Kim Stanley Robinson environmental hero of the year

Time magazine recently named KSR one of its heroes of the environment for 2008.

I adore Oliver Morton, who wrote this article for Time. He has also written a wonderful book called Mapping Mars about humanity's ongoing fascination with the red planet (maybe even or especially as a site for utopian dreaming and visions?).

Following on from Peter's comment about rounding out the semester with a happy book, I would particularly like to highlight the line Morton writes here: "Life is lessened if the imagination fails to offer futures we can envision better than any past".

One of the points that Morton makes in Mapping Mars is that Robinson's writing is often a form of restitution or atonement for the mistakes that we have made in the past - particularly in his rewriting of the Western American landscape.

While Robinson has moments of beautiful prose (especially when writing about encounters with nature in the tradition of Gary Snyder etc) - unfortunately, sometimes his writing is also more second rate.

But he will always remain an ideas man and visionary. His books are definitely filled with soaring optimism.