Kim Stanley Robinson in general

** As always this`ll be moved once a home becomes available elsewhere... In the year 1405, Bold Bardash, a scout in the army of Tamerlaine, last of the great Mongol conquerors, penetrates Hungary to spy out the land for his master's coming onslaught. To his consternation, Bold finds the land utterly devastated by plague. Not simply reduced, but completely emptied of human life. Europe, in its entirety, has been depopulated and Western, Latin, Christian civilisation becomes nothing more than a historical curiosity for all the ages that follow. And so In ten fascinating episodes, Robinson leads us from that late medieval moment down the centuries to a modern ...  Read the complete review

Icehenge is a strange novel that is split into three distinct parts, culminating in a trip to Pluto to dig up a "mesmerising icehenge". This monolith-like object is a complete mystery, did an alien race put it there? Or was it the last monument to a group of renegades that voyaged out into deep space decades earlier? The first part follows the activities of a jumped up scientist, now 300 years old, she is caught in the middle of a mutiny on board a dated asteroid-mining ship. The second part is set hundreds of years later with an old scientist trying to find out more about the mutiny previous, and the effect it had on a Mars revolution. ...  Read the complete review