Adam Roberts's Blog, page 8

H G Wells Blog

I'm reading through the complete run of H G Wells books (fiction and non-fiction both) in order, and blogging about each as I do. You'll find the results on my Wells at the World's End blog, should you be interested. Be warned though: some* of the posts are pretty long ...

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*All

2017 Tolkien Awards

I discovered today that my "Tolkien as Pastoral" post has been shortlisted for the 2017 Tolkien Society Awards. I'm honoured! Also: surprised! Surprisingly honoured. Voting is open to members of the Society, and if you're not a member you can join here.

At the head of this post is Tomás Hijo’s “The Prancing Pony”, winner of the 2016 Award for Best Artwork. Nice, isn't it?

Bethany (2016)

The most recent Interzone includes a full-page review of my short novel Bethany. Here's the final paragraph:

I say a little about how I came to write Bethany at the end of this (be warned, quite long) blogpost on Endo's great novel Silence. It's the last three paragraphs, so you can scroll down to those if you like. Or not.

Russian Esquire list 10 Notable Translated Novels

... and guess what's number 10. Мне очень приятно!

Kim Stanley Robinson and Francis Spufford

... are appearing in Waterstones Piccadilly on the evening if the 3rd April, 2017. Starts at 7pm. My understanding is that tickets are limited, so if you're interested you should probably reserve yours sooner rather than later. I'll certainly be there, and as it says on the other end of that link, I have written 'works in both the fiction and critical genres.' So there's that too!

New for 2017

I've been neglecting this blog lately, and will strive to neglect it less in the future. There's been little to report, though. Life has been going on, of course; though I'm not vain enough to believe that anyone is interested in bulletins from that front. Same old same old. As noted in previous posts on this website, 2016 was a quiet year for me publication-wise. The Thing Itself was selected as the book of the year by the great critic John Wilson, which delighted and rather startled me. A couple of the Strange Horizons reviewers honoured it likewise; which was lovely, if achronological, since the novel is a 2015 title. Ah well.

One SF-related thing I did publish in 2016 was the much-expanded 2nd edition of my Palgrave History of Science Fiction. This hasn't made any awards shortlists or anything, and, following my resolution of the 23rd Aug inst. infra, I am blithe about this fact. That said, I was pleased on behalf of Anna McFarlane and Paul Graham Raven, excellent young critics both, whose chapters from the Glyphi Adam Roberts: Critical Essays (ed. Christos Callow Jr. and Anna McFarlane, 2016) volume made the BSFA Awards longlist. Congratulations to them, and fingers-crossed for when the shortlist is announced. (Glyphi have allowed interested parties to download the two chapters in question; if you click the previous link you may still be able to do so, if you're interested!)

Some new things are coming from me, probably, later this year. I'll keep you informed.

Dec 8th: Contemporary Writers Launch: Adam Roberts, Rupert Thomson, Tom McCarthy

See you there?

Eurocon Barcelona 2016

I was there. The above is a photo of Aliette de Bodard and I enjoying a laugh over that most chucklesome of topics, Jules Verne.

2016

Well, it's been a pig of a year, I think we can all agree. But, look: this website is about what I write and what I publish, so let's focus-down our disappointment onto that for the time being, shall we? Which is to say, onto two things, sciencefictionally speaking.

The first is non-fiction: the revised second edition of my Palgrave History of Science Fiction. This is a comprehensively revised version of the 2006 first edition, including wholly new chapters (a new last chapter presents an account of 21st-century SF) and lots of extra new stuff and titivations and so on. It's not cheap I'm afraid, but you might want to order a copy for your local library. As a for-instance.

The second is fiction, a short novel called Bethany about a man who goes back in time to shoot Christ with a high-powered rifle, with this peculiar wrinkle: he plans on killing him after he has resurrected but before he ascends to heaven. This is about 35,000 words of text, so 'short novel' (I'm not sure whether, under the SF community's fiercely regulated nomenclature, it counts as a novella, novelette or novelicule) describes it. Were it published in hard copy it would be something like 140-pages long. Ah, but it's not being published in hard-copy: it's available only as an e-book title, and you can, if you are so minded, buy it from here.

This is the only book-length (or small-book-length) fiction I'm publishing in 2016. Slim pickings, I know. But, unlike the Palgrave book, it is at least relatively cheap: $/€ 3.99, £2.49. For a whole novel! A short novel, but still. Next year Gollancz will be proper-publishing my next full-length-novel, The Real Town Murders. So there's that to look forward to. If you're a looking-forward, 2017-surely-can't-be-as-ghastly-as-2016 sort of a person.

Stranger yet and Stranger, more Horizoned still

The very same day that the US Election result was announced on the world's media, this review of The Thing Itself by Kevin Power (himself no mean writer) was published. It may be the best review I've ever received. Funny old world, swings and roundabouts, and so on, and so forth.