Archive for September, 2007
Swiftly
Saturday, September 22nd, 2007This is the cover for Swiftly, to be published by Gollancz next year. It's a work in progress (the rifles there, I'm told, will be muskets rather than arquebuses), but more or less there. And isn't it splendid? As for Swiftly itself, I'd say it's the best novel I've written by quite a long mark. So there you [...]
What does Australia think of Headless?
Tuesday, September 18th, 2007This:
Gollancz SF works were previously unevenly distributed in Australia. It's a pleasure that they are now readily available, since the publisher has a reputation for quality. Forget sword and sorcery, here are thought-experiments, exercises in imaginative writing. Adam Roberts' novel posits a future in which fundamentalist Christianity and Islam have merged. High-tech means that punishment [...]
Guardian on Splinter
Saturday, September 15th, 2007The estimable Eric Brown is complimentary:
In 1877 Jules Verne published Off on a Comet, in which a meteor strikes Earth and knocks off a chunk of northern Africa inhabited by a cast of characters who whizz around the solar system before arriving, improbably, back on Earth. Roberts recapitulates the earlier novel, but updates and subverts [...]
Give me sf-prize or give me death …
Monday, September 10th, 2007I learn today that Gradisil has been nominated by LFS members for the 2008 Prometheus Award in the Best Novel category. The Best Novel winner receives a one-ounce gold coin and a plaque, presented at the World Science Fiction Convention.
The nomination is the first part of a lengthy process; a ten-person committee whittles the nominees down to [...]
Deathray on Splinter
Wednesday, September 5th, 2007Deathray is fast becoming my favourite sf magazine, despite (or who knows maybe masochistically because) they're not entirely 100% enamoured of Roberts-mode prose sf. Not 100% disenamoured either; somewhere in the middle. Here's Jes Bickham:
Splinter is a conscious, dedicated riff on one of Jules Vernes most bizarre novels--Hector Servadac ... while Hector may be an adult he's [...]