Russia, 1946. With the Nazis recently defeated, Stalin gathers half a dozen of the top Soviet science fiction authors in a dacha in the countryside...
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Feb 21, 2011
David
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This is Adam Roberts’s tenth novel, which of course means there were nine before it. Nine that I haven’t read. How on Earth have I allowed this to happen? If they’re all as enjoyable as Yellow Blue Tibia, I have been missing out.
Yellow Blue Tibia is presented as the memoir of one Konstantin Skvorecky, a science fiction writer who was gathered together, along with four others, by Stalin in the aftermath of (what I know as) the Second World War. Stalin charged the writers with the task More...
Yellow Blue Tibia is presented as the memoir of one Konstantin Skvorecky, a science fiction writer who was gathered together, along with four others, by Stalin in the aftermath of (what I know as) the Second World War. Stalin charged the writers with the task More...
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Apr 17, 2011
Lea
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Either I loved this book, or I didn't love it, or it was some third thing.
But (really) I loved it, and you'll just have to read the book to understand the first sentence of this review.
In 1946, science fiction author Konstantin Andreiovich Skvorecky, along with a group of other writers, is given the task of inventing an alien invasion scenario by Josef Stalin. Stalin believes that America's defeat by the Soviet Union is imminent, and he wants to invent a new enemy that the More...
But (really) I loved it, and you'll just have to read the book to understand the first sentence of this review.
In 1946, science fiction author Konstantin Andreiovich Skvorecky, along with a group of other writers, is given the task of inventing an alien invasion scenario by Josef Stalin. Stalin believes that America's defeat by the Soviet Union is imminent, and he wants to invent a new enemy that the More...
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Nov 10, 2011
Yaroslav
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Это даже не клюква, а какая-то морошка. Не знаю, что я имею в виду. Но и Робертс тоже накатал роман, абсолютно не зная об СССР ни черта. Все реалии, которые ему не были известны, он осторожно (не смело!) додумал. Получилась книга, которую бы мог написать теперешний старательный восьмиклассник. Знания о Сталине и Советском Союзе середины восьмидесятых у Робертса примерно на таком же уровне. Впрочем, наш школьник не стал бы приукрашивать действительность, сообщая читателям, будто в русском языке н
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Oct 20, 2011
Algernon
rated it: 
My first Adam Roberts book. I liked his narrative style, his intelligent concepts and his flashes of humor. However this book tickled me in all the wrong places with his nasty atitude towards the Russian people and culture. I don't now where he got his research done, but he popultated his world exclusively with garbage, ugliness, foul mouthed government officials, pea brained KGB agents,vodka addicts, scatter brained nuclear physicists. It all seems to come out of a CIA propaganda bureau from th
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Sep 15, 2011
Sjhigbee
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I picked this book off the library shelf (something I won’t get to do much longer, if the Government and local councils have their way...) because I thought the cover intriguingly different.
Konstantin Andreiovich Skvorecky was one of a group of Russion SF writers called together by Josef Stalin in 1946. Stalin, convinced that the defeat of America was only a few years away, needed a new enemy for Communism to unite against. Skvorecky and the others were tasked with creating a convincing More...
Konstantin Andreiovich Skvorecky was one of a group of Russion SF writers called together by Josef Stalin in 1946. Stalin, convinced that the defeat of America was only a few years away, needed a new enemy for Communism to unite against. Skvorecky and the others were tasked with creating a convincing More...
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Sep 10, 2011
Maciej
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Pod koniec lat 40tych Stalin zbiera na odludzi pięciu najwybitniejszych radzieckich pisarzy SF i wydaje im proste polecenie: mają stworzyć wiarygodny i szczegółowy scenariusz ataku obcych na Ziemię, tak aby po upadku USA, Związek Radziecki mógł przedstawić swoim obywatelom nowego wroga. Brzmi ciekawie? Dla mnie zabrzmiało i pierwsze kilkadziesiąt stron, rzeczywiście zapowiadało niezłą jazdę po ZSRR. Lekkie pióro, ciekawe dialogi, ZSRR i kosmici – czego chcieć więcej? Niestety po mocnym wstępie a More...
Jul 27, 2011
Yellow Blue Tibia is a crazy novel of multiplicating realities trying to explain the paradox of UFO sightings and there cultural existence and their actual nonexistence.
what starts as an irresistible premise about russian SF writers being asked to concoct an alein threat for communism, soon degenerates after they are told to disband and forget everything, into a confusing, bizarre and wryly humourous jaunt across russia and the ukraine to stop the chernobyl disaster, after one of the writers fin More...
what starts as an irresistible premise about russian SF writers being asked to concoct an alein threat for communism, soon degenerates after they are told to disband and forget everything, into a confusing, bizarre and wryly humourous jaunt across russia and the ukraine to stop the chernobyl disaster, after one of the writers fin More...
Apr 23, 2011
Lorraine
rated it:
This was quite good all the way through -- I thought the ending a bit weak though. It struck me as ostensibly metafictional, which is a mixed bag -- it can end up ridiculously -- but Roberts did it quite well. There are a few holes in the plot, I think, but it doesn't matter. Roberts resolves the whole thing fairly well. It's a good meditation of the role of fiction in politics and every day "reality". Especially science fiction. I can't help thinking Roberts has a slight neurosis abou
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Mar 14, 2011
If nothing else, Adam Roberts is not afraid to make enemies by speaking his mind. His 2006 academic The History of Science Fiction takes aim at some of the most popular academic theories of science fiction (Suvin's cognitive estrangement, Damien Broderick's megatext and object-focus, and Samuel R. Delaney's reading protocols); Roberts ditches these theories for an alternate theory that argues that science fiction really begins with Greek stories of fantastic travels; that sf takes a historical n
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Aug 03, 2010
Tim
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This is not so much a science fiction book (the sci fi is crammed into the last thirty or so pages but I refuse to do a spoiler here) as a book about science fiction - the old Soviet science fiction tradition.
This Soviet tradition followed a different trajectory from that of the West with Zamyatin, Jules Verne and H.G. Wells as its masters. Its most well known writers outside the 'East; are probably Mikhail Bulgakov and the Strugatsky Brothers ('Roadside Picnic') to whom might be add More...
This Soviet tradition followed a different trajectory from that of the West with Zamyatin, Jules Verne and H.G. Wells as its masters. Its most well known writers outside the 'East; are probably Mikhail Bulgakov and the Strugatsky Brothers ('Roadside Picnic') to whom might be add More...
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Jul 21, 2010
Bryna
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This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers.
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Jul 14, 2010
Amanda
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Yellow Blue Tibia by Adam Roberts is about Konstantin Andreiovich Skvorecky, a Russian SF writer who is called by Stalin to be part of a group who are to create a new threat for Communism to unite against, after the end of World War II. Soon after coming up with the concept of radiation aliens, and writing about their destruction of the Ukraine, the SF writers are disbanded and told, on pain of death, to forget everything that they have done. 40 years later the story picks up and follows Skvorec
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May 25, 2009
Jo
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What pleasant surprise ! '86 was one of those years in my life that saw major changes and Chernobyl in some odd ways became one of those turning-point moments which assumed more and more convoluted and throuroughly over-determined significance as life went on. To come across a novel which does not shy away from playing with exaclty those issues is almost redeeming in a way. Not of course that I ever suspected mysterious radiation aliens to plot an attack on planet earth following a script provid
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Sep 09, 2009
DC
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This is a very difficult book to describe (without, at least, revealing much too much of how the story unfolds). The bare details of the plot revealed on the covers are that that this is "Konstantin Skvorecky's memoir of the alien invasion of 1986", and that in the immediate aftermath of the Great Patriotic War Stalin gathered together a group of Soviet SF writers and instructed them to concoct the story of an alien invasion threat, a foe against which the Soviet people could unite onc
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Feb 21, 2009
Liviu
rated it:
Excellent book; darkly funny, superb narrative and ending. It instantly became a top 5 sf for 09 and a co-Adam Roberts favorite alongside Stone.
Some quotes from the first pages that take place in 1945 in a dacha near Moscow where Stalin himself commissions some Russian sf writers to concoct an alien invasion scenario will give you the flavor; the rest of the novel takes place in Moscow and Kiev of 1986 and it's just brilliant darkly funny modern sf
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Jun 12, 2009
Mike
rated it:
Really damn good. I can't believe I haven't read anything by Roberts before. Review forthcoming... Uh-oh: now someone actually cares, so...caveat lector.
Tibia's glorious high-concept plot opens with a gaggle of bedraggled Soviet Science Fiction writers still wincing from experiences in the Great War, convened at Stalin's dacha and told--by big blustery scary-ass demon Joe himself--to write an alien invasion novel. What follows is in some ways a reinvigoration of the classic alien More...
Tibia's glorious high-concept plot opens with a gaggle of bedraggled Soviet Science Fiction writers still wincing from experiences in the Great War, convened at Stalin's dacha and told--by big blustery scary-ass demon Joe himself--to write an alien invasion novel. What follows is in some ways a reinvigoration of the classic alien More...
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May 17, 2010
Simon
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Yellow Blue Tibia, subtitled Konstantin Skvorecky’s memoir of the alien invasion of 1986, is Adam Roberts’ 10th novel, it was shortlisted for the BSFA Award and the Arthur C. Clarke Award for best novel.
It’s 1946, Nazi Germany has just been defeated and Stalin believes that victory over America is just a few years away. He perceives that the U.S.S.R. needs an external threat to give it unity and purpose. He therefore assembles in a dacha in the Russian countryside a group of Soviet s More...
It’s 1946, Nazi Germany has just been defeated and Stalin believes that victory over America is just a few years away. He perceives that the U.S.S.R. needs an external threat to give it unity and purpose. He therefore assembles in a dacha in the Russian countryside a group of Soviet s More...
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Aug 16, 2011
Michael
rated it:
I've just finished reading "Yellow, Blue Tibia" by Adam Roberts. It is one of the better books I've read and I'll definitely be looking for more of his novels.
The basic plot if that in the 40's a bunch of soviet SF writers were told by Stalin to create a scenario in which aliens came to conquer the world. It seems that Stalin believed that the U.S. would fall soon and a new enemy would be needed. After a few months, the project was canceled and the participants were ordered t More...
The basic plot if that in the 40's a bunch of soviet SF writers were told by Stalin to create a scenario in which aliens came to conquer the world. It seems that Stalin believed that the U.S. would fall soon and a new enemy would be needed. After a few months, the project was canceled and the participants were ordered t More...
Jun 16, 2009
Aaron
rated it:
It is disturbing that this book is so good, and that Adam Roberts has written around ten other books, and the first time I heard of and about him is like one month ago. So: the book is written as a memoir. The person recalling their past, several decades worth, is among the great droll, ironic voices of (my recently read) literature. He is living in the Soviet Union. He is unintentionally sucked into the Soviet law and order bureaucracy, which is as inept as it is serious, and is a nice tar
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Sep 16, 2011
David
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A book trying to hard to be like Bulgakov: although it is a page turner, funny, well written, it tries very hard to crowbar quantum physics, philosophy, and Communism (although more successfully)into the book without really adding anything. Perhaps, Roberts is trying to be Russian in this respect, but the great Russian writers used high themes, concepts that brought the book some further depth rather than just fit the story or as a narrative tool.
All in all, it is well worth reading as More...
All in all, it is well worth reading as More...
Nov 29, 2011
James
rated it:
I have read a few of Adam Robert's books and have thrown them with greater or lesser force at the wall at some point. However, I was pleasantly surprised that this was so readable, filled with humour and, until the last third, a good story. Even the strange title gets explained, obliquely, of course.
The Russian characters were well written, with a set of 'bad guys' that are as bizarre and funny as any found in a classic Carl Hiaasen novel.
The plot does run out of steam before More...
The Russian characters were well written, with a set of 'bad guys' that are as bizarre and funny as any found in a classic Carl Hiaasen novel.
The plot does run out of steam before More...
Jul 13, 2010
Arctic
rated it:
Interesting book. Not what I'd call the greatest or a book that will stand out over time, but its an interesting concept and way the story is told.
It relies on a lot of Schrodinger's Cat concept. Most of the book is the telling from one man's point of view and you keep waiting to see more of these aliens. It also uses a lot of perceived reality and historical facts (Chernobyl meltdown).
The one thing that was mildly amusing was realizing the meaning of the title. Here is that s More...
It relies on a lot of Schrodinger's Cat concept. Most of the book is the telling from one man's point of view and you keep waiting to see more of these aliens. It also uses a lot of perceived reality and historical facts (Chernobyl meltdown).
The one thing that was mildly amusing was realizing the meaning of the title. Here is that s More...
Nov 25, 2009
Cheryl
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Science fiction writers have the leisure of their imaginations. They're not confined by the real world and when it comes to the science, they can always stretch the facts a little (or a lot in some cases), but in general they're not considered purveyors of serious scientific knowledge (hard SF being the relative exception in that it's based on current science). Certainly, governments don't take science fiction seriously. So when Stalin requests the presence of a number of Russian science fict
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Feb 20, 2010
Mihai
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This one is a keeper. Extremely funny, with a biting tone, and a satisfying resolution. Certainly one of the best finds of the year so far.
People have compared Adams to Vonnegut, but it's more. It has traces of Bulgakov's "Master and Margarita". There's "Golden Calf" by Ilf and Petrov. There's "Adventures of Soldier Svejk" by Hasek.
I suppose it will resonate differently to you if you do come from an Eastern European culture. Triply so if you More...
People have compared Adams to Vonnegut, but it's more. It has traces of Bulgakov's "Master and Margarita". There's "Golden Calf" by Ilf and Petrov. There's "Adventures of Soldier Svejk" by Hasek.
I suppose it will resonate differently to you if you do come from an Eastern European culture. Triply so if you More...
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Apr 02, 2011
Karl
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The review here is very good, as is the appearance from Roberts' himself in the comments, which you shouldn't read if spoilers frighten you. Also see this review here. Highly recommended. The last 30 pages or so merit a lot of rereading.
My ONLY complaint is the structure of the reveal, so common in genre fiction. There's a big secret; millions if not billions of people are in danger; and the ending sees the hero finding out the truth. Roberts plays it more wryly than most, but it's sti More...
My ONLY complaint is the structure of the reveal, so common in genre fiction. There's a big secret; millions if not billions of people are in danger; and the ending sees the hero finding out the truth. Roberts plays it more wryly than most, but it's sti More...
Jan 14, 2010
kingshearte
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Konstantin Andreiovich Skvorecky was one of a group of Russian SF writers called together by Josef Stalin in 1946. Stalin, convinced that the defeat of America was only a few years away, needed a new enemy for Communism to unite against. Skvorecky and the others were tasked with creating a convincing alien threat; a story of imminent disaster that could be told to the Soviet peoples.
And then after many months of diligent work the writers were told to stop and, on pain of death, to fo More...
And then after many months of diligent work the writers were told to stop and, on pain of death, to fo More...
Aug 10, 2011
Suzanne
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I read this for a book discussion, and we all enjoyed it. Starting out with an encounter with post war Stalin, most of this book takes place in the 80's. A hilarious road trip thru the Ukraine, very "Everything is Illuminated" complete with dysfunctional driver, ends at Chernobyl, and an effort to stop a psycho KGB agent from a sabotage bombing of the plant. Of course the nuclear accident at Chernobyl, as well as the Challenger destruction are part of an alien attack, which was alr
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Jul 08, 2010
Celine
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Despite finding Adam Robert's style a little frustrating at times, I greatly enjoyed this book. I found all the characters interesting and sympathetic, and I thought the story was clever and involving, though as I say the style annoyed me occasionally.
I've read Cat Valente's rather over the top review of it, and will take her at her word that much of Robert's Russian references are off, but I must say that much of what Cat Valente objects to in this book, I saw as humour (the main char More...
I've read Cat Valente's rather over the top review of it, and will take her at her word that much of Robert's Russian references are off, but I must say that much of what Cat Valente objects to in this book, I saw as humour (the main char More...
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Jan 15, 2012
Pete
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A great well thought out and researched exploration into possible realities. Maybe in one of those realities I would not have had to put the book down, in pieces, because my dog had eaten it! It was a fascinating read that bordered on the absurd only because of the skill of writing which kept the novel grounded in "plausible, frustrating, reality" when we, he reader would want a whole hearted commitment to the fantastic. Adam Roberts pulls us along on a journey of realities and possibi
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Nov 18, 2011
Alexandra
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This novel is billed as an autobiography, "Konstantin Skvorecky's memoir of the alien invasion of 1986." Skvorecky had an established reputation as a science fiction writer in the USSR in the mid-1940s, when he and a number of other SF authors were called together by Stalin to write the story of a new enemy for the USSR, on the assumption that the defeat of capitalist America was nigh. Their task was to invent an alien nemesis that Stalin and the Communist Party could use as a focus fo
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