This book examines Robinson’s concern with literary apprenticeship. In novels such as the post-apocalyptic The Wild Shore, the intergenerational star-ship narrative Aurora, and the tale of Ice Age hunters, Shaman, Robinson creates characters who struggle with and against storytelling. In these fictions, apprentices battle against the limits of their interpretative powers as they come to recognise the real pleasures, and the intense hardships, of art and narrative.