Three Californias: The Wild Shore, The Gold Coast, and Pacific Edge

Before Kim Stanley Robinson terraformed Mars, he wrote three science fiction novels set in Orange County, California, where he grew up. These alternate futures—one a post-apocalypse, one an if-this-goes-on future reminiscent of Philip K. Dick, and one an ecological utopia—form a whole that illuminates, enchants, and inspires—collected here as Three Californias.

What if... there was a limited nuclear war that left the United States blockaded, fragmented, the few survivors living in the ruins of a once-great nation?

What if... this goes on, and technology continues to accelerate, and power continues to be consolidated into corporate culture, a developer’s dream world gone mad: an endless sprawl of condos, freeways, and malls, and designer drugs?

What if... a revolution happens, and the US addresses climate change in a responsible way. Is a future green Utopia all that great when you’re young and in love?

This Tor Essentials edition of Three Californias includes an introduction by Francis Spufford, bestselling author of Golden Hill and Red Plenty.

“[Robinson] invites us to share his characters’ intensely personal, intensely local attachment to what they have. The result may shame you into entertaining new hope for the future.”

—The New York Times on Pacific Edge