Category Archive: Reviews
Publishers Weekly choose Jack Glass as one of their ‘Books of Summer 2013′
Tuesday, May 7th, 2013Which is nice of them. In an interview with PW, Roberts says that he set out to write a new kind of whodunit, where the murderer’s name is revealed on page one yet is still a surprise to the reader at the end. He succeeds admirably with this three-part SF mystery, which just won the [...]
SpecFic 2012
Wednesday, May 1st, 2013Speculative Fiction was released last Thursday (25 April); You can find it in the US for $11.99 and in the UK for £8.99. In addition to my piece on Ayn Rand, it has a wealth of brilliant articles and critical readings. Proceeds from all sales go to Room to Read. So -- c'mon! What's keeping [...]
Reviews
Wednesday, November 7th, 2012A couple of links. Theresa Derwin from the esteemed BSFG reviewed Jack Glass for the society newsletters. An excerpt: Riffing on the tropes of crime fiction (the country house murder, the locked room mystery) and imbued with the feel of golden age SF, Jack Glass is another superlative performance from Roberts. Whatever games he plays [...]
By Light Alone
Friday, January 13th, 2012A little belatedly (must attend to this 'bsite more frequently): a brief round-up of things that have been written about By Light Alone. To begin with a couple of actual readers, since they're the most important people. First Lizzie Barrett, on facebook: I have just finished By Light Alone by Adam Roberts. If you like [...]
Anticopernican
Monday, September 12th, 2011Still available for e-download, at the ridiculously inflated price of £0.86p (or 99c), my dwarf novel Anticopernicus has been reviewed in a few places. For starters, Rich Puchalsky has turned his acute critical intelligence upon it [the review contains spoilers]: The whole point of SF being a literature of ideas is not that it's supposed [...]
By Light Reviewed
Thursday, September 8th, 2011I've been neglecting this website: apologies. I'll make things a little busier here, starting off with some reviews of By Light Alone. Here's Stuart Kelly, at the Scotsman: TWO years ago, Kim Stanley Robinson declared that Adam Roberts ought to have won that year's Man Booker Prize. Roberts, like writers as diverse as China Mieville, [...]
Dragon with Girl Tattoo
Monday, June 20th, 2011David Pitt, evidently a man of critical discernment, reviewing books in in the Canadian Chronicle Herald: And, just for the heck of it, you should also check out Adam Roberts’ The Dragon with the Girl Tattoo (Gollancz), a wickedly funny parody of the first Millennium novel, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. It follows the [...]
NMA again
Saturday, March 26th, 2011I still think, all things considered, that New Model Army is my best novel, though my confidence has been dented somewhat recently by its absence from the 2010 Locus Recommended reading list, the Clarke shortlist, the SF Site 2010 list and so on, and so forth. Anyway, in the circumstances it is heartening for me [...]
Rich Puchalsky, ‘On Learning to read Adam Roberts’
Wednesday, March 9th, 2011Typical: you wait for ages for an 'On Learning to Read Adam Roberts' post, then two come along at once! Go to Rich Puchalsky's blog and check this one out.
Paul Kincaid, ‘Learning to Read Adam Roberts’
Tuesday, March 8th, 2011Read his column at Big Other. Kincaid is up for this year's BSFA Award for Non-Fiction (if you're a BSFA member you can vote for him). I hope he wins.
Tennysoniana
Monday, January 17th, 2011I edited the above selection of Tennyson's poetry for OUP in 2000. I was, accordingly, a little surprised when my copy of the LRB dropped through the letterbox this morning (date: 20 Jan 2011), and I opened it to find this review of the selection, by Seamus Perry. It's a fascinating review (occasioned, I suppose, [...]
Zone NMA review
Tuesday, August 31st, 2010Jonathan McCalmont's review of New Model Army has just been posted at The Zone. I don't think I've ever read a more pleasurably gobsmacking review of something I have written. I'm a little amazed at myself, and a touch suspicious, how pleased it makes me. Over at his Ruthless Culture site, McCalmont summarises thuswise: New [...]
What Does Nader Elhefnawy Think of New Model Army?
Wednesday, June 30th, 2010It's a good question; and the answer is here, at Strange Horizons: 'Roberts's depiction of the results is quite well thought out in some respects ... Still, the book has its share of implausibilities.' Some point of praise, balanced by points of dispraise. Most of what has been said so far is in line with [...]
On
Wednesday, June 30th, 2010Gord Sellar, over at gordsellar.com, has reviewed On, my second novel, from way back when. It's a long, but (I think) fascinating review, as much a meditation on how to handle one's preconceptions -- including, interestingly, one's positive preconceptions -- when approaching a novel for review. This bit I especially liked: What I was doing, [...]
Scotsman on Sunday on SF
Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010A very nice piece from Stuart Kelly on New Model Army, Kraken and The Restoration Game (Scotsman on Sunday, June 20 2010): IF I were to say that these three novels dealt, respectively, with how technology is changing the nature of self and democracy; the politics of belief in the postmodern city; and the ramifications [...]
On New Model Army
Wednesday, June 16th, 2010Slight haitus around here; apologies for that. I'll try and be more regular, and will start with this splendid review of New Model Army on weRead (courtesy Phil): On one level, you could see this book as another sci-fi dystopia – and, yes, it’s that – but as ever, the writing is superb, the story [...]
Guardian Review
Saturday, May 8th, 2010I knew there was going to be a very short piece by me in today's Guardian Review about Terry Pratchett's Who-related ruminations. I knew that because I wrote the piece on Wednesday (though it doesn't appear to be online ...) What I didn't know, and didn't expect, was that the Guardian would carry the following [...]
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 Reviews
Tuesday, April 20th, 2010A few reviews of New Model Army have appeared. This is what Brigid Cherry at Total SciFi Online has to say: Roberts’ intriguing and spectacular work is less a novel than a philosophical treatise. If that sounds like a turn-off, it certainly shouldn’t be, for New Model Army is written in stunning prose that is [...]
A Note on Cheryl Morgan
Saturday, January 2nd, 2010Back in the days when she ran Emerald City Cheryl Morgan read and reviewed some of my writing. She didn't like it, for a number of perfectly valid reasons, which is, of course, fair enough. The thing is: for many readers that would have drawn the line under any further encounter with what I do. [...]
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 [...]
