Adam Roberts

Roberts joins Pyr-o-mania

I was chuffed to receive an invitation from Lou to join the Pyr-o-mania blog, and agreed straight away. In fact both I and my 1970s-prog alter-ego The Adam Roberts Project have signed up. Our contributions will be on the “news, updates, random opinions” side of the brief, rather than the “general information about the Pyr line” side, which we’ll probably leave to Lou: but we’ll try and keep it interesting. Although, having said that, the most interesting thing I can offer right now is this photo of me with some municipal rubbish bins in the background.

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Is that Science there in my Fiction?

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The wonderful SF Signal is back with another Mind Meld. This one asks, “Do science fiction authors have an obligation to be scientifically accurate with their stories? Is there a minimum level of accuracy an author should adhere to?” Responses include those of Pyr authors David Louis Edelman, Alexis Glynn Latner, and Adam Roberts, though my favorite points are raised by Karl Schroeder and Elizabeth Bear.

Schroeder turns the question around, arguing that science itself progresses by looking for holes in the contemporary understanding of the universe, and thus, “If scientists are obligated to look for holes in the ‘scientifically accurate’ picture of the world, would it make sense for science fiction writers to be obligated to uphold that picture?” (Which is an excellent anti-Mundane argument.)

Bear says, “None whatsoever. With one notable exception, which is to say, when writing rigorous quote unquote hard science fiction. I do think the SF writer has an obligation to know which rules she’s breaking, and break them for a purpose, as an author writing historical fiction should alter history with intent rather than from ignorance.”

The always erudite Adam Roberts reinforces Schroeder’s point when he cites Paul Feyerabend’s Against Methodand says, “Scientific rules limit possible advances in science: the only principle that does not inhibit progress is: anything goes.”

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Gradisil Short-listed for the PKD Award

Big news this morning. Adam Roberts’ Gradisilhas been short-listed for the Philip K. Dick Award. Congratulations, Adam!We’re thrilled. (Remember: sample chapters online here.) Here’s the full press release:

2007 Philip K. Dick Award Nominees Announced

The judges of the 2007 Philip K. Dick Award and the Philadelphia SF Society are pleased to announce seven nominated works that comprise the final ballot for the award:

GREY by Jon Armstrong (Night Shade Books)
UNDERTOW by Elizabeth Bear (Bantam Spectra)
FROM THE NOTEBOOKS OF DR. BRAIN by Minister Faust (Del Rey)
NOVA SWING by M. John Harrison (Bantam Spectra)
GRADISIL by Adam Roberts (Pyr)
ALLY by Karen Traviss (Eos)
SATURN RETURNS by Sean Williams (Ace Books)

First prize and any special citations will be announced on Friday, March 21, 2008 at Norwescon 31 at the Doubletree Hotel Seattle Airport, SeaTac, Washington.

The Philip K. Dick Award is presented annually with the support of the Philip K. Dick Trust for distinguished science fiction published in paperback original form in the United States. The award is sponsored by the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society and the award ceremony is sponsored by the NorthWest Science Fiction Society. Last year’s winner was SPIN CONTROL by Chris Moriarty (Bantam Spectra) with a special citation to CARNIVAL by Elizabeth Bear
(Bantam Spectra). The 2007 judges are Steve Miller, Chris Moriarty (chair), Steven Piziks, Randy Schroeder, Ann Tonsor Zeddies.

For more information, contact the award administration:
David G. Hartwell (914) 769-5545.
Gordon Van Gelder (201) 876-2551
For more information about the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society,
http://www.psfs.org/:
Contact Gary Feldbaum (215) 563-2511
For more information about Norwescon: http://www.norwescon.org/:
Contact NorthWest SF Society: (360) 438-0871

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Brasyl Is A Trashy Novel

“I predict Brasyl will grace multiple shortlists come 2008,” says Adam Roberts in a review posted April 30th on Strange Horizons. “It’s easily the best SF novel I’ve read this year Of course, the year is barely a quarter over; but I find it hard to imagine many better novels than this one coming out. McDonald is a superb writer.”

Adam quotes the following passage from Brasyl:

Todos os Santos is big enough to have a geography, the Forest of Fake Plastic Trees, where wet ripped bags hang like Spanish moss from every spar and protrusion. The Vale of Swarf, where the metal industries dump their coils and spirals of lathe trim. The Ridge of Lost Refrigerators, where kids with disinfectant-soaked handkerchiefs over their faces siphon off CFCs into empty plastic Coke bottles slung like bandoliers around the shoulders. Above them the peaks: Mount Microsoft and the Apple Hills; unsteady ziggurats of processor cubes and interfacers. … A truck disgorges a load of terminally last-season I-shades, falling like dying bats. The catadores rush over the slippery, treacherous garbage. (p. 114)

Then he goes on to say:

“I could hug McDonald for those bats. Such good writing. More to the point, this passage captures something important about what McDonald is doing in this novel. River of Gods parsed a future-India in terms of its superfecund, amazing, or choking sprawl. Something similar is going on in Brasyl, except that the sprawl is more specifically troped as trash. Brasyl is a trashy novel, in the very best sense of that word.”

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The Future of Manned Spaceflight

SciFiDimensions has just posted a virtual panel discussion on The Future of Manned Spaceflight. Moderated John C. Snider asks noted panelists Geoffrey A. Landis (science fiction author and actual NASA scientiset), M.M. Buckner (novelist and winner of the 2006 PKD award) and our own Adam Roberts (author of Gradisil and professor of 19th Century English Literature) about NASA’s current Constellation Program, “a comprehensive package of development aimed at regaining the ability to put astronauts into space after the Shuttle is retired.”

Please read the whole discussion, but here’s a clip from Adam Roberts to whet your appetite:

“The problem isn’t that space exploration isn’t a noble, or a necessary, human aim. It clearly is. The problem is that enormous boondoggle governmental programs to put people into space are exactly the wrong way to advance that aim. What we need is a genuinely popular and ground-up move into space, not a top down one; something that taps into the groundswell of popular fascination with space travel. The technologies NASA are using to put people into space can be thought of this way: at the time of Apollo it cost as much to put a man in orbit as that man’s weight in gold. Chemical propulsion is the same technology, and the costs haven’t come down very far. Now, the USA would never have come about if it had cost that much to ship colonists over from Europe. There needs to be serious investigation of: cheaper models of space elevators; next-generation high altitude zeppelins as launch pads; re-jigged and less polluting Spaceship Orion nuclear-propulsion projects, boosting spaceplanes with electromagnetic effects from the earth’s magnetosphere; and anything else that people can think of.”

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