Most Popular Books by Adam Roberts

Solaris Rising 1.5 continues the exciting new series of SF anthologies from Solaris and editor Ian Whates, with an exclusive ebook! An anthology of nine short stories from some of the most exciting names in science fiction today. From both sides of the Atlantic – and further afield – these nine great writers offer you everything from a mystery about the nature of the universe to an inexplicable transmission to everyone on Earth, and from engineered giant spiders to Venetian palaces in space. So settle in, and enjoy yet more proof of the extraordinary breadth and depth of contemporary SF. Featuring Adam Roberts, Aliette de Bodard, Gareth L. Powell, Mike Resnick, Sarah Lotz, Phillip Vine, Tanith Lee, Paul Cornell, Paul di Filippo.

THE LAND OF THE HEADLESS is set in a far future where mankind has taken his religious dogma and the divsions that result from it out into space. On a planet where society is shaped by a strict adherance to the word of God as laid out in the Old Testament and Quran a poet is accused of the rape of a woman. Found guilty he must face the punishment laid down in the Good Book; beheading. Beheaded, he is fitted with a neck valve, ordinator and basic sensory equipment and sent out into the world. But he bears a terrible and very visible stigma. the only way he can make a living is to join the army and serve in the war against the neighbouring planet. And plan his revenge against the man he believes is really guilty. LAND OF THE HEADLESS is a searing satire of religious fundamentalism, a novel of love and war and a study of self-delusion. It is an elegantly written, thought-provoking and unique SF novel.

Sasha, a young computer programmer from Leningrad, is driving north to meet some friends for a nature vacation. He picks up a couple of hitchhikers, who persuade him to take a job at the National Institute for the Technology of Witchcraft and Thaumaturgy. The adventures Sasha has in the largely dysfunctional institute involve all sorts of magical beings—a wish-granting fish, a tree mermaid, a cat who can remember only the beginnings of stories, a dream-interpreting sofa, a motorcycle that can zoom into the imagined future, a lazy dog-size mosquito—along with a variety of wizards (including Merlin), vampires, and officers. First published in Russia in 1965, Monday Starts on Saturday has become the most popular Strugatsky novel in their homeland. Like the works of Gogol and Kafka, it tackles the nature of institutions—here focusing on one devoted to discovering and perfecting human happiness. By turns wildly imaginative, hilarious, and disturbing, Monday Starts on Saturday is a comic masterpiece by two of the world''s greatest science-fiction writers.

Lizbreath Salamander is young and beautiful. Her scales have an iridescent sheen, her wings arch proudly, her breath has a tang of sulfur. And on her back a tattoo of a mythical creature: a girl. But when Lizbreath is drawn into a dark conspiracy she will have to rely on more than her beauty and her vicious claws the size of sabres ... A dragon has disappeared, one of a secretive clan. As Lizbreath delves deeper into their history she realises that these dragons will do anything to defend their secrets. Welcome to the world of The Dragon With The Girl Tattoo. A world of gloomy Nordic dragons leading lives uncannily like our own (despite their size, despite the need for extensive fireproofing of home furnishings), a world of money hoarded, a world of darkness and corruption. A world where people are the fantasy.

This study constitutes the first to analyse the remarkable surge in popularity of Arthurian literature and art in the modern period from a broad range of instances of cultural production. More novels with Arthurian themes have been published since the war than in any previous period, and Silk and Potatoes provides detailed readings of some of the most famous, including works by Marion Zimmer Bradley, Anthony Burgess, C.J. Cherryh, Guy Gavriel Kay, Mary Stewart, Jack Vance and T.H. White. In addition to examining Arthurian fiction (with chapters on the general novel, Historical fiction and Science Fiction), this study examines the key cinematic examples of Arthuriana (Boorman’s Excalibur, Bresson’s Lancelot du Lac, Rohmer’s Perceval Le Gallois and Monthy Python and the Holy Grail). A further chapter goes on to look at the myriad other forms of cultural production based on Arthurian themes; from Bugs Bunny to Pop Music, from the Camelot of JFK to the British National Lottery. This is a study that touches on many aspects of Arthuriana whilst developing two connected arguments about (on the one hand) the necessary anachronism of any modern Arthurian Literature, and (on the other) the aesthetic-political implications of this literature’s success. The whole, whilst rooted in the scholarly debates on the enduring appeal of King Arthur, is written in an accessible and entertaining style. It will be of interest to students and teachers of Arthurian literature, film and popular culture.

A gothic tale of murder and corruption set in 1840s Victorian London, taking inspiration from our most famous 19th century writers. 1848, the spectre of revolution stalks London… “The story of the death of Sir Martin Malprelate acquired, from its earliest telling, a phantasmagorical quality, shrouding the violence of the assault in an embellishment of diabolic spectres and uncanny mystery.” Struck down in a Camden street, the railway magnate never lived to see his dream of a line from London to Middlemarch. But who was to blame? An angry mob? Or were the witnesses who swore he was struck by a demonic train, wheels ringing on rails where no rails lay, to be believed? A hated man who many wished dead? An impossible death? Truly a case for the father of all detectives. From award-winning author Adam Roberts comes a gothic murder mystery like no other; a gripping novel set in the tangled realms of 19th century fiction. In a world woven from the imaginations of Charles Dickens, George Eliot and Arthur Conan Doyle the inexplicable death of a railway magnate opens endless possibilities.

It is one of the world’s most iconic cities, the center of romance, cuisine, and high culture, a place we are all implored to visit in spring and then forever hold in our hearts: Paris. But behind these familiar notions lies a bustling and deeply complex metropolis, one that offers visitors an unending array of surprises. This book takes readers and travelers to this other Paris, a city of love and danger alike, a city imbued with over 2,000 years of history, which Adam Roberts lovingly recounts alongside an expert tour of the city’s sights, sounds, and flavors. Roberts tells the story of how a provincial backwater rose up to become one of the richest, most powerful, and most visited cities in Europe, a world leader in fashion, the arts, and gastronomy. He takes us back two millennia to when roaming Celtic tribes first set up camp on the banks of the Seine, and from there moves through turbulent centuries full of the fates and fortunes of kings, marked by invasions, revolutions, and magnificent buildings constructed one after the other. He explores the city’s renowned gothic architecture, the urban planning that has been revised throughout history, the mammoth museums that have been erected to preserve its artistic legacy, and the vibrant street culture that hosts markets, performers, and Paris’s own flâneurs every single day. Along the way, he points out countless hidden gems travelers rarely make it to: from a vintage candy shop to a museum of romantic life, from a hidden garden inside a hospital to a converted hair salon that hosts—of all things—table tennis tournaments. And of course he shows readers where to eat, catch a show, and go for gorgeous sunset strolls. Offering a comprehensive but easily digestible overview, Paris is the perfect book for anyone planning a visit to the city or anyone who simply loves it from afar.

In contrast to the common perception that the United Nations is, or should become, a system of collective security, this paper advances the proposition that the UN Security Council embodies a necessarily selective approach. Analysis of its record since 1945 suggests that the Council cannot address all security threats effectively. The reasons for this include not only the veto power of the five permanent members, but also the selectivity of all UN member states: their unwillingness to provide forces for peacekeeping or other purposes except on a case-by-case basis, and their reluctance to involve the Council in certain conflicts to which they are parties, or which they perceive as distant, complex and resistant to outside involvement. The Council’s selectivity is generally seen as a problem, even a threat to its legitimacy. Yet selectivity, which is rooted in prudence and in the UN Charter itself, has some virtues. Acknowledging the necessary limitations within which the Security Council operates, this paper evaluates the Council’s achievements in tackling the problem of war since 1945. In doing so, it sheds light on the division of labour among the Council, regional security bodies and states, and offers a pioneering contribution to public and governmental understanding of the UN’s past, present and future roles.

It is the dawn of the twentieth century. Following the Martians'' failed invasion of Earth, the British Empire has seized their technology and unlocked its secrets for themselves. It is a Golden Age of discovery, adventure, culture, invention—and of domination, and rebellion. Scarlet Traces reveals a world of ant-headed nightmares; vacuum salesmen; war machines; deadly secrets; clockwork marvels; and Sherlock Holmes, T. S. Eliot and Thomas Edison as you''ve never seen them before... Including stories by Stephen Baxter, I. N. J. Culbard, Adam Roberts, Emma Beeby, James Lovegrove, Nathan Duck, Mark Morris, Dan Whitehead, Chris Roberson, Maura McHugh, Jonathan Green and Andrew Lane.

Alma is a private detective in a near-future England, a country desperately trying to tempt people away from the delights of Shine, the immersive successor to the internet. But most people are happy to spend their lives plugged in, and the country is decaying. Alma''s partner is ill, and has to be treated without fail every 4 hours, a task that only Alma can do. If she misses the 5 minute window her lover will die. She is one of the few not to access the Shine. So when Alma is called to an automated car factory to be shown an impossible death and finds herself caught up in a political coup, she knows that getting too deep may leave her unable to get home. What follows is a fast-paced Hitchcockian thriller as Alma evades arrest, digs into the conspiracy, and tries to work out how on earth a dead body appeared in the boot of a freshly-made car in a fully-automated factory.

Science fiction was being written throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but it underwent a rapid expansion of cultural dissemination and popularity at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century. This Element explores the ways this explosion in interest in ''scientific romance'', that informs today''s global science fiction culture, manifests the specific historical exigences of the revolutions in publishing and distribution technology. H. G. Wells, Jules Verne and other science fiction writers embody in their art the advances in material culture that mobilize, reproduce and distribute with new rapidity, determining the cultural logic of twentieth-century science fiction in the process.

Foodie van Adam Roberts is een verrukkelijke en hilarische roman à la ''The Devil Wears Prada'', over ambitie, vriendschap en de culinaire wereld. Isabella Pasternak houdt van eten. Ze geniet van de schoonheid van een perfect gekookt ei, ze dagdroomt over haar eerste maaltijd bij het beste restaurant in de stad en elke centimeter van haar kleine appartement is bezaaid met kookboeken. Helaas is Isabella op staande voet ontslagen na een rampzalige livestream-demonstratie van soufflés bij het digitale eettijdschrift waar ze werkte. Dus als ze de kans krijgt om een celebrity-kookboek te schrijven met Hollywood-ster Molly Babcock neemt ze die met beide handen aan. Maar al snel blijkt dat hun karakters en doelen behoorlijk botsen en daarnaast lijkt Molly totáál niet geïnteresseerd in eten. Zal het Isabella lukken Molly úít de roddelbladen en ín de keuken te lokken? Of zullen Isabella’s toewijding aan haar culinaire idolen en Molly’s monsterlijke ego het hele kookboek in vlammen doen opgaan?

''For those of us who have to live with terrorism, when we leave home in the morning there is no guarantee that we will come back.'' Thus Lakshman Kadirgamar, Sri Lanka''s Foreign Minister, foreshadowed his own assassination in 2005. He was an astute and brave thinker and practitioner on many key issues in international politics. Long before 9/11 he warned Western democracies that they were too passive about the activities on their soil of foreign terrorist movements and their front organizations. He was a strong advocate of democracy and human rights, conducting the first-ever Amnesty investigation into the problems of a particular country - Vietnam. He was uniquely effective in countering the propaganda campaigns of the separatist Tamil Tigers in his native Sri Lanka - the movement which ultimately took his life. This definitive work explores the continuing relevance of his ideas for the modern world. Democracy, Sovereignty and Terror presents Kadirgamar''s distinctive voice in his major speeches. It also offers a convincing picture, by those who knew him, of a scholar-statesman who was both a realist and an idealist. He showed that these approaches can be combined in both thought and action.

Something fishy is going on in the world of artistic scholarship. How can there possibly be a link between the hidden cod of Leonardo Da Vinci''s paintings and the over fishing of the North Atlantic fish stocks? Could it be that Leonardo Da Vinci, the greatest genius of his age and inventor of the photocopier and mouse mat, had a chilling insight into European Union Fishing policies. Only one man can find out. Robert Hangdog, international scholar, master spy and action hero. Oh and Bezu Fish.

Award nominated SF author Adam Roberts takes on Dickens in this festive zombie gorefest. Marley was dead. To begin with. The legendary Ebenezeer Scrooge sits in his house counting money. The boards that he has nailed up over the doors and the windows shudder and shake under the blows from the endless zombie hordes that crowd the streets hungering for his flesh and his miserly braaaaiiiiiinns! Just how did the happiest day of the year slip into a welter of blood, innards and shambling, ravenous undead on the snowy streets of old London town? Will the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future be able to stop the world from drowning under a top-hatted and crinolined zombie horde? It''s the Dickensian Zombie Apocalypse - God Bless us, one and all!

« Partout, on pouvait voir ces structures nouvelles, petites et grandes, larges et hautes ; des monolithes, des dômes et des sphères bâtis par Obligation, se dressant fièrement au-dessus des pâturages comme les lettres d’un texte inédit, colossal et impénétrable. » Il y a quelque temps, insidieusement, le comportement humain a changé. Des hommes et des femmes, que rien n’apparente les uns aux autres, ont commencé à déplacer des objets du quotidien vers des lieux précis, mus par un sentiment d’obligation contre lequel il semble impossible de lutter. De quelques dizaines d’individus dans un premier temps, leur nombre est passé à des milliers à travers le monde, s’activant pour répondre à cette étrange injonction dont la cause est à ce jour totalement inconnue. Si certains objets semblent parfaitement inoffensifs, tels un vieux modèle de téléphone ou bien la capsule cabossée d’une bouteille de bière, d’autres sont bien plus complexes et déroutants : la turbine d’un moteur à réaction expérimental ou le processeur d’un superordinateur. Ceux qui se sentent obligés de transporter tous ces objets ne se contentent pas, une fois arrivés à destination, de les empiler comme des ordures. Les Obligés sont en effet capables de connecter ces éléments sans rapport manifeste entre eux, comme les pièces d’un puzzle tridimensionnel. Les structures qu’ils conçoivent semblent d’ailleurs dotées d’un potentiel mécanique et technologique destiné à servir à quelque chose. Mais... à quoi donc ? Nouvelle futuriste écrite par l’écrivain britannique Adam Roberts et transcendée par les grandioses illustrations architecturales du Belge François Schuiten, « Compulsion » offre un panel de personnages hétéroclites, coincés dans d’inextricables situations, et dont les réactions créent une tension habilement construite.

We know Stanislaw Lem, whether or not we consciously know that we do. He may only be recognised in the West as the author of the twice-filmed novel, Solaris, but the influence of his other work is legion. From computer games (The Sims was inspired by one of his short stories), to films (the red and blue pills of The Matrix owe much to his Futurological Congress); from the space comedies of Red Dwarf to the metaphysical satires of Douglas Adams... the presence of this masterly Polish writer can be traced far and wide. Nor was his genius confined to fiction. Lem''s essays and pseudo-essays borne out of the military industrial tensions of the Cold War have outlived their original context and speak to the most current developments in virtual reality, nanotechnology, and artificial intelligence. To celebrate his name, as well as his vision, this anthology brings together writers, critics and scientists who continue to grapple with his concerns. British and Polish novelists join screenwriters, poets, computer engineers, and artists, to celebrate and explore Lem''s legacy through short stories and essays - two literary forms that, as Lem knew well, can blend together to create something altogether new. As one of the barriers to Lem''s fame was language, this book also features specially commissioned translations: three stories never to have appeared in English before. Lem was always ahead of us. It''s time we caught up.

Private Investigator Alma is caught up in another impossible murder. One of the world''s four richest people may be dead - but nobody is sure which one. Hired to discover the truth behind the increasingly bizarre behaviour of the ultra-rich, Alma must juggle treating her terminally ill lover with a case which may not have a victim. Inspired by the films of Kubrick, this stand-alone novel returns to the near-future of THE REAL-TOWN MURDERS, and puts Alma on a path to a world she can barely understand. Witty, moving and with a mystery deep at its heart, this novel again shows Adam Roberts'' mastery of the form.

Humanity Among The Stars What happens when we reach out into the vastness of space? What hope for us amongst the stars? Multi-award winning editor Jonathan Strahan brings us fourteen new tales of the future, from some of the finest science fiction writers in the field. The fourteen startling stories in this anthology feature the work of Greg Egan, Aliette de Bodard, Ian McDonald, Karl Schroeder, Pat Cadigan, Karen Lord, Ellen Klages, Adam Roberts, Linda Nagata, Hannu Rajaniemi, Kathleen Ann Goonan, Ken MacLeod, Alastair Reynolds and Peter Watts.

The relationship between sleep and storytelling is an ancient one. For centuries, sleep has provided writers with a magical ingredient – a passage of time during which great changes miraculously occur, an Orpheus-like voyage through the subconscious daubed with the fantastic. But over the last ten years, our scientific understanding of sleep has been revolutionised. No longer is sleep viewed as a time of simple rest and recuperation. Instead, it is proving to be an intensely dynamic period of brain activity: a vital stage in the re-wiring of memories, the learning of new skills, and the processing of problems and emotions. How will storytelling respond to this new and emerging science of sleep? Here, 14 authors have been invited to work with key scientists to explore various aspects of sleep research: from the possibilities of ‘sleep engineering’ and ‘overnight therapies’, to future-tech ways of harnessing sleep’s problem-solving powers, to the challenges posed by our increasingly 24-hour lifestyles. Just as new hypotheses are being put forward, old hunches are also being confirmed (there’s now a scientific basis for the time-worn advice ‘to sleep on a problem’). As these responses show, sleep and the spinning of stories are still very much entwined. Featuring scientific contributions from: Prof Russell G. Foster, Isabel Hutchison, Dr. Simon Kyle, Dr. Penny Lewis, Dr. Paul Reading, Stephanie Romiszewski, Prof Robert Stickgold, Prof Manuel Schabus, Prof Ed Watkins, Prof Adam Zeman, Dr. Thomas Wehr. This project was supported by the Wellcome Trust.

Neutralitet; Sverige; Jugoslavien og dets doktrin; Begrænsninger; Alternativ.

First published in 1999, this is a guide which provides easy access to a fairly complete range of the long poetry written in the Romantic and Victorian periods: epics, narrative poems, verse-novels and other work of over a certain length. The format provides title, author, length of work and prosodic description. Texts are then summarized according to the internal divisions. Each poem is accompanied by an objective summary and the poems as a whole are preceded by an introduction which advances a particular argument as to why the nineteenth century was so fascinated with the length that was the ultimate aesthetic rationale for the long poem.

''Highly engaging and fascinating... this thought-provoking collection reminded me why I used to like science fiction so much... Eventually, one hopes, science fiction will regain its rightful place - as once again stranger than science.'' - The Guardian, 20 Dec 09. ''All hit, no miss... thought-provoking at worst, and stunning at best... shows that science can inspire anyone and everyone.'' – New Scientist, 5 Dec 09. ''Inspiring'' – THE, 19 Nov 09. ''A diamond of compression.'' – Financial Times, 20 Dec 09. When It Changed is an attempt to put authors and scientists back in touch with each other, to re-introduce research ideas with literary concerns, and to re-forge the alloy that once made SF great. Composed collaboratively – through a series of visits and conversations between leading authors and practicing scientists – it offers fictionalised glimpses into the far corners of current research fields, be they in nanotechnology, invertebrate physiology, particle physics, or software archaeology. From Planck''s Length (the smallest indivisible distance) to Plankton (potential saviours of the Earth''s ecosystem), from virtual encounters between Witgenstein and Turing, to future civilisations torn asunder by different readings of the Standard Model, together these stories represent a literary ''experiment'' in the true sense of the word, and endeavour to isolate a whole new strain of the SF bug. * * Featuring Sara Maitland''s ''Moss Witch'' - Runner Up in the BBC National Short Story Prize 2009.* *

What makes for a good short story? Being short, you might think the story''s structure would yield an answer to this question more readily than, say, the novel. But for as long as the short story has been around, arguments have raged as to what it should and shouldn''t be made up of, what it should and shouldn''t do. Here ,15 leading contemporary practitioners offer structural appreciations of past masters of the form as well as their own perspectives on what the short story does so well. The best short stories don''t have closure, argues one contributor, ''because life doesn''t have closure''; ''plot must be written with the denouement constantly in view,'' quotes another. Covering a century of writing that arguably saw all the major short forms emerge, from Hawthorne''s ''Twice Told Tales'' to Kafka''s modernist nightmares, these essays offer new and unique inroads into classic texts, both for the literature student and aspiring writer.

Computers are changing. Soon the silicon chip will seem like a clunky antique amid the bounty of more exotic processes on offer. Robots are changing too; material evolution and swarm intelligence are creating a new generation of devices that will diverge and disperse into a balanced ecosystem of humans and ‘robjects’ (robotic objects). Somewhere in between, we humans will have to change also… in the way we interact with technology, the roles we adopt in an increasingly ‘intelligent’ environment, and how we interface with each other. The driving motors behind many of these changes will be artificial life (A-Life) and unconventional computing. How exactly they will impact on our world is still an open question. But in the spirit of collective intelligence, this anthology brings together 38 scientists and authors, working in pairs, to imagine what life (and A-Life) will look like in the year 2070. Every kind of technology is imagined: from lie-detection glasses to military swarmbots, brain-interfacing implants to synthetically ‘grown’ skyscrapers, revolution-inciting computer games to synthetically engineered haute cuisine. All artificial life is here. Featuring scientific contributions from: Martyn Amos, J. Mark Bishop, Seth Bullock, Stephen Dunne, James Dyke, Christian Jantzen, Francesco Mondada, James D. O''Shea, Andrew Philippides, Lenka Pitonakova, Steen Rasmussen, Thomas S. Ray, Micah Rosenkind, James Snowdon, Susan Stepney, Germán Terrazas, Andrew Vardy and Alan Winfield. Supported by TRUCE (Training and Research in Unconventional Computation in Europe).

In 2004, Nick du Toit confessed to an attempted coup in Equatorial Guinea. But du Toit and his co-conspirators had no interest in democratic change, only in the country''s oil. In this book, Adam Roberts shows how the coup is part of a new scramble for control of Africa, a continent rich in natural resources.

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.