gradisil

Ed Parks is a founding editor of my favorite magazine of all time, The Believer. So I was thrilled when it was announced that he’d be writing an online monthly SF column for the Los Angeles Times. In its first installment, Astral Weeks reviewed HARM by Brian W. Aldiss and Under My Roof by Nick Mamatas. Now in his second outing, Parks turns his attention to Adam Roberts’ Heinlein-esque near future novel of revenge, Gradisil.

He starts off by quoting from the very first paragraph of the book, which he describes as “as elegant as invitations come,” and concludes that, “By the paragraph’s three-word finale, you might find yourself hooked.” (I did!)

Parks finds buried references to Vladimir Nabokov and allusions to Charles Portis, while noting that Roberts, while crafting a book spiced with literary illusions and satire, nonetheless “keeps those pages turning and richly characterizes his generations-spanning dramatis personae.”

Parks has written one of those wonderful reviews that obviously demonstrates a deep appreciate for the work while providing very little in the way of quotables – my publicity director loves these – but he clearly “gets” what Roberts is doing. So rather than tell you anymore, why not go read the review for yourself.

Adrienne Martini reviews her first Pyr title for Bookslut, proclaiming that Adam Roberts’ Gradisil has blown her socks off, which are “currently in orbit around Jupiter.” This is a fun review, which gets right to the essense of the book and makes you smile while doing so, with sentiments that start like this:

“Like a late-night infomercial — wait: There’s more. Roberts keeps adding layers of pure genre porn like quantum space planes over a structure with rich emotional resonance. He takes us on an old-fashioned catalog of space wonders and cultures whenever we’re in the Uplands. He envisions what will happen to language over the next two millennia, dropping silent letters from his prose as the century passes. If that weren’t enough, he sketches out a plausible outline for the geopolitical future that is completely believable and never bogs down in detail.”

I encourage you to read the whole review, which does a good job of expressing why Gradisil works without any major spoilers, though as Adrienne says, “On its surface, Gradisil — the title is derived from a Viking myth rather than the cervical cancer vaccine — is a simple story about a driven man whose jones to escape the Earth causes nuclear-grade fallout that effects at least three generations of his offspring. That one line could describe any number of science fiction page-turners. Most writers, if given that brief, could weave lovely little stories that momentarily entertained but failed to leave any lasting impression. Roberts, however, isn’t most writers. His take on this brief is so exquisitely layered that it is hard to know where to begin teasing out what makes it all come together without giving away too many of the surprises.”

“Is it fair to read a novel as a stand-alone work, or must it necessarily be judged in the context of how it compares to what has gone before?,” asks Greg L. Johnson in his SFSite.com review of Adam Robert’s Gradisil. “A fine story, all by itself, and Gradisil can easily be read strictly as the story of one family’s involvement in the great events of their time. But … Gradisil’s reference points are the classic science fiction stories of rugged individuals engineering their way into space. There are echoes here of Arthur C. Clarke’s Islands in the Sky, Poul Anderson’s Tales of the Flying Mountains and, of course, Robert A. Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.”

This wealth of influences, coupled with several literary allusions, causes Johnson to conclude, “Gradisil could easily have been-top heavy, its literary allusions and political commentary deadening the story with pretensions. That it doesn’t is evidence both of Robert’s skill as a novelist and the enduring power of an ages-old tragedy. Gradisil works well as a story in and of itself, its characters not necessarily admirable but very human in their flaws and prejudices.”

I’m a little late noticing this, but Eve’s Alexandria has posted a very detailed and thoughtful analysis of Adam Robert’s Gradisil, with dueling (though not very opposed) opinions from hosts Nic and Victoria.

First off, Vicky says, “Jon Courtenay Grimwood tells us (via The Guardian) that Adam Roberts is ‘the king of high-concept SF’, and if the Arthur C. Clarke-nominated Gradisil – Roberts’ sixth novel – is representative of his work, I must concur. One of three ‘traditional SF’ novels in the running for the Award, it proves a painstakingly well-crafted and thematically dense novel, heavy with ideas…. If Gradisil‘s structure is a variation on The Forsyte Saga, the narrative thrust has all the flavour of Greek tragedy: murdered parents, vengeful children, wronged husbands and siblings in conflict, mixed together with political and social upheaval – the development of national government and the consequences of power conjoined with the fate of families.”

Then Nic offers, “I thoroughly enjoyed Gradisil, and have to agree with Vicky’s contention that it is “painstakingly well-crafted and thematically dense,” then goes into a discussion as to whether the “narrative playfulness” of the book works or not. Nic ends by praising one of the most incredible passages in the whole book, a chapter in which an astronaut falls to earth: “…an astonishing, soaring piece of writing, showing what Roberts can do when he lays aside the irony for a while.”

Meanwhile, I love the depth of this analysis and the duel-host format. And I concur, obviously, with Vicky when she says, “It would be a worthy winner of the Clarke, I think.”