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I have not read Jules Verne's Hector Servadac. That's not particularly remarkable; I've not read Ŕ La Recherche Du Temps Perdu or Les Particules Elémentaires or any number of other works of French literature. The reason for mentioning this is that Splinter is a sort of riposte to Hector Servadac (published in English as Off on a Comet), a novel Adam Roberts freely admits is "not one of Verne's well known titles." This isn't out of character: his novel, Ice, was in a clear dialogue with Ursula K. Le Guin's The Dispossessed. At least this time he is not treading on a masterpiece.

To be honest such a side project is still a deeply unappealing prospect though. Roberts often appears to consider novel writing to be merely an extension of his critical and academic writing and making this explicit sets alarm bells ringing. So it is a pleasant surprise to open the novel and start reading. Roberts's prose is looser and more carefree than it has ever been. Usually there is something excruciatingly tense about his writing but here he relaxes. For readers such as I, our protagonist (Hector) helpfully gives his father (also called Hector) a brief synopsis of the earlier book:

"And this comet hits the earth… He searches about and finds some more survivors of this comet-hit, and they all band together, but something's gone screwy with the heavens… then it turns out they're all living on a chunk of land -- and sea, which is I think we can agree pretty tough to swallow -- that's been knocked off the earth by the collision of the comet and carried away on the comet…"

And this is our story too. Roberts glosses this "crazy" premise with a clever modern twist to make it more palatable. As always he takes explanation too far though and there is a wodge of science that those that way inclined will pick holes in and the rest of us will just skip.

That's not the only issue: he doesn't half bang on. His prose might be better but there is still an infuriatingly meandering quality to his writing. He never seems to grasp that this sort of errant wandering is all well and good if you are Vladimir Nabokov but less so if you are Adam Roberts. His previous novel, the Clarke-nominated Gradisil, could have done with the excision of about 200 pages. Splinter isn't even 200 pages long, being more an overgrown novella, but it still manages to drag.

Roberts specialises depicting in unpleasant characters and Hector is no different. It is almost as if he is part of an ongoing attempt to find catharsis in the most repellent areas of the male psyche. This could well be interesting if it didn't grate with Roberts's tone. There is always something slightly arch to his work, he never gives the impression of believing in it. If he believes he is writing satire it comes across more as a sort of bizarre po-faced farce.

This doesn't aid his examination of the two major themes of the novel: love and the relationship between parents and their children. In case the text is not clear enough on these being the major themes, Roberts hammers the point home in a 22 page afterword, complete with footnotes. In fact, the afterword is probably the best bit of the book -- a fascinating look at both the content and process of his own writing -- but, again, he is too verbose.

As I said at the beginning, I've not read Verne's novel. However if you do wish to read it, it is in the public domain and available on the Solaris website for download with a new introduction from Roberts. So why didn't they just publish that instead?

Martin Lewis lives in East London. Among other venues his reviews have appeared in Interzone, The New York Review of Science Fiction and Strange Horizons.