Jack Glass by Adam Roberts
reviewed by David Soyka
While ostensibly a novel, the book reads more like three connected novellas, with their own distinct mysteries and tone of voice
that are linked to, (or "docwatsoned," to use the enigmatic narrator's great invented term) "the greatest mystery of our
time…FTL." The author is, of course, poking fun at the Golden Age SF staple of faster than light travel, which despite being
theoretically impossible is nonetheless fictionally imperative to most any space opera. Some of the smaller puzzle pieces
are easy to guess, some you can't possibly anticipate.
Anticopernicus by Adam Roberts
reviewed by Trent Walters
You like big, mind-blowing ideas in your SF? Here's a doozy. Often, SF's big ideas go
somewhere far away and open outward. This one does the opposite in a way that
whips out the magnifying lens on our view of humanity.
Aliens have approached the solar system, but their ship hangs out in the Oort Cloud, waiting. They do not explain their
motives for coming -- except those which are not their motives.
Yellow Blue Tibia by Adam Roberts
reviewed by Seamus Sweeney
A coven of Soviet science-fiction writers are summoned by Stalin to a dacha sometime in 1945 for an act of dark
enchantment. The war against Germany is won and, as the atomic bomb is yet to be dropped, Stalin predicts a brief,
victorious struggle against the decadent USA. The Soviet Union, however, needs an enemy to keep the engines of
permanent global revolution stoked. Thus the Soviet writers are given a task by the dictator -- to create
the narrative of an alien invasion that will serve as a global unifying myth.
Swiftly by Adam Roberts
reviewed by Nick Gevers
Swiftly by Adam Roberts -- not to be confused with his similarly titled collection from Night Shade Books a few years
ago -- is an enormously ambitious novel, a steampunk epic of considerable force and ingenuity. It is also a deeply bizarre
book, whose protagonists, sometimes to the detriment of the plot, conduct a love affair based on disgust and the stimulating
odor of excrement.
Land Of The Headless by Adam Roberts
reviewed by Paul Raven
This book is written as the first-person retrospective memoir of Jon Cavala, a poet of moderate success
who, within the space of the first few pages, is beheaded for the crime of rape. Straight away, we are into the territory
of words not meaning exactly what we expect them to mean. Cavala lives on Pluse, which is one of many "Planets of The
Book" –- planets colonised by dogmatic religious sects fleeing what they saw as the decadent liberal decline of
Earth for new worlds where they could indulge in their beliefs without restriction or censure.
Splinter by Adam Roberts
reviewed by Rich Horton
Following on from Jules Verne's Off on a Comet, Hector Servadac, Jr. comes home from France to California to visit his father, with
whom he has not been on good terms. Hector Jr. is an art historian. His father is a rich man, and his mother died some
decades earlier. He finds that his father has holed up at his ranch in rural California. He is convinced that he is in
contact with an intelligent space being, in the form of an asteroid of sorts that is going to collide with the Earth
and send part of it on a journey around the Sun.
Splinter by Adam Roberts
reviewed by Martin Lewis
"I have not read Jules Verne's Hector Servadac. That's not particularly remarkable; I've not read À 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.'"
Gradisil by Adam Roberts
reviewed by Greg L. Johnson
Manipulation of the Earth's magnetic field leads to the development of orbital flight without the need for
rockets. It may not be physically possible, but it does create the
impetus for an orbiting society composed mainly of independently wealthy mavericks determined to keep their wealth and status
free from earth's increasingly belligerent nations. When those countries start to extend their power into space, the
conditions for revolution are at hand. Klara Gyeroffy, one of the early inhabitants of the Uplands, has her life changed
by the murder of her father.
The Snow by Adam Roberts
reviewed by David Soyka
As you might gather from the title, the author's fifth novel depicts a catastrophic snowfall. Not a mere avalanche
or the airports-are-closed kind of weather anomaly, but a precipitous disaster of worldwide scale that obliterates human
civilization. Of course, since the story begins with a first-person account of the start of the snow and her subsequent
adventures, you already know there are survivors.
The Sellamillion by A.R.R.R. Roberts
reviewed by Steven H Silver
There are some works of art which beg to be parodied due to their popularity and their overindulgences. While J.R.R.
Tolkien's The Silmarillion certainly qualifies for its overindulgences, the work's popularity is based not so much on its
own merits, but its association with Tolkien's more popular books. Nevertheless, following the success of the parody The Soddit, he
has turned his wit to the writing of The Sellamillion.
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The Soddit by A.R.R.R. Roberts
reviewed by Steven H Silver
The book tells the story of a lone soddit named Bingo Grabbins, hired as a thief by the wizard Gandulf and a
cadre of twelve dwarfs. The dwarfs make it clear to Bingo that the purpose of the quest to the Only Mountain is to gain
the dragon's gold. This clear subterfuge, of course, eventually causes problems, as the usually perceptive soddit buys
the dwarfs' claim.
Swiftly by Adam Roberts
reviewed by David Soyka
This book marks the author's long overdue American debut. Though in keeping with his
habit of one word book titles, this short story collection employs an
adverb rather than the customary noun, a particularly apt modifier as Jonathan Swift is the direct inspiration for a pair of tales
that bookend the compilation in depicting an alternate Victorian-era England whose industrial might is dependent upon enslaved
Lilliputians.
Stone and Polystom by Adam Roberts
reviewed by David Soyka
Stone depicts a sociopath named "Ae" in a far-future utopia virtually devoid of criminality. Ae is imprisoned in a seemingly
escape-proof confinement within the center of a star. There, he is contacted by an unknown entity -- an "artificial intelligence"
that secretes its way into the prison and is absorbed into the prisoner's consciousness -- in need of Ae's unusual
remorseless homicidal talents. The offer: to spring him out of prison.
Polystom, in contrast, is based on physical principles in which space contains not a vacuum, but an
atmosphere, enabling travel between planets via the open cockpit of a propeller-driven biplane. Polystom is the fiftieth Steward of Enting,
a pampered and naïve aristocrat whose personal limitations lead to a doomed marriage and subsequent disaster in the attempt
to gain "glory" as an officer in a war for which is intellectually and physically ill-prepared.
Jupiter Magnified by Adam Roberts
reviewed by Gabe Mesa
"Jupiter, magnified so as to fill half the horizon, appeared in the night sky."
That first line effectively sets the stage for the entire book, which is about
the effect of magnified Jupiter's mysterious appearance on humanity in general, but specifically on the narrator, a young female Swedish
poet by the name of Stina Ekman.
Stone by Adam Roberts
reviewed by Greg L. Johnson
This book is a first-person narrative from the depths of human behavior, a memoir of madness in a seemingly
perfect world. The citizens of t'T consider themselves the first truly utopian society in human history. The universal use of
nanotechnology, referred to in the novel as dotTech, has eliminated hunger and want, and all the other inequities that plague human
societies. Crime is almost unheard of, all have equal access to the pleasures and resources of t'T. But imprisoned in a cage built
within the plasma of a star waits humanity's only known murderer.
The New Critical Idiom: Science Fiction by Adam Roberts
reviewed by Martin Lewis
The author is a prolific new writer who was shortlisted for the 2001 Arthur C Clarke Award for his first
novel, Salt. He is also a lecturer in English at Royal Holloway, University of London. This makes him
ideally qualified to write this book aimed at academics. It is also of interest to the general SF reader.
Of course there is a large swathe of SF readers for whom the
phrase 'literary criticism' is an invitation to reach for their revolvers. However, for those of us who find
the approach illuminating, there is much here to admire.
Park Polar by Adam Roberts
reviewed by Lisa DuMond
When we worry about preservation of natural habitats, we flinch at the downing of every tree, the displacement
of every wild creature. When images of human skeletons stare out from our television and mutely beg for help,
we angrily demand that there is enough food to feed all of us, if we only use the resources we have properly. But,
what if the number of people on this planet continues to grow and we use all of our available farm land to its
maximum potential? What will have to go then?
On by Adam Roberts
reviewed by Nick Gevers
This book is all about vertigo. The world has turned at 90 degrees; gravity
now operates horizontally. Humans and other creatures, compelled to adapt
to this horrifying disequilibrium, inhabit ledges, crevices, and caverns,
whatever niches remain to them; and as the centuries pass and the new
barbarism takes hold, the golden age, the time when everything was
reassuringly level, fades into legend. One false step, and you fall off the
Worldwall, and you may fall forever.
Salt by Adam Roberts
reviewed by Greg L. Johnson
Why do we create alien worlds for our characters to live in? For
some, it is simply the fun and challenge of working out the details. This
is the classic art of world-building. Others use an alien setting in order
to ask what would people who lived in this strange place be like? Still
others use an alien world in order to gain a fresh perspective on behaviour
that is all too ingrained in us. The last approach is the one taken in this
impressive and rewarding debut novel.
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