Category Archive: Book News
Previous EntriesA 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 [...]
‘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 [...]
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 the [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 Tibia [...]
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 [...]
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, [...]
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 a [...]
Stone reissue
Wednesday, March 18th, 2009This is in the shops now, part of Gollancz's Space Opera Collection. Nice piece of design, no?
Stalin versus the Martians
Wednesday, March 11th, 2009Sound 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
Monday, March 9th, 2009So, 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 [...]
Daily Mail on YBT
Monday, February 16th, 2009The 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
Monday, February 9th, 2009Scotland 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 [...]
New short fiction
Saturday, February 7th, 2009A 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 [...]
Deathray reviews YBT
Wednesday, January 28th, 2009The 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, [...]