Category Archive: Book News

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Catch-up 1

Saturday, May 26th, 2007

After so long a period of desuetude I suppose I ought to provide a couple of catch-up posts. Let you know what's new, and what's been happening so far in 2007. And today the catch-up concerns Gradisil.
Following its 2006 UK publication Gradi was picked up by the top-drawer US press Pyr, and published over there with the following superb cover [...]

A few roundabout-Christmas things to report

Thursday, December 28th, 2006

The excellent new British SF press Solaris have issued a press release about my forthcoming new novel, Splinter.
It’s not out just yet, and won't be until September 2007, but I'm pretty thoroughly excited by this, I must say. No cover art as yet, but I'll post it up here as soon as I get a [...]

And so 2006 nears its end

Monday, December 4th, 2006

I'm really quite excited by this; the excellent German press Heyne have published translated-into-German versions of several of my parodies; but this is the first of my 'proper novels' to receive this illustrious metamorphosis: Salt from 2000. And what a beautiful cover! One of the handsomest I've seen. So I urge and exhort [...]

Headless Heads-up

Friday, November 10th, 2006

A new novel. Land of the Headless. Here’s an early draft of the cover. It should be something like this, give or take the correction of a typo or so.
Anyway, we can agree: it's handsome. It's green.
I talk about the book a little in the writing section of my site. This project is going through [...]

New Publications

Wednesday, October 4th, 2006

And here you go.
A new parody. Doctor Whom, or E.T. Shoots and Leaves, about a grammatically correct time lord. He’s trying to keep the ‘grammar’ of time in order, so that trifling things like ‘cause and effect’ are not wholly undermined. That’s not a dalek on the cover, by the way. It’s something else. Something [...]

30th June 2006. Birthday.

Friday, June 30th, 2006

So, yes, forty-one. There you go. Is there news?
Yes, there is news. Gradisil continues to be reviewed, sometimes very flatteringly, as is the case on Emerald City. Gosh, EmCit has never before been so nice to me. I’m not quite sure what to say. Lou Anders picks up on the review too, and bigs-up Justina [...]

My vegetable ‘bsite shall grow vaster than empires and more slow.

Tuesday, June 6th, 2006

If you wait long enough, you see, you will discover more about what's been happening. Here is a goulash of news-related stuff.
The most exciting thing is that Lou Anders and Pyr have bought the American rights to Gradisil. It should be appearing some time next year. This is my first American sale for a novel, [...]

Reviews of Gradisil

Friday, March 17th, 2006

Jon Courtenay Grimwood in the Guardian (scroll down, you know): 150 whole words. He thinks it 'Classic Roberts', which is either very good or bad. Lisa Tuttle in the Times is also flattering, and manages a few, but only a few, more words.
Pity these reviewers compelled to squeeze their thoughts into such tiny boxes (I [...]

Here it is at last the distinguished thing

Thursday, February 23rd, 2006

My advance copies of Gradisil arrive. How beautiful they look!
Now isn't that a beautiful cover?
There's more about this in writing section of this website.
Tags: Gradisil

Two small notes

Friday, February 17th, 2006

A couple more publications to note, after the manner of the small publications that are nevertheless worthy of note. One is this collection of original essays that essay the task of Reading The Lord of the Rings, edited by my colleague and friend Robert Eaglestone. My essay, ‘The One Ring’, asks and answers the [...]

A whistlestop tour of some new publications and a something else

Wednesday, February 1st, 2006

The big publication news inside casa Roberts, or indeed cranium Robersti, is still the Critical History of SF (see below). No feedback as yet. Will there be any? Who can tell. But my sinews are tensed now and the mental faculties sharpened in anticipation of the publication of this big novel, which (if there be [...]

The Palgrave History of Science Fiction

Thursday, December 15th, 2005

After many years of anxious labour, the Palgrave History of Science Fiction is delivered. And what a bonny big bouncing baby it is: so many close printed pages, half a dozen half-tone illustrations, footnotes, timeline, index, the whole kit and caboodle. Naturally the first page I open, at random, has a typo right in [...]

Of the Kong

Wednesday, November 30th, 2005

Today my contributor's copy of the excellent BenBella 'Smartpop' collection King Kong Is Back popped onto my hallway mat. Which is timely.
Lots and lots of goodies in here, amongst them my essay -- called 'Why Does My Daughter Love King Kong So Much?' It answers the question in its title, thereby throwing a fascinating and [...]

What’s next in this sequence: Tolstoi, Dostoieskvi, early Nabokov and …?

Tuesday, November 1st, 2005

Perhaps not Adam Pobeptc though. But even so, how cool is this cover? This gives you both Salt and On in one supergreen omnibus edition, available to all Russian speakers from all good Russian shops.
As I tell my creative-writing first-years (nice bunch, by the way): Nabokov is verily as a god to me. (That'd be [...]

Promised Update

Tuesday, October 18th, 2005

I said I would update eight days later. I have now updated, exactly eight days later. Happy now?
So you finished your novel, then? Like you promised you would? I finished a draft of it, yes. And where can I find out more about this new novel? Run don't walk to the writing section of this [...]

Termtime once more

Monday, October 10th, 2005

There's been a pause in the up-dating (sorry, if you're bothered by that kind of thing). Not that I've been idle. We moved house, from a two-bed house in Staines with an outside study (a converted garage, separate from the house, very in-con-wenient in the rain) to a three bedroom house in Staines with an [...]

Back from abroad

Thursday, August 18th, 2005

Since it has become a tenet of my writing practice that I never get nominated for awards, and given that I compensate for this fact psychologically by telling myself how unimportant awards are, how the best writers never got/get them, how the fact that I'm never nominated is a testament to a global conspiracy against [...]

Holiday

Saturday, July 30th, 2005

Despite the fact that we live almost exactly on the perimeter of Heathrow airport we're having to fly from Luton, because no plane from Heathrow flies anywhere near where we want to go. Crazy, yes? And despite the fact that I would gladly have paid any airline regular prices rather than go on rubbishy Ryan [...]

Foreign rights

Friday, March 4th, 2005

I've just got news that rights to Salt and On have been sold to Israel; Hebrew translations of those novels should be appearing soon. This makes me think I should report on some of the other non-Anglophone editions of my books that have appeared or might be appearing soon. My parodies have been the biggest [...]

Some new titles

Tuesday, February 1st, 2005

Two very handsome volumes arrived in the post. One is Constellations: the Best of the New British SF, edited by Pete Crowther (New York: Daw Books 2005) available currently at the frankly astonishing price of £3.73 from Amazon.co.uk. The theme of the collection is evident from its title, and Pete's introduction makes plain that he [...]

The Snow

Thursday, November 11th, 2004

The Snow has now been published to what they call 'mixed reviews'. Niall Harrison's review on The Alien Online is (I think) very perceptive and, on balance, positive; and Mark Greener, again writing on The Alien Online, who has also interviewed me for Vector, had some nice things to say about it. On the downside, [...]

West Memphis 3

Wednesday, November 10th, 2004

An original story of mine ('The Afterlives of SweetDeath') is the least of many reasons to buy the truly excellent collection The Last Pentacle of the Sun: Writings in Support of the west Memphis Three edited by the estimable M W Anderson and Brett Savory (Arsenal Pulp Press 2004). The volume is designed to [...]