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In By Light Alone, humanity has become universally able to photosynthesise enough energy to stay alive through their hair by virtue of a drug which is freely available, and has consequently collapsed into a Gatsbyesque dichotomy of the super-wealthy and the poor. The plot concerns a couple who are holidaying in an exotic resort, whose obscenely comfortable world is upended when one of their children is stolen - not kidnapped, no ransom involved; we then More...

Science Fiction is really not my thing. I had the opportunity to meet the author who said that he tends to write books with no likeable characters. This book was true to his word. The characters are really hard to like or even tolerate reading about. This book is about the same class struggle it seems that every age has only this time the wealth is food. We are not told how the wealthy became wealthy and when I asked the author about this he basically said that it wasn't relevant to the story bu More...

Why haven't I heard more about this book?

As topical and timely goes, it can hardly be surpassed: a novel about food insecurity as food becomes scarcer worldwide, a novel about income inequality in the year of the Occupy movement, and a novel about unintended consequences of benevolent ideas as we watch climate change unfold around us--why isn't it being reviewed in every newspaper and magazine from Iqualiut to Brisbane? Add to that a smart, well-written novel with well-drawn characters of litera More...

Adam Roberts is a master of the High Concept, which means a high degree of experimentation and no two novels that are alike. Hence By Light Alone is totally different in tone and style to New Model Army, for example.

BLA is a peculiar novel, an old-style dystopia/utopia discourse like Le Guin or Delany might have written, teasing out the socio-political implications of a different world that refract deficiencies in our own.

Except Roberts has chosen as main viewpoint characters a couple at the pri More...

Reading the reviews and comments posted here makes it clear that this book is not for everyone. Certainly it is a dark novel and can make one feel quite uncomfortable. But the author is an excellent writer and I think this is a very good novel. I do not think that the main premise or agenda or whatever is primarily political though it does express the increasing pessimism of Westerners about the possible futures that may await us. I think the genius of this novel is the author's profound underst More...

Dopo aver letto 'Never let me go', che ho amato molto, si è riacceso in me l'amore per i romanzi distopici, che avevo messo provvisoriamente da parte per dedicarmi ad altri generi.

Futuro. Il divario tra ricchi e poveri è sempre più marcato, specie dopo l'invenzione dei Capelli che, se impiantati nel corpo umano, provvedono nutrimento assorbendo la luce solare. I ricchi, disgustati, mostrano fieri la loro calvizie e mangiano a più non posso, mentre le popolazioni più povere e ferventi gruppi rel More...

A great Science Fiction conceit, but the author doesn't really seem to be concerned with developing his conceit. Or his plot. Or his characters. The first third is a truly awful satire of the rich carried along only by the promise of an interesting world beyond what the main characters are doing. It honestly felt a lot like Hemingway-rich people doing things that are hard to care about. The final third of the book is more interesting than anything before and a twist certainly pays off, but like More...

The last book by Adam Roberts that I read, Yellow Blue Tibia, I did not enjoy. At all. So I was a little dubious about reading this one until I saw the cover, and I am willing to admit here and now that in this case at least, the cover totally sucked me in. An art deco sensibility is definitely the way to at least make me interested in starting your book.



And then I read the blurb, and decided that this could indeed be a book for me.

One of the great answers to "how would you change the world" More...

I thought that after Land of Headless, Adam Roberts had completed his literary evolution. I was wrong, his voice is still evolving into totally new and interesting ways. This is a story of a world in which the need for food was eradicated because the hair was genetically engineered so that it can photosynthesise sunlight. You think that this is an utopia. Wrong, in the hands of Roberts this book is a dystopia, in which the poor grow their hair and become poorer and the rich shave their heads, co More...

I really wanted to like this book, but unfortunately it just didn't do it for me. I would probably give it 3.5 stars, but seeing as that's not an option I went for 3 (it doesn't rate a 4 in my opinion).

I found Adam Roberts' style of writing very difficult to engage with and the 'futuristic' vocabularly felt too manufactured, leaving me disconnected from the world Roberts had created. I had a hard time believing the state of the world in the book too, especially given the timelines - it seemed to More...

I'm on a bit of a dystopia kick at the moment, and happened to find this in my local library. I'd never heard of the book or even the author, but found this novel compelling, bizarre and uncomfortable reading.

The world is split into a small percentage of people with vast wealth, and an immense hoard of genetically altered people who are able to photosynthesise the sun's light through their hair to stay (barely) alive. This genetic alteration was put in place as a solution to world hunger, and no More...

I finished By Light Alone and it's one of the few books I read that I cannot truly make my mind about it since the ending utterly baffled me structure-wise.

It is hard to discuss why without spoilers, but the book's structure and direction do not really balance with the ending so By Light Alone feels unfinished; on the other hand the ending in itself has power and a sense of conclusion but not for this book so to speak, but for a book that would have consisted of (an expansion of) its last four More...

A very weird SF take on the rich/poor divide and the current crisis of capitalism; people with hair don't need to eat, but that just means the rich can afford to pay them even less than now. Some very unsympathetic characters and some rather more likeable ones, the usual variety of weird sex scenes that every modern SF author apparently needs to use. But mostly pretty good; I especially liked the vagueness of the ending, and the general objectivity of the author. Neither the arrogant, pampered w More...

First off. Believe the -blurb. Roberts writes better prose than over-lauded mainstream writers like Ian McEwan and has a superior speculative intelligence. I'm some 70 pages in. So far this novel has addressed the enclosed lives of a rich transatlantic clique in a world in which eating food is mark of status. Roberts deftly iterates the minor and major cruelties they inflict upon workers (who must find sustenance by photosynthesising with their hair) while exploring the nuances of their manner a More...

Steel Beach by John Varley explored what happens when scarcity is no longer a problem. In that novel, the fundamental problem is that no one has anything they need to do -- entertainment is the only industry.

By Light Alone takes a different approach. The photosynthetic hair has solved the problem of hunger for the poor, but removed much of their motivation for work. If anything, scarcity is a bigger issue than in the past. As a result, the gap between rich and poor is wider than ever (there is e More...

Some people apparently see science fiction and other forms of non-realist or speculative fiction as essentially escapist fiction. This perception of the nature of SF is clearly a barrier to those who like to read fiction that is anchored in everyday reality, even while it may attract those who genuinely do read to escape from it. Despite my taste for the imaginative and speculative in fiction, I fall very firmly into the former category and I don't see this as a contradiction. I read science fic More...

Someone has solved the world food shortage issue. By genetically engineering hair so that people can photosynthesise Rich people show off by shunning the treatment and going bald, while eating enough hard food to be hideously obese. Some of these rich people go on holiday, and their daughter is kidnapped.

I loved this. The world is well conceived, and Roberts does a very good job of dripfeeding the necessary info for you to envisage it. It's split into 4 parts, each focussing on a different playe More...

Is he the new JG Ballard? This tale is certainly one to get you thinking about how the rich and poor live, and how they might live if circumstances were to change drastically. Moving perspectives allows the reader to experience many different sides to the world created by the author. It is in equal measures disturbing and curious. I would recommend it. Only 4 stars because of a Speilbergesque ending out of keeping with the rest of the book.

This seems to be part of the new genre of sci-fi that imagines a future world based on genetic modification. This time its photo-synthesising hair. The rich eat food, the poor live on sun-light which only just sustains them. This is about a rich family who have their daughter kidnapped. The story is told from several view points which is interesting but in the end I'm not sure of the point or the ending which is sudden and incomplete.

A novel look at the divide between the haves and the have-nots; greed and exploitation; and how a scientific discovery that promises an end to individual hunger results in generational enslavement. The social landscape has shifted, goals of rich and poor have morphed, even identity is unsure - but human greed and venality remain unchanged. This is a very well written book that pulls no punches.

A brilliant dystopian look at the causes and effects of the global economy of growing food, as well as the underlying forces holding our global society together through the culture of work. Roberts writes beautiful prose, and weaves a fascinating, wonderful, scary future world which is also scarily believable. Definitely looking forward to picking up some more of his books.

I thought the central premise of this book - that in a future world poor people make food for the rich by photosynthesing light with their hair - was a good one. But the final act is so cumbersomely, so clunkily written, that I culd not wait to finish the book (and I mean that not in a good way). Hugely disappointing.

A very interesting premise thought out to its logical conclusion. The novel is science fiction at heart but is written with such panache and grace, Roberts has a lively philosophical and inventive mind. He reminds me of Doris Lessing. He has a lot to say about the world we live in now as the future he imagines is only very subtlety different to today.

In a way the book is well written, and the individual parts of it are interesting. The fantastical (science fiction) elements are intriguing. But the story is incoherent -- the book is almost two different books in one. And the moral/ ending is incomprehensible.

Another successfully risky book from Adam Roberts: mostly unsympathetic characters, a very high concept, and his obligatory few 'limbo' chapters right near the start of the book. For all that, a great book, much more about parenthood and childhood and much less about genefixed photosynthesis than you might imagine. Wonderfully striking language.

I really enjoyed the words, but when the author actually started explaining stuff he would invent stallers for example timely telephone calls to drag it out, not a great way to envoke suspense. Though very good concepts and thought provoking read.

Interesting concept - and a Sci-Fi spin on the 99%. The narrative dragged at times, but it was a worthwhile read.

I was intrigued when I read the brief synopsis of this book online after finding it listed on a top scifi/fantasy books of the year list. I did not expect to be as entertained by it as I was! Such a clever clever book, and shocking at times with the frank sexuality one encountered in it.

Fantastic start. Brilliant writing and then BAM. Everything just fell off a cliff. Got to page 270 and thought can. not. be... Hate not finishing a book.

Wow it started strangely but once I got into the story I couldn't put it down, wish there was a little bit more...