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

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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.

It was a thoroughly stimulating experience, for me at any rate. The main theme of my thread of the teaching was the relative merits of broadly structuralist/formalis approaches to SFF (such as are, at the moment, probably dominant in the critical culture associated with genre) and the approaches we might call, again broadly, 'poststructuralist'. A very bright class, and lots of interesting interaction.

On the last day we picked a text we had all read -- The Hobbit, it turned out to be -- and discussed how we might write a paper about it. We discussed a wide range of possible angles; and after we'd noted the preponderance of holes in the novel, we talked about that. Rejecting (rightly, I think) a vulgar Freudian decoding ('all the holes are vaginas! And there are swords, too! The swords are penises!') we instead tried out a Deleuze/Guattari 'holey space' reading. After the class I wrote up the paper, and you'll find it here.

the first thing that struck me while I read Adam Roberts’ “Yellow Blue Tibia” is how realistic is described the Communism times of that period. Well, there are small differences with what happened in my country, but the general line is quite the same. Adam Roberts builds an atmosphere close to reality and often throughout the reading “Yellow Blue Tibia” feels like a historical fiction or an alternative history. Although the novel has strong Science Fiction elements and a Sci-Fi plot and it would seem that these are lost in the story they are lingering in the background until the second half of the novel when they’ll come forth in full. I also absolutely loved the humor of “Yellow Blue Tibia”. Throughout the novel Adam Roberts creates amusing scenes, each one brightening my day and ripping a burst of laugh from me. Besides the amusing scenes there are dialogues that are delicious to read and savor and I find the dialogues between the main character, Konstantin Andreiovich Skvorecki, and the taxi driver Saltykov to be the cherry on the cake ... “Yellow Blue Tibia” is one novel I wished it didn’t end

British science fiction is currently undergoing one of its periodic bursts of creativity. Adam Roberts and Ian McDonald, two of the leading SF authors, certainly don't lack for imagination.

Good! Steele calls YBT:

...an SF mystery, involving UFOs and Scientology, a comedy of the Absurd in a Gogol-like satire of the Russian bureaucracy, and a multiverse "quantum alternatives that radiated" conclusion. ... Philip K Dick would have been proud of Roberts with the latter's hint that maybe the 20th century was only an invention!.

Philip K Dick would have been proud. If that's not the highest praise, I don't know what is.

Slightly less ausipcious, but cool nonetheless: Locus has picked the Routledge Companion to Science Fiction (ed., Bould, Butler, Vint and y.t.) as a 'notable book'. They call it 'hefty', which I take to be praise. Many congratulations to Mark, Andy, Sheryl and me!

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 is the book in which Yellow Blue Tibia happens); if we are lucky (as Skvorecky eventually is), we adhere to a page of the world that allows us to llive, but if we are less fortunate we reality-shift (as Skvorecky did until he fixes on one place) through the tissue-thin but innumerable Thought Experiments of the Prestidigitator, who may be UFOs this time.

It is (I feel awkward saying this, because it happens to be a positive review of my novel) an unusually good, if spoiler-high, piece of writing. As one of the commenters, 'dlomax', puts it: 'Yet another luminous review, Mr. Clute. Now, what about another novel yourself? I'll read this new Adam Roberts, but I'd rather be reading a follow-up to Appleseed...' This old Adam Roberts agrees.

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 going on is a pleasure to noodle around with while you read. Roberts, who has twice previously been shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award, is a confident writer who appears to be having buckets of fun telling this story. But what moves Yellow Blue Tibia from a well-told yarn into a layered novel worthy of more than one read is Roberts's commentary on the state of the genre and of its writers. Nuggets about the field abound.

[Update: the event went off very well; thanks to Fran for organising it, and everyone who came]

Also, if that family on the cover looks glum now, wait until the waterline has risen over those trees in the background ...

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 good price with free shipping worldwide so I say get it!!!

That's three exclamation marks. Three! Better than one.

It does make me wonder whether I shouldn't have put more dancing into YBT ...

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 smart -- and often very funny -- yarn. ... Ultimately, then, this is a novel at home with the proliferation of quantum theory, interested in the idea that every event “happens in more than one way [...] spreading into a complex delta-basin of alternate realities.” ... [But] with its humour and intelligence, Yellow Blue Tibia is no precious, wordy text book. It is, and this with some élan, a wryly eloquent -- and at times deeply allusive -- work about the human imagination. Roberts just gets better and better.

Two lines, not none, on the Strange Horizon: Michael Froggatt's line (that he quite likes bits of the book, but thinks it overall 'rather less than the sum of its parts, although some of those parts are, individually, strikingly written, entertaining and thought-provoking'); and Abigail Nussbaum's line (she identifies both Bulgakovishness and irony in the novel, though she thinks the second of these veers into cynicism, and ends unable to judge: 'It's traditional for reviews to make at least some vague gesture at an evaluation of their subject—is this book good, and what readers are likely to find it enjoyable? Yellow Blue Tibia has proven somewhat problematic on that front.' To have baffled a reviewer as sharp and clever as Nussbaum is an achievement in which I can take, I think, a perverse kind of pride).

Finally there's the Times. You know, the Times. Lisa Tuttle's SF review column is now, it seems, monthly; and here's her opinion on YBT:

Yellow Blue Tibia opens with a group of science-fiction writers summoned for a meeting with Stalin in 1946. The Soviet leader, certain that America will fall within five years, is seeking a new enemy against which the people can unite to preserve the revolutionary vigour of communism. If this enemy is other than human, it will be possible to achieve the desired “dialectical synthesis: a fully peaceful world that is simultaneously united in a great patriotic war”.

Forty years later one surviving writer encounters another, who tells him that the scenario they invented, of “radiation aliens” attacking Ukraine, is starting to come true. The latest novel by the astonishingly inventive Adam Roberts is presented as Konstantin Skvorecky's memoir of the alien invasion of 1986. If you wonder why you don't remember the invasion, it explains everything.

Skvorecky is a great creation, comic and moving. His voice - deadpan, wry and convincingly Russian - is the best thing about this engaging, unusual novel, one of the best of the year.

Interesting fact: the event was at the Augustine United Church, on George IV Bridge. Ken Macleod was in the audience, and chatting to him afterwards I discovered that this very church appears in The Night Sessions, as the location for the silent club. So now you know.

The 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."