Archive for July, 2007
Deathray on Headless: it’s Clever, Unfortunately
Wednesday, July 25th, 2007Deathray you ask? Deathray I say. Guy Haley reviews the novel, and his tagline is: 'Newly headless pompous poet wends painful way to self-discovery in picaresque SF tale that is, at time, too clever by half.' Quite right too: no place for cleverness in SF. Vile quality.
Tricky, tricky Mr Roberts. He's a tough one to [...]
Palgrave History of Science Fiction: paperback
Saturday, July 14th, 2007Here's the cover for the forthcoming paperback edition of my Palgrave History of Science of Fiction:
Tags: sf criticism
Swift! Orwell! Atwood! Roberts …
Wednesday, July 11th, 2007“Land of the Headless is a darkly satirical tale that extrapolates an absurd idea into something weirdly plausible. This is not escapist adventure but a dystopian vision in the tradition of Swift, Orwell and Atwood against the cruellest extremes of human stupidity.”
THE TIMES
‘... grotesque satire of religious fundamentalism. Thoroughly engrossing . . . deeply affecting [...]
Locus on Headless
Tuesday, July 10th, 2007Nick Gevers, LOCUS:
The SF novels of Adam Roberts invariably centre on jaw-dropping concepts extrapolated to wonderful, and satirical extremes. There is no doubting the cumulative power of his work, its aspiring strangeness and neatly calculated absurdist brio. Consider the premise of Roberts’s latest book Land of the Headless . . . a brilliant burlesque conceit, and [...]
Saturday Telegraph Headless review
Wednesday, July 4th, 2007Short enough to be quoted in full, Andrew McKie's Telegraph review of Land of the Headless from Saturday 30th June (also, by pleasant synchronicity, my birthday):
Land of the Headless is billed as ‘a simple story’. This might not be your first thought as you read the tale of a man who is beheaded for adultery [...]