Most of what has been said so far is in line with Roberts's previous writing, which is distinguished less by sweeping worldbuilding or flashy prose than the relation of character-centered stories against his speculative backdrops. The unreliable, problematic and sometimes rather unlikable (but believable) narrator; the thematic concern with freedom (especially freedom inside radically different kinds of political community); a touch of the epic in the treatment (despite this particular book's comparative brevity, at 288 widely spaced pages) are all familiar as well. (Indeed, the NMA repeatedly made me think of Gradisil's Uplands in their formative period.)

The same also goes for the awkwardness of the structure, and the periodic self-indulgences. Two-thirds of the way in, the story turns in a sharply different direction, and while what follows caps off and completes the story told thus far, it is still so different in setting, situation, tone, and narration that, despite the set up, there are times when it seems like a different book entirely—indeed, a more ostentatiously "literary" one as the pop cultural references increasingly give way to highbrow allusions, the meditations lengthen, and the sense of the surreal comes to predominate.

Additionally, in this instance, Roberts's effectiveness in painting a portrait of Antony gets in the way of the book's ostensible focus, which is not Antony, but Pantegral. This is not only a question of Antony's limits as an observer, important as these are, but also the implausibilities intrinsic to Pantegral—for all the things that Roberts gets right—and the exploration of the book's central ideas suffers accordingly. Nonetheless, Roberts is skillful enough to make the book proceed as smoothly as can reasonably be hoped for under the circumstances. In fact, his sheer ability to keep the reader turning the pages is fully evident here, and despite the story's flaws, the whole still manages to be well worth the while.

It's an intelligent, thoughtful, well-written review, this; Elhenawy doesn't really like the novel, I think, but he goes out of his way not simply to dismiss it, to try and engage with it on its own terms; and a writer can never say fairer than that. If I have the sense that he doesn't really get the novel, that has certainly more to do with my failure to make the novel get-able than his critical faculties.

What I was doing, when reading Roberts, seems a lot clearer to me now when I look again at my comments on Stone, linked above. I was saying, “Tell me a hard-SF story written with wonderful literary sensibility.” It’s like picking up Analog and saying, “Make me weep with passionate sympathy for the misunderstood narrator of this small personal story from a world overturned by technological change.”

Okay, okay, I rarely go out looking for a good weep, but the clear priorities that shape stories in Analog are a poor match for the things I go out looking for in stories, most of the time. However, this was why I was always so puzzled about my response to Roberts’ work. After all: I wanted good characterization. I wanted lovely, stylish prose. I wanted some intellectual challenges, and some philosophical dilemmas to wrestle with. Roberts had all of these things in spades. How come I always emerged from his novels finding myself so very frustrated, or at the least so very uneasy?

Well, a good part of it — not all of it, but a good part of it — has to do with the insistences and expectations I was bringing to his work. It was, in large part, because of how I was reading him.

I only see this after having read his 2001 novel On in a different way. I decided to read the novel, which has sat on my shelf for something like four years, after seeing Rich Puchalsky’s review of a completely different novel by Roberts, titled Splinter (a novel I have not yet read). On reading Puchalsky’s review, I was reminded of how compelling a storyteller I’ve always found Roberts despite the things I haven’t liked about his books — of his wonderful style and distinct imagination — and so I decided to pick up On, and then while reading it simply to step out of the way and let Roberts tell me the story he wanted to tell, with the nuances he wanted to polish and shine.

I decided, in other words, to stop insisting that he ought to be some other kind of SF writer, and see what Roberts-as-Roberts had to offer me.

I think part of this especially difficult for me is because I also somehow find myself wanting him to be more like the kind of SF author I want to be when I get around to writing novels. That’s a weird kind of a thing to realize, to look in the face, and I’ll bet if I were I able to chat with Harold Bloom long enough to talk about this weirdness, he’d accuse me of being an Oedipus in search of a daddy to kill — an author anxiously searching for an influence about which to be anxious. Which is pretty weird, because I already have a few pretty good influences, whom I’m pleased to note thus far I have not needed to slay.

I have the least useful perspective on my novels, because I wrote them. Which is a shame, because if it were otherwise, I'd go 'yes!' here. I'm not really like other writers of SF. Since most fans want a new writer to be like their favourite writers of SF, and for good reason; because that's what they enjoy, because it helps them orient themselves with regard to new stuff. Still, I'd be happy to be oedipally slain and superseded in Mr Sellar's SF novel, when it finally comes out.

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 of Bostrom's simulation hypothesis for ethics and the philosophy of being, then you'd be forgiven for thinking this newspaper had turned into Critical Quarterly.

Likewise, if I said these three novels were about a "giant" waging war on Basingstoke; the miraculous disappearance of a giant squid; and a computer game about a real but non-existent Soviet state - and the dark goings-on therein - then you'd be equally at liberty to think this was SFX.

This is one of the great ironies of contemporary literature: the books that ask the deepest and most profound questions tend to be situated in the most marginalised of genres. Even writers in the field are tired by the labels and the schisms around them - is this fantasy or sci-fi, steam-punk or alt-history? - and if it weren't for the shelving policy of bookstores, we might as well just call them all literature.

The "giant" in Adam Roberts's New Model Army is called Pantegral, and it's not a single entity. In the near future, new armies have developed through a combination of flash-mobbing, crowd-sourcing and wireless connections. Volunteers - genuine volunteers, not conscripts - come together to achieve objectives, then melt back into "civilian" life as they choose. This radical, freelance and truly democratic army has been hired by the Scottish Government as part of the Succession War: cheekily, Roberts posits a crisis in devolution when Prince William dies, and the Scots and Welsh demand Prince Harry has a paternity test before assuming the role of Prince of Wales. The protagonist tells us in the opening line that he is "not the hero of this story" as, under interrogation, he describes how the New Model Armies work.

The brilliantly detailed concept is balanced by terrific action scenes in the "suburban catastrophe" style of HG Wells or JG Ballard. Every bus stop becomes a fox-hole; each multi-storey car-park a bunker. And Roberts suggests, eerily, that the New Model Army might just be an interim stage as humanity comes to term with its new collective capacity.

Kelly says some equally insightful things about Mievelle and MacLeod.

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 construction compelling and the characterisation fulfilling. The opening sentence: “I am not the hero of this story” is true – the NMA itself is the subject, and one can imagine lesser writers taking that and using it as a pretext for hopping from one character to another, painting none of them, all in the name of focussing on the subject matter. Adam Roberts gives his narrating character a full history, personality and motive for his actions whilst still making the NMA itself the hero of the story. I’ve read all Adam Roberts’ novels and they really are superb. Some of them are less accessible than others (‘On’ and ‘Polystom’ are seriously weird!) but from Gradisil onwards he seems to be retaining his hallmark skill of taking a single unusual concept and wrapping it into a novel of outstanding quality. Reading a book as good as New Model Army one cannot help but rail against the ignorance of the literary classes that eschew Adam Roberts (and Kim Stanley Robinson) whilst heaping praise on Margaret Atwood just because she has managed to convince the book world that she’s not a science fiction writer (she is) because science fiction writers don’t write ‘proper novels.’ All three produce first class novels as good as anything Hilary Mantel or Salman Rushdie has ever written. One can but hope that this will be recognised one day.

One can indeed but-hope.

Cool John Howe cover, though, what? And this issue also includes pieces by Elizabeth Hand, John Clute and Roger Luckhurst, so I'm in good company.

I notice that Tony Ballantyne agrees with me on this one.

The SFX Summer of SF Reading
Stephen Hunt Adam Roberts, Dan Abnett Graham McNeill, China Mieville Michael Cobley

WATERSTONE'S PICCADILLY
Monday, 10 May 2010, 5:30PM
To celebrate the launch of The SFX Summer of SF Reading we are delighted to host authors from the across the [sic] SF spectrum. Access to the queue is on a first come first served basis, please arrive early to avoid disappointment. The duration of signing is discretionary. To win tickets to an exclusive post signing event please goto http://www.futurecomps.co.uk/sfxevening.

Further details: 020 7851 2400

It's a simple solution: the war is over and we need a new enemy, so ask a bunch of science fiction writers to invent an invading alien race that will spur us on to technological advance and unite the people. In thsi novel that is exactly what Stalin does in the mid-1940s. Konstantin Skvorecky is one of the writers Stalin recruited and then spurned, and one of the only survivors 40 years on. He lives a quiet life, unnoticed until the world he and his colleagues created starts to come true. What follows is a convoluted -- sometimes frsutratingly so -- puzzle of a story, continually wrongfooting the reader on a road-trip to Chernobyl in the fateful year of 1986. The novel is both thriller and mind-game, involving alternate histories, the KGB, UFOs, and even Scientology, with the author at his playful best. Putting a bunch of SF authors together to write the future wasn't really a simple solution. Nothing ever is with Roberts, who combines intellectual challenge and entertainment as few others can.

I didn't expect it because Eric Brown already reviewed the book in the paper when it came out. Still, very pleased to be double-reviewed, and so positively too!

Forbidden Planet and Gollancz publishing are delighted to bring you one of our now-celebrated, open-format, multi-author signings! At 6pm on Thursday May 13th, Forbidden Planet 179 Shaftesbury Avenue, London will be playing host to: -

• Stephen Deas
• M D Lachlan
• John Meaney
• Sarah Pinborough
• Adam Roberts

This is a free-form and open signing, bringing the authors out from behind their tables and giving their readers a chance to meet them and talk to them about their work. An array of fantastic books will be on hand to be picked up and signed – including works by every one of the writers present.

Come!

There have been some other reviews. I was particularly pleased with this David Hebblethwaite review:

I can safely say that New Model Army is like no other book I’ve ever read. I know this because I have no name for the feeling I was left with after I’d finished it. That’s a recommendation, by the way.

That's exactly what I'm trying to do when I write fiction!

The ceremony was as it always is: good to see lots of people there, meet old friends and put faces to a couple of internet names. Stephen Hunt reports that Sean Pertwee was there:

The actor Sean Pertwee – aka Mutant Chronicles, Doomsday, Equilibrium, Dog Soldiers, and the upcoming The 4th Reich – was sitting directly in front of me, close to China Miéville on the left of the cinema auditorium during the ceremony. I suspect he was there as part of the SCIFI London Film Festival, the kind hosts of the Clarke awards for the last three years ... As the thanks to the organisations supplying the judges were made, Tom Hunter, head awards honcho, gets through thanking the SF Foundation and the BSFA, it comes to SFcrowsnest.com’s turn and said web site’s ace judge Paul Skevington, then Sean Pertwee leans forward to his mate and I am fairly sure he whispered, ‘Who the £$%£ are SFcrowsnest?’

As it happens, I was sat next to China at this point in the proceedings, and beside Pertwee's mate (whom I did not recognise and whose name I don't know) and Pertwee himself. I suspect they were there as friends of Marcel Theroux, who was sitting in the row in front. I suspect this because, as a slide flashed on the enormous screen showing all six shortlised novels, Sean Pertwee's mate leant over to me (a man he didn't know from Adam, if you'll pardon the phrase) and whispered loudly in my ear: 'Far North's a genius novel. All those others, though, are shit.' I murmured something noncommitally agreeable, and the ceremony moved on.

What Stephen doesn't mention is that at one point John Landis, I'm almost certain it was, poked his head over the divide separating the exit from the auditorium, and that Pertwee and his mate both waved excitedly to him.

They're strange occasions, these awards. To slip into the third-person: one tries not to get too worked up about them, or to lose too much of one's cool; but inevitably things becomes increasingly exciting and jitter-provoking the closer to the actual announcement one gets. By the time you're at the fumbling-open-the-gold-envelope part, you're no longer thinking 'oo I hope I win!' You're thinking 'let's get this over with.' Those screenshots of the Oscars with five separate boxes and an anxious star in each? When the winner is announced, and the other four furiously applaud, they're not being disingenuous, you know. Perhaps they really are graceful losers, or perhaps they will, later, seethe with resentment; but in the moment they're experiencing a rush of pure relief that manifests as real happiness for the other actor.

On the upside, there have been some more reviews of all the shortlisted titles, some of them (the reviews I mean) very interesting. Niall Harrison, that tall man, links to some of these; and here's Dan Hartland's whole shortlist review at SH (and part II). He's not so keen on YBT, as it goes, though he says some interesting and perceptive things about the novel nonetheless. And I can't argue with his main point: he looks for an aesthetic unity in his fiction (he says he has 'a kink for it'); where I, although I acknowlege the tremendous gravitational appeal of that sort of unity, mistrust it, and consider it one of my jobs as a writer to go through the balanced, harmonious whole fucking it up in various, and I would hope creative, ways. That's a differend, right there.

One small niggle I have. Hartland:

There is also the Russian question. In a post on her own blog, the novelist Catherynne Valente charged Roberts with egregious cultural appropriation, marshalling several arguments in order to show that the novel's grasp on Russian and Soviet culture is tenuous and at times wholly wrong-headed. Some examples are less serious than others—that Skvorecky, when arrested by the KGB, angrily (but impotently) demands he has rights, is surely more forgivable than the suggestion that the genre and literary circles depicted in the novel might bear no relation to their counterparts in reality.

Nitpicking with statements like is really of no interest to anybody but a particular breed of pedantry-minded author (which is why I bury this at the bottom of a post few will read, rather than weighing in on Hartland's unpedantic, thoughtful piece); but this isn't right. What I mean is: I don't argue with Catherynne Valente's dislike of the novel; for maybe it is as shit as she says, and certainly her reaction is inalienably hers. And if I read her correctly, although that dislike does come in part from a sense that 'the novel's grasp on Russian and Soviet culture is tenuous and at times wholly wrong-headed', it really has more to do with a broader dislike of the book's tone and approach together with a diagnosis of deplorable fatphobia in my imagination. But I have to say: this particular bit isn't right. Though Valente and Hartland both say he does, Skvorecky, does not angrily (but impotently) demand his rights when arrested by the KGB. It's true that he does, after lengthy interrogation by several Militia (not KGB) officers, ask with what he has been charged; but that's not the same thing. Asking the police 'what are the charges?', even in a tyrannical state, isn't so unbelievable as demanding the KGB respect one's human rights, I think.

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 often lyrical, if not poetic. Roberts has a wonderful grasp of language and uses it to stunning effect on every page.

Keith Brooke didn't like it so much, in the Guardian:

The year is 2030 and Tony Block is fighting for Pantegral, a New Model Army hired by the secessionist Scottish government to fight against their English oppressors. Block, a gay English intellectual, is a mercenary fighting for the cause of democracy: the NMA is truly democratic, a band of free-thinkers with no command structure. Their opponents are the British army and, as Bloch sees it, the outmoded, hierarchical, feudal English political system. Much of the narrative charts the running battles with the conventional army, the NMA's resounding victories, and Bloch's love for his straight companion-in-arms Simic. But this is a novel by Adam Roberts, intellectual enfant terrible of British SF, and he transforms what might have been a conventional war story into a series of investigations into the nature of democracy, love, war and, ultimately, revolution. The result is frequently revelatory but also bafflingly self-indulgent.

And Jason Baki over at his estimable Kamvision blog, is positive:

I found New Model Army to be funny, tragic, infuriating, completely self absorbed; and yet by turn acutely self aware. A rare thing happened to me with this book, and I can think of no higher praise: as soon as I finished it, I actually wanted to re-read it. The more I thought about it after I completed it, the more I liked it. This is a fantastic piece of contemporary writing: edgy, relevant and strangely moving. I highly recommend it to those who like to be challenged as well as entertained.

And here's another thing: Jason sent me some perceptive questions, and I responded by email, and the result is called 'an interview'. You'll find that at his blog too.

Spirit by Gwyneth Jones

The City & The City by China Miéville

Yellow Blue Tibia by Adam Roberts

Galileo's Dream by Kim Stanley Robinson

Far North by Marcel Theroux

Retribution Falls by Chris Wooding

As I was saying to somebody else, the thing that makes me particularly chuffed about appearing on this list is the sheer excellence of the other nominees. It means that my happiness at being shortlisted in the first place is tempered by a kind of relief -- there'll be, for me, neither shame, envy nor sorrow if I lose to a book the calibre of Galileo's Dream, Spirit or The City and the City.' To quote Woody Allen's Love and Death, as I am fond of doing: 'no, it's a greater honour for me ...'

On the other hand, Gollancz have chosen not to go with my preferred strapline: 'If Nabokov had written Bravo Two Zero ...' Probably wisely.

Kim Stanley Robinson caused a bit of a stir this year when he wrote in The Guardian that he thought the Booker Prize should have been won by Adam Roberts’ Yellow Blue Tibia. “Adam who?” said the literati in unison, though they forgot so quickly that when the BBC caught up with the story they managed to mention the book without mentioning poor Adam’s name. I’m not sure that it is quite a Booker winner, but it is by far the best thing Adam has ever done. Just remember that he’s a British satirist, and such people earn their living by mercilessly pillorying others.

Now go and read her blog.

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 enjoy between the covers of I Am Scrooge, not least the tasteful line drawings of Zom Leech.

I'll pass those words on to Zom. He'll be chuffed.

At first I found this book rather forced and the language slightly stilted, with an uncomfortable tension between the scenes of graphic violence and the spirit of the source material, but the story grew on me as it progressed, the lilting cadences of the mock-Dickensian preose insinuating themselves into my consciousness and soon all objections were swept aside. Roberts ... [is] not a writer to engage the emotions, but he does delight the intellect with a wealth of invention and incidental detail, along the way having huge fun with the tropes of the zombie genre. ... A particular pleasure is Roberts' reinvention of the Christmas story, gifting us with a version in which the Slaughter of the Innocents had to do with stopping a zombie plague and Christmas puddings are a sweetmeat reminder of the brains which zombies love to eat. It's an audacious display of twisted logic, coupled with sly wit, as each detail is neatly slotted into the overall pattern and the feeling takes hold that yes, insane as it sounds, this all makes sense and could have happened exactly as Roberts describes it. Zombies are flavour of the month just now in publishing circles, whilst the success of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies has carved out a niche for reiterations of the classics. I Am Scrooge shows up that work as the rather dull text it actually was, demonstrating what can be done when you apply intelligence and invention and wit to subvert a classic story instead of simply adding a dollop or two of schlock to the mix. It's also, aside from a few typos (unusual for Gollancz) a very nicely produced book, and at the asking price will make a perfect stocking filler ... that will continue to bring the odd chuckle and pleasurable frisson long after the turkey is eaten and the Queen's speech forgotten.

I'll be appearing at the Scarborough Literary Festival on Saturday 17th April (at 1 pm to be precise, with Tom Holt and Peter Guttridge; but otherwise just knocking about that fine town). I don't often do festivals or cons, so this is also quite a big deal for me. I'll need to get the train up and everything.

A note on my blogging: one New Year's Resolution of mine is to complete the Hugo translation I've been engaged in, off and on, for ages now. It has lain idle for half a year, but I shall restart it. Also, I've rethought Punkadiddle. I've removed the occasional pictures that appeared there, leaving it as a pure reviews blog. I don't have enough blogs, so I've set up another one, Tin Pics, on which to post any sketches or drawings or tinny little pictures I come up with; but I don't expect anybody to follow that, except, perhaps, those members of my immediate family whom I sketch. And even then will probably be uninterested in my Hugo doings. Which is all fair enough.

My three favourite novels of the year were probably Moxyland by Lauren Beukes, Yellow Blue Tibia by Adam Roberts and Zoe's Tale by John Scalzi (going by UK publication dates, that is) ... Yellow Blue Tibia is from that interesting place where a new inflationary universe of SF has sprung up, amongst literary fiction. Some of that universe is formed by literary authors who look down on our ghetto and despise it, and some is formed by literary authors who simply don't see why they should enter a ghetto and prostrate themselves just to write about what they like. Adam Roberts, aside from both groups, is an SF writer who can decide, like Aldiss, Ballard, Priest and most of the others from the New Wave, to use the tropes of a literary novel, ambiguity most of all, to enter that universe himself. He's been, frankly, arrogant in the way he told this year's Hugo nominated authors (and artists, even!) that their work wasn't cutting edge enough. But that doesn't change the fact that he deserves more recognition, and that perhaps the SF ghetto should reach out more to embrace that new universe, and redefine, a little, its terms of engagement with literary quality. Yellow Blue Tibia is a wonderful collision between the Soviet way of seeing the world, the SF way of doing that, and the universe of flying saucers. It keeps its foot in the SF genre, right at the end, by offering not a dreamlike wandering off from its road trip through the Russian consciousness, but a nuts and bolts explanation, which might come as a bit of a shock to a literary audience expecting something more like The Magus or Miss Smilla's Feeling For Snow. But who knows, they might have liked that shock, they might want more, and we should welcome them with more, and more like this from Adam Roberts.

London Evening Standard. The best books of the year: our reviewers name the titles that have meant the most to them over the past 12 months.

FRANCIS SPUFFORD I spent this year finishing a book set in Russia, so I was all ready to delight in the charcoal-black satire of Adam Roberts's Soviet UFO novel Yellow Blue Tibia (Gollancz, £12.95), even before it was tipped as a worthier winner of the Booker than anything on the actual shortlist.

May I not sound too Boraty as I say, in reply: 'nice!'. In other news, and also floated first on Twitter, this:

FORBIDDEN PLANET and Gollancz Publishing are delighted to be hosting an open-format, multi-author signing. Five authors, one event – at 6pm on Thursday November 26th, Forbidden Planet 179 Shaftesbury Avenue, London will be playing host to: -

• David Devereux
• Paul McAuley
• Justina Robson
• Adam Roberts
• Chris Wooding

To promote the release of Justina’s new book CHASING THE DRAGON, Forbidden Planet and Gollancz Publishing have gathered a host of science fiction and fantasy talent into one event – an event to bring writers and fans together and to promote interest in new and different kinds of fiction.

This is a free-form and open signing, bringing the authors out from behind their tables and giving their readers a chance to meet them and talk to them about their work. An array of fantastic books will be on hand to be picked up and signed – including works by every one of the writers present.

And, as usual with these events, there are likely to be more than a few surprise guests...

...and a subsequent visit to the pub!

Be nice to see you there. Whomsoever 'you' may be.

Until then, I've been noting with pleasure a couple of zombie reviews. Hard, for instance, to think of a more elevating and honourable point of comparison than I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again:

Imagine a historical Shaun of the Dead written with as many bad zombie puns as you can think of – if you’ve got a long memory, add that it’s been written by the I’m Sorry I’ll Read That Again team – and you’ve got an idea of the tone. The narrator’s voice occasionally irritates, with one joke repeated a few too many times, but once the plot kicks in, it’s far more in the background. Given that Roberts is a professor of 19th Century literature, it’s hardly surprising that there are multiple references to different stories, some well-known, others obscure. Like Monty Python at its best though, I Am Scrooge doesn’t talk down to its audience – even when it’s about to make possibly the worst Scooby Doo joke ever! [Paul Simpson]

And here's what the Daily Mail thought:

One man stands between Victorian London and a plague of brain-munching undead: Ebeneezer Scrooge. Yep, it’s that Dickensian zombie novel Eng Lit so obviously lacked. In what you could call a fairly free adaptation, Adam Roberts reworks A Christmas Carol into a zombie-slashing gore-fest, with cameo appearances by Jack the Ripper, Queen Victoria and Dickens himself, plus a bravura performance by the Ghost of Christmas Future as a very funny Ali G-soundalike, Lots of corny jokes and groanworthy one-liners, lots and lots of brain-slurping zombies. Clever and daft in equal measure. [Harry Ritchie, Daily Mail 30 Oct 2009]

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 science fiction being published in the UK these days is simply amazing. The eight wonderful writers featured here are only a representative sampling of a community of artists so strong that it is hard to explain. Add to these Brian Aldiss, Neal Asher, Iain Banks, Christopher Evans, Alasdair Gray, Colin Greenland, John Courtenay Grimwood, Peter Hamilton, Nick Harkaway, M. John Harrison, Robert Holdstock, Gwyneth Jones, Garry Kilworth, Doris Lessing, Ian R. MacLeod, China Miéville, Richard Morgan, Christopher Priest, Alastair Reynolds, Adam Roberts, Jennifer Rohn, Brian Stableford, Charles Stross, Lisa Tuttle - and no doubt others I have forgotten, or am unaware of (sorry) - and one has to ask, how is it that a group of such intellectual power could be working at one time, and our time at that.

I was enormously chuffed to see my name in there, part of that genuinely exalted company. Now, if somebody staged a four way hike-off between Robinson, Le Guin, Delany and Gene Wolfe for the title 'world's greatest living science fiction author' I'd put my money on Robinson; something that only made the name-check sweeter. But then I turned the page.

Oh, I know there is a Booker prize, I've heard of it even in California - supposedly given to the best fiction published in the Commonwealth every year - but there are no Woolves on those juries, and so they judge in ignorance and give their awards to what usually turn out to be historical novels. Sometimes these are fine historical novels, written by tremendous writers; I particularly like Roddy Doyle, John Banville, Vikram Seth and Amitav Ghosh, and my favorite was Penelope Fitzgerald. But working, like all of us, in the rain shadow of the great modernists, they tend to do the same things the modernists did in smaller ways. A good new novel about the first world war, for instance, is still not going to tell us more than Parade's End by Ford Madox Ford. More importantly, these novels are not about now in the way science fiction is. Thus it seems to me that three or four of the last 10 Booker prizes should have gone to science fiction novels the juries hadn't read. Should I name names? Why not: Air by Geoff Ryman should have won in 2005, Life by Gwyneth Jones in 2004, and Signs of Life by M. John Harrison in 1997. Indeed this year the prize should probably go to a science fiction comedy called Yellow Blue Tibia, by Adam Roberts.

At which point I fell off my chair.

Fifty Key Figures in Science Fiction (Routledge Key Guides) (Paperback)
by Mark Bould (Author), et al. RRP: £14.99

Or available via Amazon for £1,848.69
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If it weren't for that extra shipping charge ...

The book is consistently okay, and the author makes a good attempt at character development, but the problem is he attempts to tell the story of all nine characters and move the plot along, it's just too much for one book so everything feels too quick. There's more pages spent discussing the trip to their objective, or more correctly discussing the personal histories of the various characters, than there is in their training or the mission itself ... In any event, it's not a bad read, but it's not going to win any awards.

Wrong! Funny old world, ain't it, though?

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 next novel, to be called New Model Army: at the minute my editor has it, and I've also sent it to three of the most deftly expert novel-readers I know, who have, with fantastic kindness, all agreed to have a read too. In the light of their feedback I shall revise.

The Mammoth Book of Mindblowing SF (which I'm in, and which I praised here) has been the occasion of a heated SFSignal thread. Commentors noted that all the contributors are white men. This is, clearly, not good. Some commentators attempted a defence of this aspect of the collection, which in turn inflamed the tempers of other commentators, and it all became rather shouty. My view is bound to be a little compromised by virtue of the fact that I have a story in the volume; but in many respects it is close to what Al Reynolds (also a contributor) says. Like him, when Mike Ashley approached me to see if I wanted to contribute a story, I had no idea who else was being asked, or what the overall collection would look like.

You should read the whole thread, really; it's interesting, if often intemperate. So: I believe there should be more diversity in published SF, especially in terms of gender and non-white ethnicity. It's a shame this anthology doesn't do that; but the claims of several of the more choleric contributors don't seem to me tenable, specifically (a) accusations that Mike Ashley is sexist, or actively misogynist: I really don't believe he is; and (b) the belief that this anthology deserves to be held up for particular rebuke (instead of, let's say, the 2009 Hugo best novel shortlist) because it claims to be in some sense representative of SF. I don't think it does; not even in terms of the cover tagline's characteristic publishing-hyperbole (I don't know if the editor was responsible for this tagline anyway; probably not).

Actually, I think Jonathan M's first comment (also on that thread) may be closer to the truth: the problem isn't this anthology as such, it's a more generalised sexism and racism in SF publishing; and the point of getting so angry here, and of throwing so much vitriol around, is to turn this book into a deterrent case: to make future editors think twice. I can see some merit in that, although it seems to me hard that Ashley, a decent and conscientious man, must have this torrent of anger poured onto his head. It also seems to me a shame that Paul di Filippo gets so roasted in the thread, given that he is to the best of my knowledge neither a sexist nor a racist: his attempt at genial 'let's all calm down' commenting sparked some furious and indeed frumious responses. One interesting thing to come out of it, though, was a specific suggestion from Reynolds: a genuine ethical question that I am currently pondering ... should authors who are approached to contribute to anthologies make their agreement conditional on the finished product including an appropriate diversity of other authors? I wonder how that would work, practically: whether it falls within an author's responsibility; whether, indeed, it would tag the author in question as 'difficult' and reduce future commissions; and whether that would be a price worth paying for the larger good. What isn't discussed in that thread, and indeed can't be since, by their own admission, most of the people commenting neither have nor ever (on principle) will read the stories it includes, is literary quality. That seems to me high, although my judgment is of course, as noted, of course problematised by the fact that I'm also a contributor.

But, look, here's Nick Hubble in Strange Horizons, who likes it a good deal: 'The editors ... are to be highly commended for assembling a superb team of contributors and producing a volume that is both an outstanding work of reference in its own right and a comprehensive guide to science fiction and the scholarship surrounding it. This is a book which will last, informing and challenging scholars at all levels for many years to come. Its success will not be measured simply in sales or the number of subsequent editions, but in the work it will inspire as SF continues to grow as an academic field.' Excellent!

This has nothing to do with providing myself with work-avoidance fodder, although I have just spent a minute coming up with the following faux-etymology. Twitter. v & n From Latin, tuito 'a taking care of, keeping, guarding, preserving, defense, protection, preservation.'

Christmas? 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; Dickens's A Christmas Carol, with added Zombies. Yes?
ME: By all means. Given that this won't be out until Christmas, and that Christmas is a long long way away, when will you need me to deliver the manuscript?
ZOMBIE EDITOR: MAAAAAAAAAY!
ME: I'd better get cracking then.
ZOMBIE EDITOR: Do you mean cracking in the sense of cracking open peoples' skulls in order to get at their BRAAAAIIINS? Or in the sense of moving swiftly along with the writing, hilarity and drawing the illustrations?
ME: The latter.
ZOMBIE EDITOR: Fair enough.

And here's the cover. I particularly like the bloodstained thumbprints.