New Releases by Adam Roberts

Klara et son père, Miklos Gyeroffy, font partie des rares chanceux capables de se placer sur orbite par leurs propres moyens. Là-haut, un nouvel espace de liberté s''offre à eux, un vaste territoire vierge de toute règle : les Hautes-Landes. Mais, outre les riches excentriques, cette nouvelle frontière attire aussi de dangereux criminels, bienheureux de pouvoir échapper aux poursuites des autorités terriennes. C''est, sur trois générations, l''histoire de cette nation naissante qui nous est contée, une histoire inextricablement liée à celle de la famille Gyeroffy.

Russia, 1946, the Nazis recently defeated. Stalin gathers half a dozen of the top Soviet science fiction authors in a dacha in the countryside somewhere. Convinced that the defeat of America is only a few years away, and equally convinced that the Soviet Union needs a massive external threat to hold it together, to give it purpose and direction, he tells the writers: ''I want you to concoct a story about aliens poised to invade earth ... I want it to be massively detailed, and completely believable. If you need props and evidence to back it up, then we can create them. But when America is defeated, your story must be so convincing that the whole population of Soviet Russia believes in it - the population of the whole world!'' The little group of writers gets down to the task and spends months working on it. But then new orders come from Moscow: they are told to drop the project; Stalin has changed his mind; forget everything about it. So they do. They get on with their lives in their various ways; some of them survive the remainder of Stalin''s rule, the changes of the 50s and 60s. And then, in the aftermath of Chernobyl, the survivors gather again, because something strange has started to happen. The story they invented in 1946 is starting to come true ... A typically mind-blowing SF novel from one of the genre''s literary stars.

Two experimental essays engaging with the science fiction concepts of ''Alien'' and ''Star''.

Science Fiction is a fascinating and comprehensive introduction to one of the most popular areas of modern culture. This second edition reflects how the field is rapidly changing in both its practice and its critical reception. With an entirely new conclusion and all other chapters fully reworked and updated, this volume includes: a concise history of science fiction and the ways in which the genre has been used and defined explanations of key concepts in Science Fiction criticism and theory through chapters such as Gender, Race, Technology and Metaphor examines the interactions between Science Fiction and Science Fact anchors each chapter with a case study drawn from short story, book or film, from Frank Herbert''s Dune to Star Wars, from The Left Hand of Darkness to Neuromancer. Introducing the reader to nineteenth-century, Pulp, Golden Age, New Wave, Feminist and Cyberpunk science fictions, this is the essential contemporary guide to a major cultural movement.

And this is how the world will end . . . ¿The snow started falling on the sixth of September, soft noiseless flakes filling the sky like a swarm of white moths, or like static interference on your TV screen - whichever metaphor, nature or technology, you find the more evocative. Snow everywhere, all through the air, with that distinctive sense of hurrying that a vigorous snowfall brings with it. Everything in a rush, busy-busy snowflakes. And, simultaneously, paradoxically, everything is hushed, calm, as quiet as cancer, as white as death. And at the beginning people were happy.¿ But the snow doesn¿t stop. It falls and falls and falls. Until it lies three miles thick across the whole of the earth. Six billion people have died. Perhaps 150,000 survive. But those 150,000 need help, they need support, they need organising, governing. And so the lies begin. Lies about how the snow started. Lies about who is to blame. Lies about who is left. Lies about what really lies beneath.

Includes bibliographical references.