Toronto Reference Library Blog

Today's post is by Max, a librarian who delights in uncovering forgotten gems in our collections. Enjoy!

When a books still stays in the mind more than 10 years after you read it, it is worth mentioning.

Canada has more good science fiction writers than you might think and one is Robert Charles Wilson who lives in Concord, Ontario. Mr. Wilson has published 17 novels, and has won'the Hugo award for science fiction, which is a very big deal in science fiction.

In 2001, Mr. Wilson published The Chronoliths. I read it in the early years of this century and it has stuck with me because the premise is genuinely strange, a hard thing to accomplish. Also the story has overtones of our post 2001 world history.

The book opens sometime after 2001, when a series of monuments begins to appear, out of thin air, across Asia.  These “monuments,” of indestructible stone and 800 feet tall, bear inscriptions honoring military victories by an unknown general named Kuin. The victories are dated 20 years in the future.

In the chaos that follows (imagine 20 million tons of stone suddenly, instantly, materializing, suddenly just there, at the corner of Bloor and Yonge) the world begins to slide into anarchy, anarchy that will make Kuin (whoever he is) first a possibility, then a reality.

Time-paradox stories are not new to SF, but this is a genuinely new approach. And beyond that, the novel is a parable about what happens when society has to deal with a fact not seen in the game plan. It reminds you of world history since 2001 and has an unsettling quality that is hard to forget.

Below is a selection of other books by Robert Charles Wilson, including some of his award-winning titles.

Today's post is by Max, a librarian who delights in uncovering forgotten gems in our collections. Enjoy!

When a books still stays in the mind more than 10 years after you read it, it is worth mentioning.

Canada has more good science fiction writers than you might think and one is Robert Charles Wilson who lives in Concord, Ontario. Mr. Wilson has published 17 novels, and has won'the Hugo award for science fiction, which is a very big deal in science fiction.

In 2001, Mr. Wilson published The Chronoliths. I read it in the early years of this century and it has stuck with me because the premise is genuinely strange, a hard thing to accomplish. Also the story has overtones of our post 2001 world history.

The book opens sometime after 2001, when a series of monuments begins to appear, out of thin air, across Asia.  These “monuments,” of indestructible stone and 800 feet tall, bear inscriptions honoring military victories by an unknown general named Kuin. The victories are dated 20 years in the future.

In the chaos that follows (imagine 20 million tons of stone suddenly, instantly, materializing, suddenly just there, at the corner of Bloor and Yonge) the world begins to slide into anarchy, anarchy that will make Kuin (whoever he is) first a possibility, then a reality.

Time-paradox stories are not new to SF, but this is a genuinely new approach. And beyond that, the novel is a parable about what happens when society has to deal with a fact not seen in the game plan. It reminds you of world history since 2001 and has an unsettling quality that is hard to forget.

Below is a selection of other books by Robert Charles Wilson, including some of his award-winning titles.