Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    The Memory of Whiteness: A Scientific Romance
    Unavailable
    The Memory of Whiteness: A Scientific Romance
    Unavailable
    The Memory of Whiteness: A Scientific Romance
    Ebook393 pages7 hours

    The Memory of Whiteness: A Scientific Romance

    By Kim Stanley Robinson

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    An early novel from Science Fiction legend Kim Stanley Robinson, The Memory of Whiteness is now available for the first time in decades.

    In 3229 A.D., human civilization is scattered among the planets, moons, and asteroids of the solar system. Billions of lives depend on the technology derived from the breakthroughs of the greatest physicist of the age, Arthur Holywelkin. But in the last years of his life, Holywelkin devoted himself to building a strange, beautiful, and complex musical instrument that he called The Orchestra.

    Johannes Wright has earned the honor of becoming the Ninth Master of Holywelkin's Orchestra. Follow him on his Grand Tour of the Solar System, as he journeys down the gravity well toward the sun, impelled by a destiny he can scarcely understand, and is pursued by mysterious foes who will tell him anything except the reason for their enmity.

    At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateJan 7, 2014
    ISBN9781466862197
    Unavailable
    The Memory of Whiteness: A Scientific Romance
    Author

    Kim Stanley Robinson

    Kim Stanley Robinson was born in 1952. After travelling and working around the world, he settled in his beloved California. He is widely regarded as the finest science fiction writer working today, noted as much for the verisimilitude of his characters as the meticulously researched scientific basis of his work. He has won just about every major sf award there is to win and is the author of the massively successful and highly praised ‘Mars’ series.

    Read more from Kim Stanley Robinson

    Related to The Memory of Whiteness

    Related ebooks

    Science Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Kim Stanley Robinson Holds Out Hope

      Oct 7, 2020

      There’s something about stories. We cherish them. Teach them. Pass them down to the next generation. Stories create a sacred space that humans have always respected. And science fiction takes us one step further. It gives us the space to imagine what

      8 min read

    • Article

      By the Light of the Moon, the Poles of the Earth: The Remarkable Ways Animals Get Around.: The remarkable ways animals get around.

      Jul 11, 2013

      Back in January, science news was abuzz with reports that the lowly dung-beetle—shellacked trundler of balled-up excreta, stuck with one of nature’s least glamorous jobs—used a majestic method to find its way around: the Milky Way. The critters had a

      10 min read

    • Article

      'The Dispatcher' Is A Short Stroll In A Strange Neighborhood

      May 31, 2017

      John Scalzi's new novel — originally an audio book — imagines the implications of a world where 999 out of 1,000 murder victims pop back into existence, naked, confused and safe in their own beds.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Collaborations With Nature

      Aug 1, 2022

      Collaborations With Nature
      5 min read

    • Article

      Confessions of A Rock Star

      Oct 28, 2022

      Confessions of A Rock Star
      9 min read

    • Article

      The Parasitic Workplace

      Apr 15, 2022

      The Parasitic Workplace
      5 min read

    • Article

      We’re On A Planet Here!

      Jun 1, 2022

      We’re On A Planet Here!
      6 min read

    • Article

      Kim Stanley Robinson

      Sep 9, 2020

      IT IS, KIM STANLEY ROBINSON NOTES, QUITE possible “to conclude that we’re doomed, that the trajectory we’re on is so powerful that we won’t get our shit together fast enough to avoid a mass extinction event and total catastrophe”. But what if humanit

      3 min read

    • Article

      'The Raven Tower' Rises From Shakespearean Foundations

      Feb 26, 2019

      Ann Leckie's new fantasy novel is packed with family intrigue, throne-room maneuvering and nods to Hamlet in its story of a son who comes home to find his father missing and his uncle in power.

      2 min read

    • Article

      Tree Time and Mortality in the Eyes of Alfred Hitchcock, Richard Powers, and Ursula K. Le Guin

      Oct 16, 2018

      1. Trees tell time when they cease to live. Concentric bands show up clean and countable, the index of so many wet and dry seasons past, but only when the end has been determined, when no more rings will be added. The tree is always recording, but it

      11 min read

    • Article

      Katharine Kilalea

      Dec 15, 2017

      Katharine Kilalea
      37 min read

    • Article

      Escaping the Noise

      May 28, 2020

      Escaping the Noise
      11 min read

    • Article

      An Ode to Being Read To

      Sep 16, 2022

      An Ode to Being Read To
      2 min read

    • Article

      Table Talk

      Jun 1, 2022

      Table Talk
      10 min read

    • Article

      Easy Does It

      Mar 18, 2022

      Easy Does It
      8 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Memory of Whiteness

    3.5/5

    5 ratings3 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      Set about a thousand years in the future, this space opera follows the story of famous musician Johannes Wright as he embarks on a grand tour of the solar system, progressing from Pluto to Mercury and beset along the way by sabotage and assassination attempts by a mysterious cult known as "the Greys." This book was obviously a breeding ground for ideas Robinson later used in his more famous Mars Trilogy, but it also stands on its own as a cool little novel that works with a number of different themes. As usual with Robinson, advanced scientific theories rear their ugly heads (even in discussions about music), but you can hardly fault him for being true to the genre's name. Personally I found the most interesting parts to revolve around the character of Dent Ios, a journalist who falls in with the tour and later aids the chief of security in unravelling the mystery surrounding the Greys, despite his inexperience and incompetence. The ending also came to a rather cinematic climax, which pandered to my tastes perfectly well.
    • 4/5
      i liked this one quite a lot. quite different from Robinson's usual story. it's a far future sf, vividly set on a space opera stage. makes me think of stuff like Keith Roberts' Pavane, that kind of story, though it's easy enough to see Jack Vance in it too. the worlds are interesting, but the big deal is the main conceit: a galactic culture based on music, the nature of the interface between the audience and the work, and the nature and influence of artistic principles in engendering change. art, then, is always in the best sense revolutionary. starts with an Einstein quote: "It is the theory which decides what we can observe." and the whole thing, the physics of the whole culture, the diversity of models idea can generate, and the sort of synesthesia shorthand by which the idea moves out from the work, it's all a series of riffs on that one quote. nice.
    • 2/5
      In the very far future, when humanity has colonized the solar system, a musician embarks on a tour with an instrument developed by the man whose physics power civilization. He aspires to make music that corresponds to that physics, which may mean that listening to the music shows you your past and future, completely determined. There’s also a conspiracy or two around whether he’ll be allowed to give his concerts. Though early on there’s an exchange about the amusing idea of writing about music, the book doesn’t escape that inherent problem – especially for a musically untrained person like me, much of the writing was essentially meaningless. Robinson’s later genius for landscape is apparent in stretches as he describes coming home to Mars and then to Earth, but mostly I felt he was wasting his time writing about music in a setting over a thousand years from now, both of which worked to distance me from the plot and characters.