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Latest News
Have yourself a zomberific Christmas
By Adam Roberts | July 3, 2009
Categories: Book News
Christmas? I know, I know; we're only just into July. It went like this:
ZOMBIE EDITOR: We here at Zombie Publishing feel there aren't enough zombies in literature today. BRAAAAAIII...
ME: I see.
ZOMBIE EDITOR: ...IIINNNS! and accordingly we were wondering if you might BRAAAAAIIIINSS! write us a little stocking-filler book for the Christmas market; Dickens's A Christmas Carol, with added Zombies. Yes?
ME: By all means. Given that this won't be out until Christmas, and that Christmas is a long long way away, when will you need me to deliver the manuscript?
ZOMBIE EDITOR: MAAAAAAAAAY!
ME: I'd better get cracking then.
ZOMBIE EDITOR: Do you mean cracking in the sense of cracking open peoples' skulls in order to get at their BRAAAAIIINS? Or in the sense of moving swiftly along with the writing, hilarity and drawing the illustrations?
ME: The latter.
ZOMBIE EDITOR: Fair enough.
And here's the cover. I particularly like the bloodstained thumbprints.
On Today tomorrow
By Adam Roberts | June 28, 2009
Categories: Events and Appearances
In the wake of the general media buzz about Al Reynold's splendid million pound advance, tomorrow's Today programme [Monday 29th June; 6-9am] will be interviewing both Al and myself, on the pressing current affairs questions of Space Opera. We're to be on 'between 8:40 and 9', I'm told. Assuming we don't get bumped, as sometimes happens.
All That Is Solid Melts Into Air
By Adam Roberts | June 18, 2009
Categories: Chitchat
I suppose it's fair to say that Denis Bayle is less well-known as a science fiction writer than he ought to be. Over at Futurismic, I've reviewed a fictionalised version of Bayle's biography: supposedly written by 'Thomas Hidgekin', who I'm not sure is a real-life figure. My review of this problematic title is already causing some friction in the comments thread. Check it out.
Mammoth Book of Mindblowing SF
By Adam Roberts | June 16, 2009
Categories: Book News
Two contributor copies of Mike Ashley's new anthology, The Mammoth Book of Mindblowing SF, arrived in the post yesterday. Lovely cover, and a splendid collection of stories from all the genre greats. Most are reprints (but what reprints! masterpieces!) although Mike also commissioned five new stories for the vol., from Steve Baxter, Eric Brown, Paul Di Fillipo, Robert Reed and me. Mine is called 'Anhedonia' and this is what it's about: nearish-future humans, on a Mars base, encounter aliens, who in turn promise to gift mankind the wherewithal to travel ftl to the stars. But the aliens have taken away the crew's ability to experience pleasure, and they're an elusive, weird set of entities, so it's not clear why they have done so, or why they're prepared to hand over this galaxy-opening tech, or what their hidden agenda might be. It's a good story, actually, though I say so myself; but the whole collection is chockful of great stories, and you really should buy a copy.
Richard P on YBT
By Adam Roberts | June 16, 2009
Categories: Book News
Rich Puchalsky, over on his blog, reports reading Yellow Blue Tibia with a temperature of 101. He thinks it 'an amusing book that people should read', but doesn't actually like it: 'it's the wrong book for me, right now.' One of the things I love about Rich's writing (and, despite the fact that he does have his own blog, that writing is mostly to be found in the fugitive pieces of comments on other people's blogs) is the way he is intellectually incapable of fundamentalism; his mind works dialectically, in creative opposition to other peoples' and even to his own positions and beliefs. Which is a roundabout way of saying that this is one of the nicest negative reviews I've ever had.
SFF Masterclass 2009
By Adam Roberts | June 15, 2009
Categories: Events and Appearances
I spent much of last week in Liverpool, teaching (with Joan Gordon and Paul Kincaid) the annual SFF Masterclass.
Location: University of Liverpool
Dates: June 10th, 11th and 12th, 2009. The Science Fiction Masterclass is held in conjunction with the University of Liverpool. The aim of the Masterclass is to provide those who have a serious interest in sf criticism with the opportunity to exchange ideas with leading figures in the field, and also to use the SFF Collection. The Masterclass will take place from June 10-12th at the University of Liverpool. Each full day of the Masterclass will consist of morning and evening classes, with afternoons free to prepare. Class leaders for 2009 will be Joan Gordon, Adam Roberts, and Paul Kincaid.
It was a thoroughly stimulating experience, for me at any rate. The main theme of my thread of the teaching was the relative merits of broadly structuralist/formalis approaches to SFF (such as are, at the moment, probably dominant in the critical culture associated with genre) and the approaches we might call, again broadly, 'poststructuralist'. A very bright class, and lots of interesting interaction.
On the last day we picked a text we had all read -- The Hobbit, it turned out to be -- and discussed how we might write a paper about it. We discussed a wide range of possible angles; and after we'd noted the preponderance of holes in the novel, we talked about that. Rejecting (rightly, I think) a vulgar Freudian decoding ('all the holes are vaginas! And there are swords, too! The swords are penises!') we instead tried out a Deleuze/Guattari 'holey space' reading. After the class I wrote up the paper, and you'll find it here.
The Romanian wolf speaks
By Adam Roberts | June 3, 2009
Categories: Book News
Mihai Adascalitei, who runs the blog Dark Wolf's Fantasy Reviews, has reviewed YBT. I'm chuffed he likes the book as much as he does, and particularly pleased that he found the representation of life under a Communist regime to be so realistic (given that he is someone with first hand experience of what such life was like):
the first thing that struck me while I read Adam Roberts’ “Yellow Blue Tibia” is how realistic is described the Communism times of that period. Well, there are small differences with what happened in my country, but the general line is quite the same. Adam Roberts builds an atmosphere close to reality and often throughout the reading “Yellow Blue Tibia” feels like a historical fiction or an alternative history. Although the novel has strong Science Fiction elements and a Sci-Fi plot and it would seem that these are lost in the story they are lingering in the background until the second half of the novel when they’ll come forth in full. I also absolutely loved the humor of “Yellow Blue Tibia”. Throughout the novel Adam Roberts creates amusing scenes, each one brightening my day and ripping a burst of laugh from me. Besides the amusing scenes there are dialogues that are delicious to read and savor and I find the dialogues between the main character, Konstantin Andreiovich Skvorecki, and the taxi driver Saltykov to be the cherry on the cake ... “Yellow Blue Tibia” is one novel I wished it didn’t end
Canberra’s Blutibia
By Adam Roberts | June 2, 2009
Categories: Book News
The man with the superhero name, Colin Steele, reviews Ian McDonald's Cyberabad Days and my YBT in the Canberra Times (23/05/2009) under the pleasing headline 'Big Ideas in Brits' Creative Burst':
British science fiction is currently undergoing one of its periodic bursts of creativity. Adam Roberts and Ian McDonald, two of the leading SF authors, certainly don't lack for imagination.
Good! Steele calls YBT:
...an SF mystery, involving UFOs and Scientology, a comedy of the Absurd in a Gogol-like satire of the Russian bureaucracy, and a multiverse "quantum alternatives that radiated" conclusion. ... Philip K Dick would have been proud of Roberts with the latter's hint that maybe the 20th century was only an invention!.
Philip K Dick would have been proud. If that's not the highest praise, I don't know what is.
Awards and notables
By Adam Roberts | May 19, 2009
Categories: Awards
I can claim merely a fraction (and not a large fraction, neither) of the credit for this: but I'm delighted nevertheless that 2008's Riffing on Strings, Creative Writing Inspired by String Theory, edited by Sean Miller & Shveta Verma (a varied collection of essays and creative pieces, including my story 'S-Bomb') has has won an IPPY Silver Medal. IPPY stands for Independent Publisher Book Awards; and this is an annual competition open to independent presses. The awards ceremony will be at the upcoming BookExpo America, in NYC (May 29). Many congratulations to Sean and Shveta!
Slightly less ausipcious, but cool nonetheless: Locus has picked the Routledge Companion to Science Fiction (ed., Bould, Butler, Vint and y.t.) as a 'notable book'. They call it 'hefty', which I take to be praise. Many congratulations to Mark, Andy, Sheryl and me!
Swiftly shortlisted for 2009 Sidewise Award
By Adam Roberts | May 8, 2009
Categories: Awards
And there was much rejoicing. In my house at any rate.
Clute on YBT
By Adam Roberts | May 8, 2009
Categories: Book News
I've been positively Cluted: one of the highest honours in genre.
The world portrayed in Yellow Blue Tibia is an illimitable palimpsest of versions of the world, just like all the SF stories ever written heaped one upon another; the world is a Book (on page 251, Roberts says as much, says that Yellow Blue Tibia is the book in which Yellow Blue Tibia happens); if we are lucky (as Skvorecky eventually is), we adhere to a page of the world that allows us to llive, but if we are less fortunate we reality-shift (as Skvorecky did until he fixes on one place) through the tissue-thin but innumerable Thought Experiments of the Prestidigitator, who may be UFOs this time.
It is (I feel awkward saying this, because it happens to be a positive review of my novel) an unusually good, if spoiler-high, piece of writing. As one of the commenters, 'dlomax', puts it: 'Yet another luminous review, Mr. Clute. Now, what about another novel yourself? I'll read this new Adam Roberts, but I'd rather be reading a follow-up to Appleseed...' This old Adam Roberts agrees.
J G Ballard
By Adam Roberts | April 19, 2009
Categories: Book News
The news of Ballard's death, whilst not unexpected, is still something of a jolt. I've just come off the phone from doing a radio interview with Dotun Adebayo (on Radio 5's Up All Night) trying, more than slightly on the hoof, to articulate what made him so crucial, so powerful, so uniquely and brilliantly disorienting a writer. Not sure I quite nailed it. It may take a while for not only the weight but also the nature of his influence on SF, and lit more generally, to become clear. Sad news.
Locus on YBT
By Adam Roberts | April 19, 2009
Categories: Book News
Not only Locus, neither, but Locus Online too. This is what the superbly named Adrienne Martini thought:
Taken in terms of plot, Yellow Blue Tibia is a thrill ride, if only because of Roberts's wit and snappy pacing. Skvorecky's mix of bitterness and heart makes him an engaging character. The mystery of what is actually going on is a pleasure to noodle around with while you read. Roberts, who has twice previously been shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award, is a confident writer who appears to be having buckets of fun telling this story. But what moves Yellow Blue Tibia from a well-told yarn into a layered novel worthy of more than one read is Roberts's commentary on the state of the genre and of its writers. Nuggets about the field abound.
Staines, Saturday 18th April
By Adam Roberts | April 1, 2009
Categories: Events and Appearances
Go into the Waterstone’s in Staines at the moment and you’ll find the following flyers being handed out:
That’s one high budget piece of advertising, right there. If you happened to be in the neighbourhood, t'd be lovely to see you. No ticket is required!
[Update: the event went off very well; thanks to Fran for organising it, and everyone who came]
BSFA Open Meeting, this Wednesday
By Adam Roberts | March 22, 2009
Categories: Events and Appearances
I'm one of (I believe) several guests appearing at the next BSFA Open Meeting: 25 March 2009, The Antelope tavern, 22 Eaton Terrace, London, SW1W 8EZ. People will be in the bar from 5ish. The upstairs room itself opens at 6pm onward, whereupon there will be a bunch of fascinating free-and-frank exchange of views concerning, but doubtless not limited to, the BSFA Award shortlist (concerning which I have expatiated, online, here, here, here and here). Nearest Tube: Sloane Square. Come. Do.
Another Clarke Award Omission
By Adam Roberts | March 20, 2009
Categories: Book News
Lily's school reading book this week:
Somebody should tell Steve Baxter.
Also, if that family on the cover looks glum now, wait until the waterline has risen over those trees in the background ...
Clarke Award
By Adam Roberts | March 19, 2009
Categories: Book News
Rather startled, to be honest, that Niall has taken my earlier whinge as a commentary upon the Clarke shortlist as a whole -- it's really no such thing, and provides commentary only upon a writer's individual crumbliness, which is presumably banal enough news not to need wider distribution. As far as Clarke commentary goes, I'll instapundit thus: it looks, at first blush, a solid list, with some strong books on it. I'm not the only person to be a little surprised at the absence of Baxter's Flood (his Weaver would be just as valid a title there), Harkaway's Gone Away World or Ness's Knife of Never Letting Go. But otherwise: Anathem's presence has the feel of inevitability; I thought The Quiet War a very very good piece of writing (and would happily see it beat Stephenson to the prize); House of Suns is not Al Reynolds' best book, but it's a perfectly good book for all that; and whilst I didn't go overboard on Song of Time plenty of people were properly moved by it, so it clearly works brilliantly for some. I haven't read the other two, but will remedy that soon.
Fantasy Book Critic on YBT
By Adam Roberts | March 18, 2009
Categories: Book News
Liviu C Suciu reviews Yellow Blue Tibia for Fantasy Book Critic, and he likes it too:
In summary, Adam Roberts’ “Yellow Blue Tibia” is just superb and I can’t recommend it enough. I also strongly hope that the book will find a US publisher soon, but until then The Book Depository offers the novel at a good price with free shipping worldwide so I say get it!!!
That's three exclamation marks. Three! Better than one.
Stone reissue
By Adam Roberts | March 18, 2009
Categories: Book News
This is in the shops now, part of Gollancz's Space Opera Collection. Nice piece of design, no?
Things
By Adam Roberts | March 18, 2009
Categories: Chitchat
Sometimes things don't go so well. Yesterday my bike was stolen (the sort of thing that happened all the time when I lived in London, but which is something of a shock after six hitherto biketheft-free years of living in Staines). Today it seems that my car has died: unsurprisingly, since it's a banger, but still. And this afternoon I discover not only that Swiftly has not been shortlisted for the Clarke, but that Graham Sleight, a critic whose opinions I respect enormously, doesn't consider it a book he or anybody else might even have expected to see on the shortlist. [Update, 19.3: I spoke too soon, as you'll see if you click the link] So it goes, of course, howsoever disheartening. I get the sense that the stuff I'm interested in and value, SF-wise, really aren't the things SF as a whole considers interesting or valuable. The wisdom of crowds, and okham's razor, suggests that SF as a whole may be in the right. Ho hum.
Stalin versus the Martians
By Adam Roberts | March 11, 2009
Categories: Book News
Sound familiar, qua concept?
Via SF Signal (thanks to Lou Anders for forwarding me this). One word: awesome.
It does make me wonder whether I shouldn't have put more dancing into YBT ...
Brief Flurry of Yellow Blue Reviewing
By Adam Roberts | March 9, 2009
Categories: Book News
So, at No. 71 (a site that promises, boldly, both the story and the truth) Dan Hartland is his usual insightful self:
Blue Tibia is in some ways a less adventurous novel [than Swiftly]: structurally and stylistically, it plays far fewer games with one’s expectations, and stretches the form much less. Nevertheless, it is a very smart -- and often very funny -- yarn. ... Ultimately, then, this is a novel at home with the proliferation of quantum theory, interested in the idea that every event “happens in more than one way [...] spreading into a complex delta-basin of alternate realities.” ... [But] with its humour and intelligence, Yellow Blue Tibia is no precious, wordy text book. It is, and this with some élan, a wryly eloquent -- and at times deeply allusive -- work about the human imagination. Roberts just gets better and better.
Two lines, not none, on the Strange Horizon: Michael Froggatt's line (that he quite likes bits of the book, but thinks it overall 'rather less than the sum of its parts, although some of those parts are, individually, strikingly written, entertaining and thought-provoking'); and Abigail Nussbaum's line (she identifies both Bulgakovishness and irony in the novel, though she thinks the second of these veers into cynicism, and ends unable to judge: 'It's traditional for reviews to make at least some vague gesture at an evaluation of their subject—is this book good, and what readers are likely to find it enjoyable? Yellow Blue Tibia has proven somewhat problematic on that front.' To have baffled a reviewer as sharp and clever as Nussbaum is an achievement in which I can take, I think, a perverse kind of pride).
Finally there's the Times. You know, the Times. Lisa Tuttle's SF review column is now, it seems, monthly; and here's her opinion on YBT:
Yellow Blue Tibia opens with a group of science-fiction writers summoned for a meeting with Stalin in 1946. The Soviet leader, certain that America will fall within five years, is seeking a new enemy against which the people can unite to preserve the revolutionary vigour of communism. If this enemy is other than human, it will be possible to achieve the desired “dialectical synthesis: a fully peaceful world that is simultaneously united in a great patriotic war”.
Forty years later one surviving writer encounters another, who tells him that the scenario they invented, of “radiation aliens” attacking Ukraine, is starting to come true. The latest novel by the astonishingly inventive Adam Roberts is presented as Konstantin Skvorecky's memoir of the alien invasion of 1986. If you wonder why you don't remember the invasion, it explains everything.
Skvorecky is a great creation, comic and moving. His voice - deadpan, wry and convincingly Russian - is the best thing about this engaging, unusual novel, one of the best of the year.
Conan Doyle’s Lost World
By Adam Roberts | March 2, 2009
Categories: Events and Appearances
At the weekend I popped up to Edinburgh to take part in one of these 'Lost World Read' events: specifically a 28th Feb, 6-9pm talk called 'Lost Worlds'. Deftly chaired by Stuart Kelly, and sponsored by Napier University's Centre for Literature and Writing (known, brilliantly, as 'CLAW'), the panel consisted of China Miéville, Roger Luckhurst and myself discussing Conan Doyle's novel. It was an excellent and enjoyable occasion in every way.
Interesting fact: the event was at the Augustine United Church, on George IV Bridge. Ken Macleod was in the audience, and chatting to him afterwards I discovered that this very church appears in The Night Sessions, as the location for the silent club. So now you know.
Daily Mail on YBT
By Adam Roberts | February 16, 2009
Categories: Book News
The Daily Mail, no less. And they liked it. The review is mostly plot expo, and thumbnailing what goes on, but it ends: "Adam Roberts takes an intriguing premise and makes the most of it in this entertaining and intelligent novel."
Scotland on Sunday on YBT
By Adam Roberts | February 9, 2009
Categories: Book News, Lit Crit
Scotland on Sunday brackets my novel with David Ebershoff's excellent The 19th Wife (in itself a good sign) to joint-review them:
HISTORY might be written by the victors, but historical novels tend to be the province of the losers. Although David Ebershoff's The 19th Wife and Adam Roberts' Yellow Blue Tibia are very different, but equally engaging, novels, they both are concerned with the human jetsam left behind by the tide of history. Moreover, they fulfil that vision by marrying the complexity and depth of "literary" work with the energy and velocity of "popular" fiction.
Good, eh? He goes on:
Roberts is a very witty writer, and there are moments of superb slapstick here (in particular, a scene where a KGB interrogator gets confused). Skvorecky has a mantra about "third ways" – "Time runs forwards. Or it runs backwards. One of the two. But it must do one of those two things, and there cannot be a third thing it does" – which becomes increasingly untenable as the narrative progresses.
The novel's conceit is driven by the fact that Soviet propaganda and sci-fi clichés are often indistinguishable – Stalin's name means literally Man of Steel – and the gap between rhetoric and reality gives a vivid insight into the absurdities of totalitarian collapse. History – possible histories, probable histories, secret histories – become the nemesis of Soviet "Destiny". "Comedy quantum agitprop" might be completely new genre of novel.
Both novels deal with major issues without hectoring the reader; both inform and entertain simultaneously. Who said the literary novel was dead?
I like Comedy Quantum Agitprop so much I shall include it as a new tag on this very site. Most excellent.
New short fiction
By Adam Roberts | February 7, 2009
Categories: Book News
A couple of author-contributor copies of short-fiction collections dropped through the letterbox last week.
First was Peter Crowther and Nick Gevers' nonpareil Postscripts magazine (Winter 2008, Number 17 it says on the cover; it was winter 2008 not long ago, and it is still winter, so that's more or less right), in which my story 'A Prison Term of a Thousand Years' appears. One of the best I've written, I think. In the little author blurb slot they give you in Postscripts I say: 'so much sf is fast paced, frenetic and kinetic. I wanted to write a short but very slow story', and that's what I've done. But the reason I like it so much, I think, is that it's a text that marks a shift from doing to being, and that's even rarer in SF, I'd say. Annoyingly (although only for me) 'A Prison Term of a Thousand Years' isn't even the best thing in this issue of Postscripts. That palm goes to Ian Macleod's simply superb narrative of the miseries and mysteries of the English camping holiday, 'The Camping Wainrights.' The whole of that excellent story (indeed, the storm scene within it alone) is worth the price of admission to the collection. Go, buy. This is the last issue, too. If that's not a collector's item, I don't know what is.
Also on the mat was a copy of George Mann's Solaris Book of New Science Fiction Volume Three. I'm particularly chuffed to be included in this, since I believe that (with the possible exception of Steve Baxter, who is always and everywhere exceptional) I am the only person so far to have had two stories in this highly regarded series of collections. That's an honour right there. My story this time round is called 'Woodpunk', is set in Chernobyl, and is (again) one of my better tales. In fact it is in its way a retelling of Tarkovsky's Stalker. The more observant amongst you will have noticed that I've reworked versions of that film, or elements of it, more than once in my writing career; but 'Woodpunk' is the most direct I've yet done.
Lou Anders speaks
By Adam Roberts | February 5, 2009
Categories: Blogging
And when Lou speaks, the world should listen. Because he's one of the best editors in the business. Of course, you might think I would say that, given the nice things he says about me in his latest Tor.com column; but I assure you, and I expect you to believe me when I say, my high opinion of Lou predates such things, agreeable though they are (for me) to read.
Deathray reviews YBT
By Adam Roberts | January 28, 2009
Categories: Book News
The excellent Deathray (probably the best genre mag on the newsstands) chooses Yellow Blue Tibia as one of the 'Death Ray Five', viz. 'our pick of the month's most intriguing and/or important stuff'. A detailed, thoughtful review too, by Matt Bielby:
You never know exactly what you're going to get with an Adam Roberts novel, and that's a strength: each of his books is very different in feel from the last ... Yellow Blue Tibia is many things, but chiefly its a thriller that thinks it's a comedy. You'll smile, and maybe even laugh out loud, many times. But though it's clever [aha!] and always entertaining, you do tend to wonder exactly where this is all going, and there is a slight feeling, in the middle, of the book treading water before it's time to hit us with its chain of startling last-quarter revelations and sudden shifts of status quo. The result is not at all what I was expecting when I first picked up Yellow Blue Tibia. When your narrator suffers a partial lobotomy halfway through, rendring his whole way of thinking different, you know you're not in the hands of one of the most reliable of sorts. His status is just one of the things Roberts handles so impressively here, with a wee smile.
Tom Holt on YBT: ‘this is a book you’ve got to read … you’ll end up wanting to kick a hole in the wall’
By Adam Roberts | January 25, 2009
Categories: Book News
Some reviews are good, some bad, and as a writer you take each kind as they come. But I have to say that Tom Holt's simultaneously good and bad review of Yellow Blue Tibia, in February's SFX, is a pure joy to read. I'd rather get reviews like this than any number of blander 'good, very good's; because, of course, any writer worth her/his salt wants to shake things up, not have readers nodding sagely. Or indeed nodding off. So what does he say?
It is the best of books, it is the worst of books. It is gripping, captivating, astonishing, wonderfully funny, magnificently written, completely different, mess-with-your-head weird. It's also unsatisfying, bewildering and not much constructed as spilled out into a heap, and the ending makes you want to shake the author warmly by the throat until he promises to go back and write it again.
Mostly Holt says very good things: 'this is a book with more layers than a multi-storey car-park, and on one of them its a fantastically evocative account of what life was like in Soviet Russia, packed with telling details that makes it painfully immediate. Roberts's style is beautifully crafted, his dialogue is superb, his characterisation perfect. His use of syntax alone subtly conveys the mindset; after 50 or so pages, you may believe you're starting to think in Russian. The humour, which ranges from dark irony to laugh-out-loud comedy, works so well because it comes straight from character; not just decorative gags, seriously funny.' And there's more:
It's also a crazy sort of anti-thriller -- the hero's a crippled old man, which makes the scenes where he outwits and outfights a series of KGB heavies startling effective; his occasional sidekick is a querulous, middle-aged nuclear physicist with Asperger's synbdrome who's been demoted to driving a taxi; the love interest is a monstrously overweight American scientologist. We'd love to see a blockbuster movie (a version somewhat rewritten version of) this book.
Then there's the but: the novel 'skids a hits a tree' on the science fiction (ironic, 'since to a large extent, insofar as its about anything its about science fiction. And why people see UFOs. And alternate realities.') Holt can't see the 'slender silver thread of logical coherence running through the last 70 pages' (he can't? I thought it was a little over-obvious, myself ...), and he concludes:
Over-amibiton is definitely better than a lack of it, and this is a ferociously ambitious book that makes good on at least two-thirds of its extravagant promises. It's a shame that its high-yield language and blue-chip characterisation are underwitten by a sub-prime plot ... Arguably, boom-and-bust fiction is more annoying than plain consistent mediocrity ... Even so, this is a book you've got to read. It's better to have loved and ended up wanting to kick a hole in the wall than never to have loved at all.
Now that's a review.
New Futurismic Column [pending] ponned.
By Adam Roberts | January 25, 2009
Categories: Blogging, Non-Fiction
My prog alter-ego The Adam Roberts Project (he's Slim Shady to my Eminem, sort of) has a new outlet. Not content with europrogblogging, he's now starting a monthly column at Paul Raven's excellent Futurismic site. I'll update this announcement when the first column rolls, which I believe will happen Wednesday coming.
28th Jan: No longer pending, now ponned: here's the link.
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