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Icehenge

3.38 of 5 stars 3.38 · rating details · 494 ratings · 35 reviews

On the North Pole of Pluto there stands an enigma: a huge circle of standing blocks of ice, built on the pattern of Earth's Stonehengebut ten times the size, standing alone at the farthest reaches of the Solar System. What is it? Who came there to build it?

The secret lies, perhaps, in the chaotic decades of the Martian Revolution, in the lost memories of those who have li

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Mass Market Paperback, 272 pages

Published September 15th 1990 by Tor Books (first published 1984)

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May 10, 2012 Christopher Hivner rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This was a novel I just couldn't get into, so much so I gave up and never finished it. It's well written from a technical standpoint and a clever idea but the middle portion of the book didn't hold my interest. The book is divided into 3 distinct parts. In the first, a mining vessel is converted into a craft capable of leaving the solar system by Americans and Russians who don't agree with the governing body in charge of Mars. Their way of getting out from under an oppressive regime is to find s...more

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Aug 24, 2011 Angela rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I loved this! It is great for people who can't get enough of KSR's Mars trilogy. It's a much earlier imagining of some of the ideas that he must have developed over years of research in order to write those later books with his amazing attention to detail. At the same time, it's a completely different kind of thing - a science fiction book that is also a mystery. We see the story told through the experiences of three characters, each story set hundreds of years apart.

In this universe people can...more

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Dec 29, 2011 Timothy Darling rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: epic, science-fiction, space

The broad style prefigures Robinson's method used in the Mars books, following an individual character, thoroughly exploring an idea from their perspective and then moving on to another. Emma Weil is very much about self awareness and the difficulty of knowing and being known, of the significance of words and actions. Her frustration with the lack of understanding her friends have for her is such a common feeling that the reader jumps right in and feels her frustration with her. I personally don...more The broad style prefigures Robinson's method used in the Mars books, following an individual character, thoroughly exploring an idea from their perspective and then moving on to another. Emma Weil is very much about self awareness and the difficulty of knowing and being known, of the significance of words and actions. Her frustration with the lack of understanding her friends have for her is such a common feeling that the reader jumps right in and feels her frustration with her. I personally don't have as much problem seeing myself as an individual who needs to communicate as I have seeing others that way.

Someone has noticed the theme of memory and advanced centenary ages. How, what and why do we remember? What sticks with us and why do we forget? If this were the actual theme, the story would be more psychological and theoretical. However, I think it is more epistomological. What do we know and how do we know it? In some cases, even our own pasts are the subjects of our research. At all times, our experience informs our interpretation of facts: Emma's friendships, Nederland's childhood trauma of the invasion of Houston, Doya's father's impressions of Nederland. Our desire to know is clean enough, but our understanding is tainted by our experience more than helped. Even Doya's father's experience with Nederland is tainted. What he interpreted as rudeness was merely anxiety and awkwardness.

SF is a literature of ideas more than a literature of characters, but Robinson's characters belie that generalization. They are deeply identifiable and deeply flawed ... and so they are real. If the writer has a problem it is in his own lack of objectivity about the characters ... they deserve some evaluation. It happens through the eyes of other characters from time to time ... but only if we can trust their perspective.

The grief we feel at forgetting, the warp we experience in knowing and separating what we know from what we want are all clear ideas in this book. Robinson is often profound, and perhaps even occasionally wise. But his writing is so addicted to perspective that the reader is forced to evaluate what is true from what is the perspective of the character. Sometimes they are far from the same thing, and sympathy for the character can obscure that fact. It's brilliant and forces the reader to retain his own perspective throughout or lose the sense of objectivity to which he is entitled as a disinterested observer. Read Robinson for his insight into human character and human foibles. But also read him for the nuggets of truth that surface, if you can distinguish them from the merely powerful.(less)

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May 25, 2011 Michael Alexander rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Wow, I really loved this. Jo Walton is completely right about this book.

4.5 stars, really. Once you get past the clunky hard SF of the first 30 pages, it's a lovely, strange, sad meditation on all the different people we are in life and the fiction that they are all one person. In grand SF fashion, it makes this concrete by giving humans the same pseudo-immortality as the later Mars books but handles memory differently, by making us slowly give up our earlier memories as we pass beyond that firs...more

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May 09, 2010 Rob rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: random-comments-review

...I liked this book a lot when I first read it and this second read has probably raised my admiration of the author another notch. It's a very well constructed tale, designed to make the reader doubt, puzzle and think. Icehenge is a good read for people who enjoyed the author's Mars trilogy but it's also a good place to start if you are not sure you're ready for three large volumes of detail on the red planet. Personally I loved the descriptive passages in those books but quite a few readers se...more

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Feb 25, 2011 Jason rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi

"Icehenge"consists of 3 first-person narratives that lead the reader through a revolution on Mars, an archeological dig in the ruins of the revolution many years after, and, finally, to the (then) planet Pluto to investigate the mysterious Icehenge of the title. All three stories interconnect. They each leave the reader with a possible 'truth' concerning the Mars Revolution and the creator of the Icehenge. In the end the reader is led to a final conclusion, but possibilities still haunt the trut...more

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Mar 21, 2010 Raj rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi

This is a book about memory, and what happens to it when humans start living four or five times their "natural" lifespan. Set in the solar system in the 22nd and 25th centuries, a giant monument is found on Pluto. Could it be the key to a forgotten rebellion on Mars?

Even early in his career, Robinson (who would later write the Mars Trilogy) seemed interested in Mars, hence a large chunk of this book being set there, and some aspects of the later series being foreshadowed here. The book raises in...more

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Feb 28, 2011 Aaron rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I didn't know about Icehenge until I saw it on my local used bookstore's shelves. I had already read and reread the Mars Trilogy, and also the follow-up collection of short pieces ('The Martians', right?). After consuming all of them, I feel like 'The Martians' is a collection of b-sides that the producer was probably right not to include in a group's bestselling record, while 'Icehenge' is like a rare live recording of the band at the local club before they got so huge...the same ideas, but dep...more

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Jul 25, 2012 Darren Vincent rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2012

This is the worst book I have read this year, and is quite possibly a top five choice for the last five years.

This book was either as bad as I thought it was or it was way too smart for me, which is quite possible. I knew that I should have bailed on this book about 1/4 of the way into it, but I decided to stick around because I was hoping that the ending would tie everything together with a clever twist or revelation. The more I hung around, the more I realized that there were fewer and fewer p...more This is the worst book I have read this year, and is quite possibly a top five choice for the last five years.

This book was either as bad as I thought it was or it was way too smart for me, which is quite possible. I knew that I should have bailed on this book about 1/4 of the way into it, but I decided to stick around because I was hoping that the ending would tie everything together with a clever twist or revelation. The more I hung around, the more I realized that there were fewer and fewer pages for this twist or revelation to take place. I was so optimistic that even with less than a page left, I kept hoping for something to take place just to make the time I spent reading this book worth it.

My first thought that I should cut my losses was when I realized that there was way to much real estate being given to explaining/describing the environment in detail. This is not normally a bad thing, but I felt as though the author was trying to fill up the pages by trying to pass off superfluous detail as creative writing.

The second clue was that the word 'Icehenge' didn't show up until almost the halfway point of the book, and even then it did not become the main focus of the book until the last 1/3. This is, by the way, the reason that I picked up the book; to find some clever connection between Stonehenge and Icehenge, as promised on the jacket.

Three stories/autobiographies from three different characters. Two of them were only mildly interesting, and by mildly, I mean that once you dug through the layers of useless description, there were only a page or two that actually intrigued me enough to make me want to turn the page on their own merit. The third story actually explores Icehenge but with zero payoff, making reading this autobiography a waste of time as well. Count in the fact that one of the stories might be misdirection and the other, which is based off of it, might be as well, then you truly put the book down after the final page to feel very unrewarded. It is like you have been promised to be taken on an exotic vacation only to be put on a slow moving/boring Greyhound bus for hours and when you arrive at your destination, you realize it is the dilapidated park in your own neighborhood.

This is a shame too, because I actually liked some of the ideas put forth in the book such as the longevity of the human life span, the funk one encounters with extra years due to a lack of purpose and the idea that longevity of memory is not included with an extended life span. But these ideas are mentioned and not truly expanded upon in a way that would have made the book more interesting. None of them would have saved the book from the fact that it did not answer its own question or at least leave me thinking in any constructive way after I turned the final page, but at least I would have been somewhat more entertained by this book.(less)

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Aug 29, 2010 Bill Ward rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction

Parts of this book seemed so familiar, I thought I had already read them. Perhaps I did read this book partway through once before, or maybe it's because I've read Red Mars and Green Mars (though I'm not sure I ever finished Green Mars, and I don't think I ever even started Blue Mars). But in any case, I finished it now.

This book is the first of his Mars books - although it is largely about the eponymous structure that gets discovered on Pluto, much of it is set on Mars and is about the history...more

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Jul 03, 2008 Nicolas rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: space-opera, immortalité, hard-science, histoire, mémoire, rayon-fantasy-et-sf

L’histoire
Ce roman(roman-mosaïque/fix-up) raconte les histoires de trois personnages dans un système solaire situé du XXIIIème au XXVIème siècle, donc assez dans le futur. A cette époque, le système est conquis jusqu’à Saturne, et les planètes plus lointaines sont inexploitées. Le récit commence avec les aventures d’Emma Weil, spécialiste en système de survie, membre de l’équipage d’un vaisseau minéralier, et qui va assister au départ d’un groupe vers l’espace profond. Pour anodin qu’il soit,...more L’histoire
Ce roman(roman-mosaïque/fix-up) raconte les histoires de trois personnages dans un système solaire situé du XXIIIème au XXVIème siècle, donc assez dans le futur. A cette époque, le système est conquis jusqu’à Saturne, et les planètes plus lointaines sont inexploitées. Le récit commence avec les aventures d’Emma Weil, spécialiste en système de survie, membre de l’équipage d’un vaisseau minéralier, et qui va assister au départ d’un groupe vers l’espace profond. Pour anodin qu’il soit, cet élément, décrit comme une anecdote d’une histoire plus grande, est la base de ce récit. En effet, quelques centaines d’années plus tard, son récit sera découvert par un historien lors de fouilles, et donnera lieu à des recherches très poussées. A partir de là, il commence à être difficile d’en parler sans dévoiler l’intrigue, je vais donc m’y arrêter. Sachez toutefois que le titre du roman fait référence à une version futuriste de Stonehenge, et que la réalité de l’Histoire est le sujet central de ce roman.

Mon avis
J’ai été assez emballé par cette histoire, racontée avec la précision toute clinique d’historiens. En effet, quelquesoit le narrateur (il n’y en a que trois, mais ils sont très différents), le récit reste à mes yeux très peu passionné, même lorsque Nederland s’enfonce doucement dans la folie ou la dépression (même si cet état amène en général assez peu de passion), ou lorsque le dernier personnage pose enfin le pied devant Icehenge. C’est là un premier point qui m’a un peu douché, ou plutôt qui m’a permis d’entrer dans cette histoire à mon rythme. L’autre point est assez étrange, c’est plutôt une pirouette de l’auteur pour nous plonger dans des affres de questionnement. il s’agit bien sûr de la très grande longévité (plus de six cent ans) accordée par les progrès de la gérontologie aux humains du futur. A première vue, ça parait enthousiasmant. Sauf que l’auteur, pour ne pas trop allonger son récit, ajoute à celle-ci une mémoire assez défaillante, qui fait que les individus gardent une mémoire sur à peu près cent ans. Alors, cette pseudo-immortalité n’est-elle de fait qu’une illusion, ou reste-t-elle utile ? Aucune idée, mais apparement, les personnages n’y attachent pas des tonnes d’importance. Peut-être est-ce là une diversion, comme a pu l’être la Bulle dans Isolation, de Greg Egan. Si c’en est une, elle est sacrément habile, puisque j’ai bien eu l’impression que, dans toute la seconde partie du récit, Robinson jouait avec cette idée de longévité pour me faire croire que Nederland et Weil ne formaient qu’une seule et même personne. Mais ces points de détails sont balayés devant la puissance de ce récit, où on reste sans voix devant les contorsions que font subir les protagonistes à l’histoire (dont nous ne connaissons d’ailleurs rien) de ce monument. En effet, si pour le second narrateur l’histoire du monument est évidente, toutes ces évidences sont balayées par le troisième, en ne nous laissant même pas le droit à une conclusion révélant la véritable histoire, ce qui est d’ailleurs à mon avis le coup de maître de cette histoire : nous faire mariner un nombre suffisant de pages à propos de ce monument, pour ne finallement rien nous en dire ! Là n’est même pas le point fondamental. Celui-ci est assez clair : loin d’être un faisceau de faits ou de preuves, comme veulent le faire croire les narrateurs, l’auteur nous dit qu’elle n’est qu’un matériau utilisé comme l’époque le demande : pour Nederland, fortement attaché à l’histoire de Mars et de la rebellion, ce monument y est forcément rattaché, alors que Doya, le troisième, y voit tout autre chose, lié sans aucun doute à son histoire propre, comme il l’écrit lui-même très bien. Donc pour moi, la seule conclusion évidente de cette histoire est que l’Histoire n’existe pas, tout n’est qu’interprétation.Il est d’ailleurs amusant de voir l’utilisation, sans doute très technique chez les historiens, que fait Robinson du terme révisionisme, si chargé chez nous de connotations spécieuses. Sans doute est-ce là encore un jeu de sa part, auquel il a su me convier sans problème. Pour terminer, un point amusant : comme tous les livres de sf pré-89, il est fait explicitement mention des soviétiques, et à moult reprises. bien sûr, ça ne suffit pas à en faire un roman passéiste, toutefois, on a là une datation largement suffisante de la période d’écriture. Enfin, comme vous pouvez le voir, il s’agit là d’un livre remue-méninges, qui vous fera longuement réfléchir à ce que peut être l’Histoire, ce qui est pour moi une raison largement suffisante pour s’y plonger sans attendre. (less)

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Jul 25, 2012 cupcake mike rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: nerds

Recommended to cupcake by: Lee

Shelves: sci-fi

While the plot was really compelling and Robinson's universe was deep and rich, the first-person point-of-view kind of bothered me because none of the characters are particularly sympathetic. I liked that they were idiosyncratic and believable, but they were missing something...Perhaps this is the result of living so long and the loss of memory, but regardless, they seemed hard for me to sympathize with. Definitely going to read more Kim Stanley Robinson, though.

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Feb 21, 2013 Thomas Fackler rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Archaeology, lifespan, history, finance, politics and technology meeting again in this story with three distinct parts. Some will draw connections between the three. Others will draw different connections. Only the reader will be right.

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Aug 07, 2011 Tomgroff rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I really wanted to like this book. I was reading it to get myself enthused to read the 3 volume Mars trilogy. Unfortunately, it had the opposite effect. I found the pacing of the book rather ponderous. That in itself would not have been so bad, except the longest section, the middle block, was narrated by a character I found completely unsympathetic, at times personally repulsive. For me at least, that makes a character driven story a slog to get through.

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May 15, 2012 Zeke Chase rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction, space-opera

I can barely remember this book. I read it in high school, and as I recall, it wasn't that good. An interesting premise, and it wasn't horrible, so I'm estimating 2 stars.

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Mar 30, 2012 Jake Baker rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is an amazing book that does something uncommon: it makes the reader question the trustworthiness of its narrative structure.

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Feb 18, 2012 Kevin Hartley rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, paper-book, science-fiction

It's been years since I've read this. I remember enjoying it, but I don't remember much else at this point.

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Oct 25, 2012 Janet added it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, 2011, sff

I loved "Red Mars" back in the day, and had somewhat diminishing returns from the two subsequent books. It was good to step back into that world, and fascinating to see what Robinson does with a society with a medical treatment that makes people live for a thousand years. The book is divided into several sections, each with a different narrator, and a few hundred years apart. The arc follows the events that may (or may not) involved the creation of a monolith built from ice. Read it for how char...more

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Aug 12, 2011 Bill rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A candidate for worst novel to ever make it to non-vanity press publication.

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May 03, 2010 Guilbep rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

He wrote it almost 4 years before the cycle of Mars. Same atmosphere.

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Dec 26, 2012 Patrick rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Why aren't all Kim Stanley Robinson books this good?

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May 27, 2008 Julia rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This started out pretty fascinating, with its tale of totalitarian rule and archaelogical finds, but one too many climaxes later the ending just couldn't support the weight of all that came before it. I literally started falling asleep in the last third and never felt as fully invested as I was in the first two thirds until the final theories on the origin of the strange outer-planetary ruin was revealed. Not a bad story but some things felt unresolved and reaching the admittedly neat ending was...more

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Jul 24, 2011 Keith Bell added it · review of another edition

Reread and enjoy his writing immensely. Stream of consciousness mixed with science and intrigue. A precursor to his Martian Trilogy. Loved it.

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May 01, 2011 Jenne marked it as didnt-finish · review of another edition

Shelves: sf

I was into it at first, but then I realized this is one of those books where they tell the story by changing narrators all the time. (and not going back to them, either)
And sometimes that can be OK, but with full-on "hard SF" like this, I really need some characters that I care about in order to make me interested in the idea part.
And if I have to keep starting over caring about people every time we switch narrators, eventually I will just give up.

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Dec 17, 2008 Matthew rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: scientastic

I'm not generally a fan of literary mysteries that never get solved, though this is probably just lingering trauma after reading Pynchon's Crying of Lot 49. So that's an inherent weakness here. The more interesting part of this book is the way that Robinson explores the implications of humanity finding a medical cure for aging, resulting in folks that live 500+ years. The middle chapter, in particular, is beautiful and haunting.

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Jan 19, 2009 James rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Rough, and has more spiritual oogey-boogy than I remember -- the "layers of history that will never be untangled" angle is what I like, and I don't need no ghostly visitations for that. Also spotted some nods to Delany, and, relatedly, appreciated some straightforward (er) gay characters as a switch from KSR's more common lots-o-poly relationship tropes.

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Jan 22, 2008 G. C. rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is by the author of "Red Mars", "Green Mars", and "Blue Mars". I have not read those books because I think Robinson gets bogged down in details too much and they are massive books. This is a compilation of three short stores that I think are set in that same universe. It is interesting but not ground breaking by any means.

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Sep 19, 2008 Angel rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

interesting combo of mystery and scifi... the best part is that kim robinson was a professor at davis.. and he came in to talk to the class. my copy is officially autographed =) that made hte biggest impression on me, although his story of how he made it as a writer left me with a lot of inspiration.

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Jun 06, 2009 Ty rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Fascinating book although the ending was a bit abrupt.

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Jun 21, 2011 Penny rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: scifi-alt-history

I waited a long time to read this: hard to find and possibly out of print. It's a very early KSR item, Pre- Mars Trilogy. Anyway... the way the three parts are linked is surprising. Parts were very satisfying; others were not.

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About Kim Stanley Robinson

Kim Stanley Robinson is an American science fiction writer, probably best known for his award-winning Mars trilogy.

His work delves into ecological and sociological themes regularly, and many of his novels appear to be the direct result of his own scientific fascinations, such as the 15 years of research and lifelong fascination with Mars which culminated in his most famous work. He has, due to his...more

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Quotes from Icehenge

“It was that sort of sleep in which you wake every hour and think to yourself that you have not been sleeping at all; you can remember dreams that are like reflections, daytime thinking slightly warped.” — 55 people liked it

“And in this curious state I had the realization, at the moment of seeing that stranger there, that I was a person like everybody else. That I was known by my actions and words, that my internal universe was unavailable for inspection by others. They didn't know. They didn't know, because I never told them.” — 14 people liked it

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