Gateway Essentials: Robert Charles Wilson

Robert Charles Wilson was born in Whittier, California in 1953 but has spent most of his life in Canada, acquiring citizenship in 2007. He has won the Hugo, Theodore Sturgeon, Philip K. Dick and John W. Campbell Memorial Awards, and has been described by Stephen King as ‘probably the finest science fiction author now writing’. His first published SF story  was “Equinocturne” in the February 1975 issue of Analog (under the pen name Bob Chuck Wilson), but he did not make a significant impact on the field until the 1980s, when he received his first Philip K. Dick Award nomination (for A Hidden Place, in 1987).

Those looking to explore the worlds of Robert Charles Wilson could do a lot worse than start with his fascinating millennial novel Darwinia, in which the world changes overnight, in 1912, when Europe and all its inhabitants disappear to be replaced by an untamed primaeval continent which becomes known as Darwinia. Other Gateway Essentials titles we’d recommend are the extraplanetary exploration novel, Bios, and 2001’s The Chroniliths , in which the world is ‘invaded’ by strange historical markers from the future.

Alternatively, newcomers might like to try Wilson’s acclaimed Hypotheticals trilogy, beginning with the 2006 Hugo Award-winner for Best Novel, Spin, and continuiing with 2007’s Axis and 2011’s Vortex.

You can find these and more of Robert Charles Wilson’s work via his Author page on the Gateway website, and read about him in his entry in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.