Category Archive: Book News
Previous EntriesDozois-osity
Tuesday, July 20th, 2010My contributor copy of Gardner Dozois' prestigious Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Seventh Annual Collection arrived through the door yesterday. It contains my story 'Hair', but very much else besides, and you ought to buy a copy. Oughtn't, you, now.
La Gradisil Française
Wednesday, June 16th, 2010Gorgeous new Folio SF edition of Gradisil, as translated into French by the estimable Elisabeth Vonaburg. 800 pages long, too!
Pandora SF und Fantasy 04
Thursday, May 13th, 2010Dropped through my letter-box yesterday: a contributors copy of the latest Pandora. It includes an article by me on Philip K Dick called 'Der obszohne Klecks auf Ihrem Engramm". The content's page follows that article title with 'von Adam Roberts', which presumably means I've joined the German artistocracy. Excellent! Cool John Howe cover, though, what? [...]
Keith Brooke, The Unlikely World of Faraway Frankie
Tuesday, May 11th, 2010My contributor copies for this title arrived from Ian Whates' Newcon Press last week (I wrote the short introduction). It's an excellent novel too; certainly one of the very best things this talented author has yet done. If you know what's good for you, you'll want to buy a copy, although the title's amazon page [...]
New Model Army signing
Tuesday, May 4th, 2010I'll be signing copies of New Model Army at Waterstones in High Wycombe, on Saturday the 15th May from 11am. Unaccountably, High Wycombe somehow escaped the depredations of my NMA in the novel itself, although nearby Maidenhead gets hammered. Perhaps the good citizens of High Wycombe wish to thank me for sparing their borough ...? [...]
New Model Army
Saturday, March 27th, 2010In the post this morning: the first two of my author copies of New Model Army (available from all good internet bookshops and so on and so forth). Very handsome volume; good cover, nice type, sits lovely in the hand. I opened it at random on p.128 and found a typo in the first line, [...]
Yellow Blue Tibia in the 2009 BSC Book Tournament
Monday, March 22nd, 2010BSCreview.com email me to tell me that Yellow Blue Tibia is one of 64 books selected to be voted on in their book tournament for the best new genre release of the year 2009. You can see the details of the tournament here. 'We invite you,' they say, 'to encourage your fans to come vote [...]
A thousand schools of thought contend
Monday, March 1st, 2010This site has been lacking hard news of late; a state of affairs which is about to change. But before it does, a few more boat-trips around the island called The Contemporary Reputation of Yellow Blue Tibia. On the one hand, it's been voted (I'm very pleased) one of sfsite's top 10 titles of the [...]
‘Hair’
Saturday, January 2nd, 2010Gardner Dozois has selected my story 'Hair' for The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Seventh Annual Collection (due out July 2010). I'm chuffed. 'Hair' originally appeared in Geoff Ryman's superlative When It Changed anthology of original fiction. Why don't you buy a copy?
Black Static on Scrooge
Saturday, January 2nd, 2010Black Static is a fine magazine. Here's what Peter Tennant says about I Am Scrooge in the latest ed: For his latest trick, respected critic and SF author Adam Roberts has great fun producing a pastiche of Dickens's seasonal classic, A Christmas Carol, and the horror afficionado and more general reader will find much to [...]
Seventh
Friday, November 6th, 2009Nice to chance upon this. Seven is a magic number, after all.
Scrooge screviews
Saturday, October 31st, 2009What am I up to? Well, since you ask (and so politely, too) I'm going through another revision of New Model Army, this one occasioned by the characteristically insightful, incisive comments of my editor, Simon Spanton. A good editor is is more precious than jewels and his value is far above rubies or pearls: and [...]
New Model Army cover art
Monday, October 19th, 2009This just in. Very cool, in an (appropriately, as it happens) stylish, neo-Mod quasi-fascistic sense.
Dickensian Zombies stagger into shops
Thursday, October 15th, 2009I Am Scrooge is now available for purchase in shops that sell books. Buy a copy, or I'll eat your brains. I will do it, personally.
Booker Prize 2009
Monday, September 21st, 2009Or, rather, nothing to do with the Booker prize 2009. Kim Stanley Robinson has edited a New Scientist science fiction special, which starts with a Robinsonian editorial: British science fiction is now in a golden age. I say this as a happy fan and an awed colleague: the range, depth, intensity, wit and beauty of [...]
Routledge 50 Key Figures Out Now
Wednesday, August 12th, 2009Spotted in the wild: Mark Bould, Andrew M Butler, Sheryl Vint and my Fifty Key Figures in Science Fiction (Routledge Key Guides, 2009). Hurrah! £14.99 in paperback, but, well, clearly more valuable than that. How much more valuable? My esteemed co-editor Andrew M. spotted this (since rescinded, I think): Fifty Key Figures in Science Fiction [...]
We Are Scrooge proofs in
Tuesday, August 11th, 2009What the top-hatted individual is trying to tell you is ... I've received the proofs of We Are Scrooge now; and I'm going through them now. Returning them by the end of the week.
Catch-up 1
Monday, August 10th, 2009A while since my last post here (though there's been a deal of business here, here and here). A quick newsy catch-up, then. I have a picture of a Finnmug to share; but am having trouble getting the image posted. Before the end of the week, though, surely. I finished a working draft of my [...]
The Human Genre Project
Wednesday, July 8th, 2009A very neat notion from the estimable Ken MacLeod (who gives the backstory here): The Human Genre Project site has now gone live. I've contributed two things, a 1200-word story called 'The Chrome Chromosome' and a 10-line poem called 'Chromosome Poem'. Perhaps you can see what I'm doing with those titles. But this looks like [...]
Have yourself a zomberific Christmas
Friday, July 3rd, 2009Christmas? 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; [...]
Mammoth Book of Mindblowing SF
Tuesday, June 16th, 2009Two 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 [...]
Richard P on YBT
Tuesday, June 16th, 2009Rich 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 [...]
The Romanian wolf speaks
Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009Mihai 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 [...]
Canberra’s Blutibia
Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009The 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, [...]
Clute on YBT
Friday, May 8th, 2009I'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 [...]
J G Ballard
Sunday, April 19th, 2009The 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 [...]
Locus on YBT
Sunday, April 19th, 2009Not 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 [...]
Another Clarke Award Omission
Friday, March 20th, 2009Lily'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
Thursday, March 19th, 2009Rather 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 [...]
Fantasy Book Critic on YBT
Wednesday, March 18th, 2009Liviu 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 [...]
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