Adam Roberts

[AE35Unit]

Anyone read his books? I read Salt a few years back and wasn't impressed to be honest. His first book I believe. But looking thru his books on fantastic fiction I see some interesting ideas there.
http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/r/adam-roberts/

 

[Rodders]

I've read "On" and his debut novel (Can't remember what it was called now.) At about that time i also read the kingdom on the wall by Robert Silverberg.

I enjoyed them both, but i prefered Silverberg.

 

[AE35Unit]

I've read...his debut novel (Can't remember what it was called now.).

I think that was Salt which sounded good but like a bottle of opened coke it went flat.

 

[HareBrain]

I've read "On", but nothing else. Some interesting ideas and some gripping storytelling (see below), but an appalling ending made worse by an appendix supposed to explain the science of his central conceit, which is so fantastic that I think he should have left it as fantasy, without trying to justify it. (I didn't understand enough physics to grabble with his justification, but the fact that he'd included the appendix just made him seem insecure about it, a serious misjudgement on his part, in my view.)

The best bit is the section where a squad of young soldiers gets horribly eaten one by one by colossal centipedes (as I remember it).

 

[Who's Wee Dug]

His spoofs are funny as A.R.R.Roberts - LOTR ones and Matrix as Robertski brothers & Va Dinci cod, cant seem to find my Star Warped one.

 

[AE35Unit]

His spoofs are funny as A.R.R.Roberts - LOTR ones and Matrix as Robertski brothers & Va Dinci cod, cant seem to find my Star Warped one.

Ah,thats who does those! I'd seen em in the library and wondered about them!

 

[Werthead]

I've read Swiftly and Yellow Blue Tibia. Both are pretty good. The former is a sequel to Gulliver's Travels in which the British Empire has enslaved the Lillipiutians and France has teamed up with the Brobdingnans. It's pretty good but the ending is pretty crazy.

YBT has a great premise: a group of SF authors are brought together in 1946 by Stalin to create a fictional threat to the world which will unite the Soviet people behind Stalin now that Hitler has been defeated and the USA's fall is inevitable. They come up with the idea of an alien race invading Earth by first blowing up an American spacecraft as it takes off and then destroying an atomic power station in the Ukraine to spread a cloud of radioactive material over Europe. The project is cancelled, but then, in 1986... Great stuff.

I've also met him a few times. A nice and extremely clever guy.

 

[Ian Whates]

I can only endorse Werthead's comments. Adam is a genuinely nice guy and brimming over with ideas and opinions. He's actually a very exciting and innovative writer, but one problem with his novels is that he does like to use them to experiment, both with narrative style and with content, which means that sometimes his novels jar with the reader. I haven't always loved them.

His short fiction, on the other hand, is invariably excellent, and I've been fortunate enough to commission and publish stories from him a couple of times... Three, now I come to think of it: two for NewCon Press anthologies (Celebration and disLOCATIONS) and one for a BSFA Special Booklet.

As an aside, Adam also spent a great deal of time in recent years compiling the new 'music section' for John Clutes imminent online reissue of the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, which he had great fun doing.