Tag Results: Swiftly
Guardian on Swiftly
By Adam Roberts | April 13, 2008
Categories: Book News
Eric Brown briefly on Swiftly:
Roberts is king of the thought-experiment, and this novel begins with a grand conceit. It's 1848, and Britain and France are at war - aided respectively by the Lilliputians and the Brobdingnagians from Gulliver's Travels. Abraham Bates, opposed to his country's enslavement of the little people, has turned traitor. Seconded by the French military to escort a computational device from London to York, he falls into the company of opium addict Henry Oldenberg, the dean of York, and in love with Eleanor Burton, who combines sexual naivety with scientific precocity. What follows is both a compulsive comedy of manners and a free-wheeling metaphysical riff on the nature of religion, the universe and scale, with the arrival of extraterrestrials far larger than the Brobdingnagians.
That's cocaine, not opium, but otherwise a decent review. Compulsively free-wheeling, you know.
Deathray on Swiftly
By Adam Roberts | March 30, 2008
Categories: Book News
I'm going to quote Guy Haley's review of Swiftly in full here, because it seems to me spot-on (about the weaknesses and the strengths, both, of the novel); and if I'm infringing his or Deathray's copyright I trust him to let me know.
Another intriguing novel from one of the UK's most important working writers of sf, and one of his best.
I'm going to call this literary, and that's going to get me into trouble. We rail against the tedious taxonomic classification of
books, especially using such an emotive term, connoted as it is with snobbery and superiority. No doubt this hypocrisy on my part will plunge like a Lilliputian dagger into the eyes of various readers, but it stands, because you know exactly what I mean. By small conveniences do we aggravate one another.Swiftly is an expansion of Roberts' short story, an ingenious extrapolation of Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels. It is 144 years after Gulliver returned home. Britain and France are at war, and the marvellous creatures Gulliver encountered have been inevitably subdued and enslaved by the European power.
There are many areas where the book excels. Its description of a world made wondrous by the advent of Brobdingnagian sheep, talking cavalry and Lilliputian craftsmen (whose tiny hands allow them to construct fantastical machines) is entrancing, the middle act is an amusingly apt rebuke to the 19th century romantic novel, and in the final stages we are treated to an imaginative dissection of Swiftly's multi-scalar universe.
Less successful is the book's theme of the worthiness of a man to be loved. Roberts goes too far in his abasement of his protagonist Abraham Bates; among many other penances, he makes Bates a coprophiliac who loathes his own arousal. Admittedly, Roberts does nothing without reason -- Bates' peccadilloes illustrate the gloriously physical reality of love, furthering the story's debunking of Victorian romantic myth, and they form a sly scatalogical adjunct of the book's discourse on scale and corruption. But Bates begins with indignity already heaped upon him, and to have him have to redeem himself through yet more indignifty seems suffering for suffering's sake. It's almost Catholic, and Bates is no Christ.
Yet this is a small criticism. The book fully takes up the beat of Swift's drum on the contrariness of human nobility, and Roberts cleverly carries on the mode of reversal that the original novel employs. We have the Houyhnhnms, the most rational of Swift's creations, recast as broken beasts of burden, the gentle Brobdingnagians forced to fight as soldiers, and arrogant Europeans compelled to embrace their own insignificance. Finally, Bates finds peace within his own grubby world, something Gulliver failed to achieve.
It's a good taste of Roberts' work, sporting many of his tropes: Bates is flawed, a naive, depressive idealist who betrays is country; there's an antagonistic supporting character in the shape of the cocaine-addled Dean of York; we meet a number of obstructive, ambivalent authority figures; and there's a difficult journey on foot, and a war which our hero has little stomach for. It's not a retreading of old ground, however. These are merely some of the authors' favourite stage settings ,and he knows how to employ them well.
Swiftly is probably the most accessible of Roberts' books to date, too. Besides the readership's obvious familiarity with the source material, his prose has found an agreeable balance in its literary flourish, and his three main characters, though still Robertsian in their flaws and peculiarities, are easy to befriend. The narrative loses some of its steam towards the end, but, like the Brobdingnagians, the book has a big heart.
He writes an intimate book, does Roberts, and you get the feeling his characters must suffer so much because he believes himself, not them, to be unworthy. I suspect that when Roberts' confidence grows a little, we will see a truly great work, rather than a merely excellent one, from this most fascinating of authors.
SFX on Swiftly
By Adam Roberts | March 28, 2008
Categories: Book News
Richard Cobbett offers his opinion of the book in the latest SFX:
Some speculative fiction ideas just jump right out of the page, and this is definitely one of them: a historical epic set in an England where Lemuel Gulliver was more than just the main character in a book by Jonathan Swift. ...
Swiftly is, ironically, a slow-paced novel, not outright mimicking the flowery style of the era, but certainly taking its share of cues from it. There’s little of the satire that made the classic that inspired it such a lasting success, but that’s not a problem – Adam Roberts is simply using Swift’s creations, not writing a sequel to his original story, and the change of style helps to give Swiftly its own distinct universe. It’s an excellent piece of historical fantasy in its own right, and would likely stand even without the Gulliver connection.
What makes the main story so interesting is the merging of human politics with the new inhuman characters; the struggles between France and England due to the addition of new manpower and technology imported from the rediscovered islands. It’s familiar, but just different enough to be fresh ...
The concept behind Swiftly was strong the first time Roberts used it, as a short story in a collection (which was also, confusingly, called Swiftly) and as a full novel it really gets time to breathe. It’s almost enough to make you grab a boat and head out in search of new islands.
Splendid. I'm still waiting for a copy of the most recent Deathray to arrive in Staines, since it contains a review of the same novel by Sir Guy Haley, no less; but it hasn't made it to any of this town's newsagents yet.
Gevers judges Swifters
By Adam Roberts | March 22, 2008
Categories: Book News
Nick Gevers is one of the best reviewers working in SF today: deeply knowledgeable about the genre and with both eloquence and an impeccable judgment. He has not always liked my fiction overmuch previously, so it's particularly gratifying to read his review of my latest over at SFSite.
Swiftly ... is an enormously ambitious novel, a steampunk epic of considerable force and ingenuity. It is also a deeply bizarre book, whose protagonists, sometimes to the detriment of the plot, conduct a love affair based on disgust and the stimulating odor of excrement. Why Roberts chose this admixture of elements is a little mysterious, unless it serves as a commentary on the original Dean Swift's fascination with smutty jokes and toilet humor. As well, the eighteenth century, whose spirit the novel explores, was generally an age of smells and off-color bawdiness; maybe that indeed plays a part ... Despite its peculiarities, Swiftly may be Roberts's best novel so far. It is a book he had in mind for a long time, and its maturity of conception is impressive.
That's spot-on, I'd say, though it would be nice if that 'despite' in the last sentence there were 'because of'. But one can't have everything.
More Swiftly reviews
By Adam Roberts | March 13, 2008
Categories: Book News
SFRevue respect rather than love the novel: 'An endlessly inventive writer, Adam Roberts can, it seems, turn his hand to any kind of science fiction story ... The result is more admirable than it is enjoyable, but once again it confirms Roberts as one of our most intelligent and versatile authors and I look forward to seeing what he offers up next' says John Berlyne.
SFX like it, expressing their liking with four stars. Mind you, in the selfsame issue they note the appearance of the mass-market paperback of Land of the Headless in much less positive terms. They don't like it. They call it 'oddball.' It was another one of those double-take moments for me, the realisation that for SF criticism 'oddball' is a term of dispraise. (Doesn't that seem wrongheaded to you? Isn't oddball something you go to SF for--to escape the deadening slick professional sheen of airport thrillers and sagas?) Ah well; there's no accounting for tastes. Perhaps what's wanted are the trappings of oddness, not an oddness that goes all the way down to the balls. But of course, I would say that, wouldn't I. I can choose to believe that reviewers just don't know what to make of my fiction, when it's just as likely they do know what to make of it, they just don't like it.
Swiftly reviews
By Adam Roberts | February 26, 2008
Categories: Book News
Dan Hartland, over at Strange Horizons, has some thoughtful and, by and large, praising things to say about Swiftly:
In Swiftly, he takes [his] talent for cannibalisation to a more serious end—he creates a world which, in its variety of familiar motifs, reminds us of something we should know and yet is not. We feel at home here, even whilst being constantly reminded that we are far from that. Roberts deepens yet further our empathy for his at-sea protagonists. The world has changed—I feel it in the prose.
...
Swift's hatred of structures and systems, but his love of individuals with their foibles and quirks, is brought to the fore in Swiftly, a worthy science fictional successor to Swift's indispensable masterwork. If Roberts has explicated Swift's surreal world with wit and not a little learning, he has also in no small part written a book equal parts adventure story and social commentary. Its philosophy is Swift's, but its success is all Roberts's own.
He has some small problems with the way the original short-story has been reworked into a full-length novel, and with aspects of the characterisation, but he also says that this is 'criticism which doesn't have much to say about how enjoyable the book is to read', which is nice.
In another medium, Anthony Browne at the fruity and opal Starburst magazine gives it a full-page review; he also has some very nice things to say, although some less positive things too, and on balance the latter rather outweigh the former: 3 stars out of 5. I console myself by thinking, perhaps erroneously, that they are the best three stars: stars three, four and five, perhaps, and not the baser, less valuable stars one and two. Who knows?
Back
By Adam Roberts | August 14, 2007
Categories: Chitchat
Been away. Back now. Big pile of papers on the welcome mat when we turned the key and tried to swing the door, making it hard to open more than a sliver. Most of this pile was free newspapers, fliers, junk mail and the like. Some was more substantial material that needs dealing with. I've also been spending the day slowly getting a sense of the enormity of pile of outstanding emails I now must process.
The holiday enabled a certain amount of thinking; reflection, and specifically self-reflection, being a needful thing from time to time for a writer. Or for anyone. In part I have been pleasantly digesting some of the reactions to Headless (you can read them, below) and in particular the Deathray review and some of the reader comments posted (you can read them directly below) pendant to the sentiments expressed therein. This is what I've been thinking. My last three novels, Snow, Gradisil and Headless, are all--I can see, now--desert novels. A desert of water ice; a desert of orbital vacuum; a desert of the soul; and in all three cases the concomitant mental and emotional sensibilities, and aesthetics. In a way these three novels represent a sort-of trilogy, a thematic trilogy; and they are accordingly and necessarily rather barren. I can hardly complain if people find this offputting.
What are the words that Robert Bolt put in the mouth of King Faisal in conversation with Lawrence, T.E., CB, DSO? These: "I think you are another of these desert-loving English: Doughty, Stanhope, Gordon of Khartoum. No Arab loves the desert. We love water and green trees. There is nothing in the desert. No man needs nothing." One of the things that I love about that movie is the way we believe in Lawrence's love for the desert, the way it is never seen as mere romanticised orientalism, or topographic idealisation. He knows what the desert is, and nevertheless craves it. What sort of man craves nothing, anyway? What's wrong with water and green trees? (I summarise, in brief, the aforementioned reviews/discussion). I could say, of course, that it is almost always a mistake for a person to try and write too violently against their own grain. Doughty, for an instance, was an odd writer, creatively strange, stuck in weird ruts of his own that other people found rather baffling, ornate, clever, desertstruck ... what would it have benefitted him if he'd been persuaded by contemporary reviews not to be so odd? I'd say Nick Gevers (below) gets it right with Headless, as far as the book's oddity is concerned. There was a New Weird, briefly. Any chance of a New Odd?
Then my ponderings took another direction: my next Gollancz novel, Swiftly, is not a desert novel at all. It is, on the contrary, and in a rather peculiar and exaggerated manner, a novel about fertility. Certainly about fertiliser, in Rabelaisian (or at least Bakhtin's version of Rabelais) mode. My forthcoming Solaris novel, Splinter, starts in a desert, but very quickly smashes it up and replaces it with something again rather aggressively fertile. It might seem a little belated on my part, only now to be seeing larger patterns in the way my books are coming out. But then again, writing is a balance between what the writer plans and what emerges, in aleatory or at least subconscious tension with the Apolline planning. Perhaps there's some tectonic shifting happening under my very own feet, and I'm only slowly becoming aware of it. Maybe, and without directly informing me, my creative imagination has had enough of deserts for the time being. Maybe there will be some explosive growth, elephants bursting out of the Narnian ground and so on. Who can tell?
Deathray on Headless: it’s Clever, Unfortunately
By Adam Roberts | July 25, 2007
Categories: Book News
Deathray you ask? Deathray I say. Guy Haley reviews the novel, and his tagline is: 'Newly headless pompous poet wends painful way to self-discovery in picaresque SF tale that is, at time, too clever by half.' Quite right too: no place for cleverness in SF. Vile quality.
Tricky, tricky Mr Roberts. He's a tough one to evaluate. An accomplished sculptor of prose and a cunning satirist, Roberts writes playful SF with concepts so high, you sometimes need a stool to get them down from the shelf. ... There's a part of me that loves Roberts' output: it's all that SF should be, packed with brilliant ideas and clever--
No! There it is again.
--clever examinations of the human condition. Land of the Headless does both, taking the hero Jon Cavala on a painful road of self-discovery before finally, finally his eyes are opened to his inner self. But he can be a plodding read. Roberts is unquestionably a good writer, so much so that he feels he can happily stuff a paragraph with analogies and similes until it chokes on literary merit, and this is bad. It slows the pace right down, as do the long discursive sections (which, to be fair, are an integral part of the tale) and it all robs the story of vitality. There's an additional annoyance with Land of the Headless, in that you'd quite happily cut Cavala's head off yourself. He's the most pompous ass since Lucius Apuleius and though the story is concerned with his enlightenment, spending 275 pages with Cavala's morbid whining is not easy. Of course, it's all a very clever--
Dammit.
--a very clever parable on perspective, makes sly use of the picaresque form, and has a good deal of satire on fundamentalist societies (and the woe-filled self-pitying mentality of writers, for that matter). Cavala's character is at the very heart of this, but that doesn't mean you don't want to thump him, a desire shared by, and acted upon, by quite a few of the other characters too. Do persevere, though. For Cavala's salvation, when it finally comes, is a satisfying experience, and there are many great ideas in here, so hats off, if not heads, to Roberts.
So no more cleverness for me; and no writing that does anything other than move narrative forward. And only likeable, Stepford-wifely characters too. It's an interesting review, actually; that could either be summarised (for, say, blurbing purposes) like this:
[Roberts is] an accomplished sculptor of prose and a cunning satirist … all that SF should be, packed with brilliant ideas and clever examinations of the human condition.
or like this:
tough … plodding … bad … slow.
I know which one I prefer. On the other hand, Deathray likes the 'Swiftly' story included in Keith Brooke and Nick Gevers' Infinity Plus anthology, also reviewed in this issue: 'one suspects,' says Haley, 'Roberts is referencing Candide with Land of the Headless ... [he] has played with early modern literature before--witness his excellent story 'Swiftly' (see the Infinity Plus review) a clever story that ...'
Oh. Damn.
Ah well, let's turn to the the Infinity Plus review itself, and see whether it specifically mentions my story. It's by Matt Keefe, and it does mention the tale! 'One man struggles to free Lilliputians from slavery in a clever follow-up to Swift's Gulliver's T....'
Oh.
And so 2006 nears its end
By Adam Roberts | December 4, 2006
Categories: Book News
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 you to go to Amazon.de, see it in situ and (who knows?) and buy a copy.Lovely, lovely. Also green.
Other news, I've been revising Land of the Headless, and putting the finishing touches to Swiftly, this latter, by the way, one of the best things I've done. One other thing for now, and more substantial writing/publishing updates in a fortnight. I've started blogging. As you know, I've been part of the group blog at The Valve for a while now. But I've finally pushed the boat out and started a blog of my own. Actually, I've started three blogs. One, with a proggy sort of name, is updated daily and is the repository of my more pretentious, or profound, apothegmatic observations. A second, named for the diddly and punky twist of my mind, is for fiction and pictures. A third, named for a character from Round the Horne, is a diary-style blog. These three have been up for a month or so now, and I shall continue them into the indefinite future.