Kim Stanley Robinson
I love this guy's work. Both the Mars Trilogy (Red, Green, Blue) and The Years of Rice and Salt show deep insight into culture, civilization and the politics of being. The current book is no different. Basically a biography of Galileo, Robinson provides a fascinating look at the political and cultural context for Galileo's life, work and the decisions he made. Intersperse this with a bit of 1000 year time travel to the Galilean moons of Jupiter we have jumped from historical biography to science fiction. I love that Robinsons starting point is that future humans would sacrifice two gas giant planets in the solar system as a source of energy to push a quantum time travel device into the past. Of course you would do this. And now that it is done, we have a mechanism to look at Galileo and his impact on our current scientific worldview, posit his impact of the future of humanity and dabble in explanations for a universal/scientific revelation of the identity of God (and get Galileo's thoughts on the matter while we are at it). Robinson blows my mind. Unfortunately, with all of this fascinating and interesting storyline, I found that I was not engaged in this book like I have been in the past. I was actually able to put this down for weeks at a time. Apparently it is possible for a book to be fascinating, but not engaging. But still, read this book, and then let's talk.
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