Year’s Top Ten Tales of Science Fiction 5 (2013)
  5. The Year’s Top Ten Tales of Science Fiction 6 (2014)
  6. The Year’s Top Ten Tales of Science Fiction 7 (2015)
  7. The Year’s Top Ten Tales of Science Fiction 8 (2016)
  8. The Year’s Top Ten Tales of Science Fiction 9 (2017)
  9. The Year’s Top Ten Tales of Science Fiction 10 (2018)

Anthologies In Publication Order

  1. Northern Stars (1994)
  2. New Skies: An Anthology of Today’s Science Fiction (2003)
  3. The Year’s Top Ten Tales of Science Fiction 2 (2010)
  4. Season of Wonder (2012)

Spin Saga Book Covers

Standalone Novels Book Covers

Short Stories/Novellas Book Covers

Collections Book Covers

The Year’s Top Ten Tales of Science Fiction Anthology Book Covers

Anthologies Book Covers

Robert Charles Wilson Books Overview

Spin

One night in October when he was ten years old, Tyler Dupree stood in his back yard and watched the stars go out. They all flared into brilliance at once, then disappeared, replaced by a flat, empty black barrier. He and his best friends, Jason and Diane Lawton, had seen what became known as the Big Blackout. It would shape their lives. The effect is worldwide. The sun is now a featureless disk a heat source, rather than an astronomical object. The moon is gone, but tides remain. Not only have the world’s artificial satellites fallen out of orbit, their recovered remains are pitted and aged, as though they’d been in space far longer than their known lifespans. As Tyler, Jason, and Diane grow up, a space probe reveals a bizarre truth: The barrier is artificial, generated by huge alien artifacts. Time is passing faster outside the barrier than inside more than a hundred million years per year on Earth. At this rate, the death throes of the sun are only about forty years in our future. Jason, now a promising young scientist, devotes his life to working against this slow moving apocalypse. Diane throws herself into hedonism, marrying a sinister cult leader who’s forged a new religion out of the fears of the mas*ses. Earth sends terraforming machines to Mars to let the onrush of time do its work, turning the planet green. Next they send humans and immediately get back an emissary with thousands of years of stories to tell about the settling of Mars. Then Earth’s probes reveal that an identical barrier has appeared around Mars. Jason, desperate, seeds near space with self replicating machines that will scatter copies of themselves outward from the sun and report back on what they find. Life on Earth is about to get much, much stranger.

Axis

Wildly praised by readers and critics alike, Robert Charles Wilson’s Spin won science fiction s highest honor, the Hugo Award for Best Novel.

Now, in Spin s direct sequel, Wilson takes us to the ‘world next door’ the planet engineered by the mysterious Hypotheticals to support human life, and connected to Earth by way of the Arch that towers hundreds of miles over the Indian Ocean. Humans are colonizing this new world and, predictably, fiercely exploiting its resources, chiefly large deposits of oil in the western deserts of the continent of Equatoria.

Lise Adams is a young woman attempting to uncover the mystery of her father’s disappearance ten years earlier. Turk Findley is an ex sailor and sometimes drifter. They come together when an infall of cometary dust seeds the planet with tiny remnant Hypothetical machines. Soon, this seemingly hospitable world will become very alien indeed as the nature of time is once again twisted, by entities unknown.

Vortex

Vortex tells the story of Turk Findley, the protagonist introduced in Axis, who is transported ten thousand years into the future by the mysterious entities called the Hypotheticals. In this future humanity exists on a chain of planets connected by Hypothetical gateways; but Earth itself is a dying world, effectively quarantined. Turk and his young friend Isaac Dvali are taken up by a community of fanatics who use them to enable a passage to the dying Earth, where they believe a prophecy of human/Hypothetical contact will be fulfilled. The prophecy is only partly true, however, and Turk must unravel the truth about the nature and purpose of the Hypotheticals before they carry him on a journey through warped time to the end of the universe itself.

A Hidden Place

In the hard years of the Depression, young Travis lives with his uncle and aunt. Upstairs lives the mysterious Anna. Anna says she’s going to be ‘changing’, and she needs Travis’s help…
for purposes she won’t explain. What follows is a tale of passion, terror, and hope, opening out to a great, dark, and unsuspected universe.

A Bridge of Years

A secluded Pacific Northwest cottage becomes a door to the past for Tom Winter, who travels back to the New York City of 1962, followed by a human killing machine that he alone must stop.

Mysterium

In a top-secret government installation near the small town of Two Rivers, Michigan, scientists are investigating a mysterious object discovered several years earlier. Late one evening, the local residents observe strange lights coming from the laboratory. The next morning, they awake to find that their town was literally cut off from the rest of the world…
and thrust into a new one!

Soon the town is discovered by the bewildered leaders of this new world–at which point, the people of Two Rivers realize that they’ve arrived in a rigid theocracy. The authorities, known as the Bureau de la Covenance Religieuse, have ordered Linneth Stone, a young ethnologist, to analyze the arrivals and report her findings to the Lieutenant in charge.

What Linneth finds will challenge the philosophical basis of her society and lead inexorably to a struggle for power centering on the mysterious object that Two Rivers’s government scientists were studying when the town slipped between worlds.

Darwinia

In 1912, history was changed by the Miracle, when the old world of Europe was replaced by Darwinia, a strange land of nightmarish jungle and antedeluvian monsters. To some, the Miracle is an act of divine retribution; to others, it is an opportunity to carve out a new empire. Leaving American now ruled by religious fundamentalism, young Guilford Law travels to Darwinia on a mission of discovery that will take him further than he can possibly imagine…
to a shattering revelation about mankind’s destiny in the universe. Darwinia is a 1999 Hugo Award Nominee for Best Novel.

Bios

In the 22nd century, humankind has colonized the solar system. Starflight is possible but hugely expensive, so humakind’s efforts are focussed on Isis, the one nearby Earthlike world. Isis is verdant, Edenic, rich with complex DNA based plant and animal life. And every molecule of Isian life is spectacularly toxic to human beings. The entire planet is a permanent Level Four Hot Zone. Despite that, Isis is the most interesting discovery of the millennium: a parallel biology with lessons to teach us about our own nature. It’s also the hardest of hardship posts, the loneliest place in the universe. Zoe Fisher was born to explore Isis. Literally. Cloned and genetically engineered by a faction within the hothouse politics of Earth, Zoe is optimized to face Isis’s terrors. Now at last Zoe has arrived on Isis. But there are secrets implanted within her that not even she suspects and the planet itself has secrets that will change our understanding of life in the universe. Bursting with ideas, replete with human insight, Bios is science fiction in the grand tradition: a novel of bravery, exploration, and discovery in a universe charged with awe.

The Chronoliths

Scott Warden is a man haunted by the past and soon to be haunted by the future. In early twenty first century Thailand, Scott is an expatriate slacker. Then, one day, he inadvertently witnesses an impossible event: the violent appearance of a 200 foot stone pillar in the forested interior. Its arrival collapses trees for a quarter mile around its base, freezing ice out of the air and emitting a burst of ionizing radiation. It appears to be composed of an exotic form of matter. And the inscription chiseled into it commemorates a military victory sixteen years in the future. Shortly afterwards, another, larger pillar arrives in the center of Bangkok obliterating the city and killing thousands. Over the next several years, human society is transformed by these mysterious arrivals from, seemingly, our own near future. Who is the warlord ‘Kuin’ whose victories they note? Scott wants only to rebuild his life. But some strange loop of causality keeps drawing him in, to the central mystery and a final battle with the future. The Chronoliths is a 2002 Hugo Award Nominee for Best Novel and the winner of the 2002 John W. Campbell Memorial Award.

Blind Lake

Robert Charles Wilson, says The New York Times, ‘writes superior science fiction thrillers.’ His Darwinia won Canada’s Aurora Award; his most recent novel, The Chronoliths, won the prestigious John W. Campbell Memorial Award. Now he tells a gripping tale of alien contact and human love in a mysterious but hopeful universe. At Blind Lake, a large federal research installation in northern Minnesota, scientists are using a technology they barely understand to watch everyday life in a city of lobster like aliens upon a distant planet. They can’t contact the aliens in any way or understand their language. All they can do is watch. Then, without warning, a military cordon is imposed on the Blind Lake site. All communication with the outside world is cut off. Food and other vital supplies are delivered by remote control. No one knows why. The scientists, nevertheless, go on with their research. Among them are Nerissa Iverson and the man she recently divorced, Raymond Scutter. They continue to work together despite the difficult conditions and the bitterness between them. Ray believes their efforts are doomed; that culture is arbitrary, and the aliens will forever be an enigma. Nerissa believes there is a commonality of sentient thought, and that our failure to understand is our own ignorance, not a fact of nature. The behavior of the alien she has been tracking seems to be developing an elusive narrative logic and she comes to feel that the alien is somehow, impossibly, aware of the project’s observers. But her time is running out. Ray is turning hostile, stalking her. The military cordon is tightening. Understanding had better come soon…
.

Julian Comstock

From the Hugo winning author of Spin, an exuberant adventure in a post climate change AmericaIn the reign of President Deklan Comstock, a reborn United States is struggling back to prosperity. Over a century after the Efflorescence of Oil, after the Fall of the Cities, after the Plague of Infertility, after the False Tribulation, after the days of the Pious Presidents, the sixty stars and thirteen stripes wave from the plains of Athabaska to the national capital in New York City. In Colorado Springs, the Dominion sees to the nation’s spiritual needs. In Labrador, the Army wages war on the Dutch. America, unified, is rising once again. Then out of Labrador come tales of a new Ajax Captain Commongold, the Youthful Hero of the Saguenay. The ordinary people follow his adventures in the popular press. The Army adores him. The President is troubled. Especially when the dashing Captain turns out to be his nephew Julian, son of the falsely accused and executed Bryce. Treachery and intrigue dog Julian s footsteps. Hairsbreadth escapes and daring rescues fill his days. Stern resolve and tender sentiment dice for Julian s soul, while his admiration for the works of the Secular Ancients, and his adherence to the evolutionary doctrines of the heretical Darwin, set him at fatal odds with the hierarchy of the Dominion. Plague and fire swirl around the Presidential palace when at last he arrives with the acclamation of the mob. As told by Julian s best friend and faithful companion, a rustic yet observant lad from the west, this tale of the 22nd Century asks and answers the age old question: Do you want to tell the truth, or do you want to tell a story?

The Perseids and Other Stories

Robert Charles Wilson’s time has come. His first novel from Tor, Darwinia, was a finalist for science fiction’s Hugo award, and a 1 Locus bestseller in paperback. His next novel, Bios, is a critical and commercial success. Now Wilson’s brilliant short science fiction is available in book form for the first time. Beginning with ‘The Perseids,’ winner of Canada’s national SF award, this collection showcases Wilson’s suppleness and strength: bravura ideas, scientific rigor, and living, breathing human beings facing choices that matter. Also included among the several stories herein are the acclaimed Hugo Award finalist ‘Divided by Infinity’ and three new stories written specifically for this collection. AUTHORBIO: ROBERT CHARLES WILSON lives in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

The Year’s Top Ten Tales of Science Fiction 2

An unabridged audio collection of the best of the best science fiction stories published in 2009 by current and emerging masters of the genre, as narrated by top voice talents. In Erosion, by Ian Creasey, A man tests the limits of his exo suit prior to leaving a dying Earth. In As Women Fight, by Sara Genge, a hunter, in a society of body switchers, has no time to train for a fight to inhabit his wife’s body. In A Story, with Beans, by Steven Gould, the role of religion in a dystopian future plagued with metal eating bugs is considered. In Events Preceding the Helvetican Renaissance, by John Kessel, a monk, in the far future, steals the only copy of a set of plays from a repressive regime and uses this loot to free his people. In On the Human Plan, by Jay Lake, a mysterious alien visits a far future, dying Earth in search of the death of Death. Set in the Jackaroo sequence, Crimes and Glory, by Paul McAuley, a detective chases a thief to recover alien technology that both aliens and humanity are desperate to recover. Set in the Lovecraftian Boojum universe, Mongoose by Sarah Monette and Elizabeth Bear, a vermin hunter and his tentacled assistant come on board a space station to hunt toves and raths. In Before My Last Breath, by Robert Reed, a geologist discovers a strange fossil in a coal mine that leads to the discovery of a peculiar graveyard. In The Island, by Peter Watts, a woman on a spaceship must decide whether to place a stargate near an alien society that will ultimately destroy it. Finally, This Peaceable Land; or, The Unbearable Vision of Harriet Beecher Stowe, by Robert Charles Wilson, is an alternate American Civil War history in which the war was never fought, slavery gradually disappeared, and Uncle Tom s Cabin was never published. More than 9.5 hours on 8 CDs, read by Tom Dheere, Vanessa Hart, and J. P. Linton.

Northern Stars

A collection of stories, compiled by a World Fantasy Award winning anthologist and a Canadian scholar, displays the talents of William Gibson, Charles de Lint, Spider Robinson, and many other Canadian fantasy writers, and includes introductory essays and notes.

New Skies: An Anthology of Today’s Science Fiction

New Skies…
imaginative stories for a new generation of science fiction fans. Here are writers such as Philip K. Dick, Orson Scott Card, Jane Yolen, Greg Bear, Kim Stanley Robinson, Steven Gould, Connie Willis, Spider Robinson, and many more. Here is a careening adventure along the outside of a tower looming miles above the ground, and a tale of desperate survival on the deadly surface of the Moon. Here is a world in which children divorce their parents, and the story of a four dimensional boy in a three dimensional world. Here are future young people rebuilding after terrible disasters, and here is a story of the future development of baseball on Mars.

Nightmarish or whimsical, irreverent or swashbuckling, each of these stories is an adventure in imagination. Journey from the here and now into New Skies.

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