"What made you want to write about Galileo?
Kim Stanley Robinson : When I did the research for my novel The Years of Rice and Salt, I looked into the history of our scientific revolution, and Galileo was a major figure in that. He stuck out for his status as some kind of "first scientist," and for his tangled relations with his patrons and the Catholic Church, and for his flamboyant character. As a science- fiction writer the idea of writing about the first scientist seemed natural. When the image came to me of him visiting the moons of Jupiter in a future time, I had my way into the story.
To what extent was this an exercise in world creation for you?
Kim Stanley Robinson : I don't know, I think of every novel as "world creation" of one kind or another, so in a way you could say that this one was an exercise in world creation in just the way all novels are. I did have two pleasures of that sort this time, first in trying to suggest the feel of the years 1609 to 1642 in Italy, and then also to create a brief partial vision of a far future human civilization inhabiting the moons of Jupiter and presumably the rest of the solar system - but all through the eyes of Galileo only, so that it had to be presented at least potentially as his dream. So that part is not "hard sf" but some kind of Renaissance fantasia, or the future as Galileo would comprehend it."
