Adam Roberts's Blog, page 3

The Big Read on ���The This���: I Am Read, Bigly

 

link

Those excellent readers, Bill and Joel, are joined by ���one of the best essayists in America��� (the TLS's words, not mine; though I agree with them) Phil Christman, to talk about my The This, which is about hive minds, social media, Coleridge and, most importantly, GWF Hegel. It is, I can be straight with you, amazing to me. Listen and see, or hear, for yourself. I mean, amazing. Amazing!

I'll be honest: it took me several goes to listen to this. It starts with some healthy American praise...

The Big Read on “The This”: I Am Read, Bigly

 

link

Those excellent readers, Bill and Joel, are joined by ‘one of the best essayists in America’ (the TLS's words, not mine; though I agree with them) Phil Christman, to talk about my The This, which is about hive minds, social media, Coleridge and, most importantly, GWF Hegel. It is, I can be straight with you, amazing to me. Listen and see, or hear, for yourself. I mean, amazing. Amazing!

I'll be honest: it took me several goes to listen to this. It starts with some healthy American praise, wh...

Strange Horizons Reviews "The This"; and Other News

 

Prashanth Gopalan finds The This to be ‘a wildly imaginative novel, a thought experiment on morality and social organization, and a meditation on time and consciousness.’

With its interesting theories about the roots of human social behaviour, organization, and culture, and its intense explorations of life within a hivemind, The This explores the nature of being and belonging, and what people might be willing to do to find belonging when they reach the limits of social atomization, language, ...

Latest News

I was asked yesterday about my blogs, and it occurred to me that I don't anywhere have them itemised or indexed. So here goes.

One. This blog, Morphosis, is now my stand-in author website. I used to run a site called adamroberts.com to that end, but it cost a surprisingly large amount of money and nobody ever visited it so I stopped my subscription and instead repurposed this Blogger platform as author website. Once upon a time it used to be a blog for critical thinking and essays and whatnot, an...

Donna Scott reviews ���The This��� in PARSEC

 The most recent issue of the excellent ParSec magazine (you can, and should, subscribe over at the NewCon website) includes a review of The This by the estimable Donna Scott. A snippet therefrom:

One of the things you may already have read about Adam Roberts��� latest science-fiction novel is that it is���Hegelian��� ��� absolutely steeped in clever philosophical arguments after the school of Georg WilhelmFriedrich Hegel ��� and concluded that you should have studied philosophy in order to ...

Donna Scott reviews “The This” in PARSEC

 The most recent issue of the excellent ParSec magazine (you can, and should, subscribe over at the NewCon website) includes a review of The This by the estimable Donna Scott. A snippet therefrom:

One of the things you may already have read about Adam Roberts’ latest science-fiction novel is that it is “Hegelian” – absolutely steeped in clever philosophical arguments after the school of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel – and concluded that you should have studied philosophy in order to ‘get’ it. F...

The Times of London reviews "The This"

 

Pleased with that! Additional reaction here.

Interview, and some "The This" reactions

 

First, here's a link to the long and (I think) interesting Phil Christman conducted with me for his substack. Phil is a good guy, and a really good writer, although, whilst I can't contradict his opening sentence here, I'm not sure it's the entire veritude. But you should definitely read the interview! 

Second, in The This news: there have been some reviews, for instance here at SF Crowsnest, and New Scientist picked it as one of the SF books to look forward to in 2022. Over on Amazon there are ...

"Purgatory Mount" on BSFA shortlist

 

Amazed and delighted that Purgatory Mount has made the 2022 BSFA Best Novel shortlist, especially considering how very strong the list is as a whole:

A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine, Tor
Blackthorn Winter by Liz Williams, NewCon Press
Purgatory Mount by Adam Roberts, Gollancz
Shards of Earth by Adrian Tchaikovsky, Tor
Skyward Inn by Aliya Whiteley, Solaris
Green Man’s Challenge by Juliet E. McKenna, Wizard’s Tower Press

The winner will be announced Easter weekend, at Reclamation, this ...

This is the The This theme things

 

Some reactions to The This: Brian Cregg admires, but does not love, the novel. A more expansive (though of course not necessarily more accurate) response to the novel from Alan Jacobs, here. Goodreads is currently running at 4.5 out of 5, Buzzmag seems to like the book (or have I misunderstood?) and there are various other online responses, amazon reviews and so on.

And here is the estimable Phil Christman, praising with reservations The This (and talking a little about my other books too).

Ro...