Most Popular Books by Adam Roberts

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).

An exhilarating, pun-filled love letter to musicals, with 50 Broadway-inspired recipes. Good food and trivia and authors who sing—these are a few of our favorite things! Tony-nominated actor Gideon Glick and food writer Adam Roberts have teamed up to write the ultimate cookbook for theater lovers. This collection of musical-inspired recipes includes dishes like Yolklahoma!, Clafoutis and the Beast, Yam Yankees, Dear Melon Hansen, and more. And while readers are sure to be charmed by the names, the recipes themselves will have them sticking around for the food, glorious food! Thoughtfully assembled by two veritable Broadway experts, this book is sure to result in some enchanted eating. Each dish comes with a brief history of the show that inspired it, a summary of the plot, and “Listening Notes” chock-full of behind-the-scenes trivia. Complete with lively illustrations from celebrated theatrical illustrator Justin “Squigs” Robertson, Give My Swiss Chards to Broadway makes every meal feel like a night at the theater.

In March 2004 a group led by Nick Du Toit and former SAS member Simon Mann tried to overthrow the tyrannical Obiang Nguema, president of Equatorial Guinea. They were working for investors, allegedly including Mark Thatcher and "J.H. Archer", who wanted to seize control of Africa''s third largest oil producer. Roberts tells how the coup was set up and abandoned at the last minute, and how the plotters were seized and subsequently tortured. The new material includes an account of Mann''s illegal abduction from prison in 2008; his dramatic trial, in which he accuses named individuals, including Thatcher, of being deeply involved in the plot; Thatcher''s fears of "extraordinary rendition" to Equatorial Guinea; and Eli Calil''s revelatory admission that he supported forced regime change in Equatorial Guinea.

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.

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.

Numa linguagem acessível e abrangendo uma grande variedade de obras, o crítico e escritor Adam Roberts traça o desenvolvimento da ficção científica desde suas origens até sua atual disseminação na cultura popular, com seus desdobramentos no cinema, música e TV. Apresentando argumentos de que a ficção científica tem suas raízes nas viagens fantásticas da literatura grega, Roberts passa pelas suas inúmeras fases e subgêneros, da Era de Ouro a New Space Opera, para mostrar que essa é uma das grandes culturas literárias do nosso tempo. Além de uma excelente fonte de pesquisa histórica, esta é certamente uma das mais significativas obras da atualidade no campo da ficção científica e a mais completa do gênero em língua portuguesa.

La naissance d''un tout nouveau type d''IA avec son premier specimen, SoieVerte...

Bingo Pacquet est un posstit menant une existence paisible. À part ses pieds,atrophiés, arthritiques et éléphantiasiques -, rien ne semble pouvoir troubler la quiétude de ses jours. Mais son bonheur prend fin lorsque le magicien Glandalf et une compagnie de nains gallois l''embarquent pour l''aventure. Ils projettent de faire main basse sur un trésor gardé par Snob, un dragon d''un ennui mortel. Ah oui : Bingo découvre aussi une espèce d''anneau,mais est-ce vraiment important...

Nichts ist, wie es scheint Stellen Sie sich ein Universum vor, das nach ganz anderen physikalischen Regeln funktioniert. In dem die Planeten so eng aneinander liegen, dass man mit Flugzeugen und Zeppelinen zwischen ihnen hin- und herfliegen kann. In dem sich die menschliche Zivilisation wie Nomaden von einer Welt zur nächsten bewegt. Und in dem es ein wohlgehütetes Geheimnis gibt. Denn dieses Universum ist eine perfide Illusion ...

Jack Glass est un meurtrier, voilà une certitude. Dans un lointain futur, où l’humanité a exploré le système solaire, où les corporations et les clans familiaux dirigent l’univers connu, nous allons suivre trois affaires dans un monde inégalitaire dans lequel les riches vivent somptueusement sur Terre, et les pauvres se terrent dans les astéroïdes orbitant autour des mondes colonisés. Trois affaires qui suivent les codes du roman policier classique : le huis clos, le mystère... Trois affaires dont on sait qui est le coupable, car Jack Glass nous l’avoue dès les premières pages. Jack Glass est un roman merveilleux, une œuvre rare d’un auteur au sommet de son art littéraire qui mêle les notions de crimes et de peines, de pouvoir et de liberté.

Hector travels across America to visit his father on a ranch. He discovers that he has constructed a cult who await the impact of an asteroid. However, Hector is amazed when the section of Earth that the ranch is on suddenly breaks free from the rest of the planet during the collision. He struggles with his skepticism and acceptance of the fact that he is part of the remnants of the human race, on a splinter from the Earth.

Iraq War, 2003-; United States; foreign relations; Iraq.