American novelist Kim Stanley Robinson is widely recognized as one of the foremost living writers of science fiction. He began publishing novels in 1984, and his work has been described as "humanist science fiction" and "literary science fiction." Robinson has been a proud defender and advocate of science fiction as a genre, which he regards as one of the most powerful of all literary forms.

Robinson was sent to the Antarctic by the US National Science Foundation's Antarctic Artists and Writers' Program in 1995 and returned in their Antarctic media program in 2016. His work has been translated into 25 languages and won a dozen awards in five countries, including the Hugo, Nebula, Locus and World Fantasy awards. His most recent novel is The Ministry for the Future.