#adam roberts

[grandturtleperson]

In the way Tolkein's Lord of the Rings is a 'profoundly Catholic work' not despite but because it itself contains no churches, temples, priests or religious rituals, so His Dark Materials is not an anti-religious text although it often, especially in its last volume, indulges in anti-clerical rants and atheist militancy. What makes the trilogy sing, what brings it alive, is its openness to the wondrous. It is, like many classic fantasy novels, fascinated with the relationship between transportive pre-modern religious subjectivities and 'buffered' modern bourgeois sensibilities; its case against the church - as sexually prudish, using concepts of sin to oppress and harm people, as prideful and overmighty - is not an attack on the transcendent wonder and magic of the pre-modern world in which the church was dominant, but on the contrary on the uses of domineering political power characteristic of buffered modernity. Suffusing throughout is 'Dust', the particulation of transcendence itself... That the universe is not the handiwork of a creator God does not mean that the universe is not wondrous. On the contrary, Pullman's cosmos is immanent with magic and wonder.

Adam Roberts, Fantasy: A Short History, Bloomsbury, 2025.

[gollancz]

Happy North American publication day to HIGH VAULTAGE, by @victoriocity! And many thanks to @terribleminds for the boost. (not least to my ego since I get a shout-out)

It's available through all good bookstores, AND you can get signed copies here!

OTHER NICE THINGS PEOPLE HAVE SAID:

'Hilarious' - Matt Young, co-creator of Hello from the Magic Tavern

'A joyous, delightful romp...filled to the brim with clever jokes - perfect for anyone looking for a Pratchett fix' - Caitlin Schneiderhan, screenwriter, Stranger Things

'More please' - SFX

‘High Vaultage is exactly what I've come to expect from the Sugdens - inventive, imaginative, and hilarious’ – Lauren Shippen, creator of The Bright Sessions

‘There are some very big concepts in this novel, ambitious settings, and amazing new discoveries. The satire is even more smart, the wit even more sharp’ – @skyfullofpods

'Absolutely overflowing with imagination and creativity . . . I also loved how witty and clever the writing and dialogue was and I found myself genuinely laughing' - @foreverlostinliterature

'High Vaultage is endlessly entertaining - a classic mystery adventure with 10,000 volts of mad science put right through it. It's not just the type of story I wish I could read every day, it's the type of story I wish I could write. Reading it would make me furious with envy if it didn't keep me so busy grinning from ear to ear' - Gabriel Urbina, creator of Wolf 359

[sleepingexplorer]

[altarimage]

François Schuiten

Compulsion 2024

[bookcoversonly]

Title: Jack Glass | Author: Adam Roberts | Publisher: Gollancz (2012)

[badmovieihave]

Bad movie I have Evil Bong 888: Infinity High 2022

[judgingbooksbycovers]

Food Person: A Novel

By Adam Roberts.

Design by Janet Hansen.

[remedialreviews]

Lots of big ideas here, but Roberts' high concept twist is to explain by comparison, allusion, and theory without drawing them to the human ends teased by the plot(s). It's especially disappointing because there is a real story in the novel between the bookends - a thriller told with great pace, but a story that is ultimately sacrificed to the author's philosophical "point." A child committing personal murder and then international genocide on a single page is the obvious sign of this sudden shift from character to philosophy, and that's when I really knew this novel had lost me.

[grandturtleperson]

'Clouds!' Albert yelled, suddenly. Such uncharacteristic behaviour for this reserved, immaculately mannered individual! 'Clouds!' He was pointing upwards. For a moment I saw clouds, visible masses of water droplets suspended in the air according to the logic of their relative density. But then the ghastly reality struck me, a modern-day Saul on the road to a ghastly Tarsus – for water must always be heavier than mere air, and no structure of such size and evident solidarity could support itself overhead. What we had thought clouds were not. They were something else. They were gigantic amoeboid beings, creatures of monstrous otherness. A venus-shell of silver mist, animated by some incomprehensible will or mechanism, swooped low over Mayence's crenulations and spired roofs. It was a device, a machine constructed on principles quite different to steam engines, or electrical capacitors; a chariot for cleaving the high sky, a throne set about with rods and lights. Weapons? And seated in its heart, wraithed about by the very device it piloted, was a creature unlike any I have seen – like the meat at the centre of a cockle, but the size of a bullock, orange and quivering with life. I looked about me, my heart galloping, a hideous anticipation of perdition in my whole body. Every cloud was a chariot, and in every one monsters of various sizes were enthroned – from cattle-big to whale-big. They thronged the sky. 'O strange!' I howled. 'Strange strange strange!'

The Thing Itself by Adam Roberts

[whats-in-a-sentence]

An Earth-like Moon in a Godly universe, as Adam Roberts points out in his "History of Science Fiction" (2016), raised pressing new questions: are its inhabitants saved? Can they be? What does Christ's sacrifice mean in a universe far grander than that of the schoolmen? Must the people of the Moon take Communion?*

* If so, they may have been in trouble, as Johann Andreas Schmidt, a Lutheran theologian, argued in "Selenite e luna proscriptos divini numinis gratia" (1679; "Selenites, or the Moon proscribed by Divine Grace"). The Moon, he noted, was too inclement for vineyards, and without vineyards there could be no Communion, and thus no salvation. There could thus be no people with souls on the Moon, merely monsters.

"The Moon: A History for the Future" - Oliver Morton

[scififr]

Lake of darkness, par Adam Roberts (Gollancz, juillet 2024)

Dans un lointain futur où l’Humanité s’est répandue dans la Galaxie au sein d’une « Utopia », deux vaisseaux spatiaux orbitent autour d’un trou noir pour l’étudier lorsque l’un des commandants affirme soudain être en contact avec quelqu’un dans la singularité ! Et rapidement, il massacre tous ses compagnons…

Un ouvrage étrange et déséquilibré, à l’image de ses protagonistes. Cela commence comme un thriller de hard-science, pour se transformer en description ironique de ce monde de neuneus hédonistes, et finir dans un torrent de spéculations métaphysico-spirituelles.

[vilevexedvixen]

Favourite 4 books:

This isn't a book recommendation so much as a sentimental ramble.

Been doing a big clear out and really been mulling over which books actually mean anything more than a good read to me. And it's these four.

I'm a slow reader, so I barely made it through three books a year when I read literally every break in school and on the bus to / from school. But even then, I don't remember much from most books. Largely because they were just some general fantasy and generic characters with petty drama I tried but struggled to relate to. I often wonder why fantasy (with the exception of some videogames) doesn't capture me as I feel it should. Entirely a failure of whimsy on my part, but why? I can make magic sparkle brightly in my mind, but unless the idea of it sparkling is magical it might as well be a flickering image.

That doesn't make realism any more engaging than fantasy though. What I crave, it seems, is absurdity and intensity. Characters who break the mold in their absurd intents and habits rather than attempting to be relatable (making them, oddly, relatable for me). Their world shaped and warped by their perspective rather than by magic from a godly third person view. I guess a bit like the way impressionist and surreal paintings feel more vivid in the thoughts and feelings they provoke than some gorgeous landscape of the renaissance for some.

Perfume and I'll sell you a dog hit home partly because I actually related to the protagonists and their struggles. Not sure if either were autistic coded or meant to be autistic in the story, but their experiences and how they related to the world (frustration and boredom in Teo's case; and with sensory fascination but detachment from his fellow man in Grenouille's case). Their hijinks, however cruel, made a lot of sense to me which was comforting compared to the flat yet non-sensical protagonists of other novels I'd read.

Villallobos is just an amazing writer all around. 'Down the rabbit hole', detailing the raising of a cartel lord's child and his pet hippo - oblivious to the dirty dealings used to obtain it -, is another I highly recommend though it's less close to my heart than 'I'll sell you a dog' which, was my first of his.

'By light alone' is closer to normal sci-fi. Could be described as Solarpunk from an aesthetic POV and its class conscious framing. It came around at the perfect time for when I was getting into bioengineering (which plays a prominent role in the setup of the setting). Making a compelling argument that I should keep a broader perspective when trying to solve things like hunger through bioengineering. Unless you address existing economic inequalities, people will continue to go hungry or at least class divisions will continue being enforced, just through different means.

And Lastly, The Dice Man was fun. Definitely the most fun of all the novels. Is that strange to say?

The Dice Man is what happens when the conflict of Fight Club (wanting to break out of the confines of modernity and its stale, repetative monotony and how it reflects our seeming lack of free will) is answered not by inflicting mutual sadomasochism to feel alive, but by never letting anyone (not even yourself) know your next move.

Case in point:

*handstands in a dressing gown*

(Explains to confused spouse),

"I haven't thought about dinasaurs today"

[quotian]

I can run my fingers along the broad and waxy leaves of new plants, I can crush the tiny peppercorn bulb-heads of frogflowers between my fingers and smell the bitter perfume. salt - adam roberts

[zanephillips]

Forbidden Letters (1979) dir. Arthur J. Bressan Jr.