gradisil

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.”

The Future of Manned Spaceflight Read More »

Libertarians in Low Orbit, Cyborgs Come of Age

Jim Hopper, in the March 11, 2007 San Diego Union-Tribune, reviews two Pyr titles in an article entitled, “ECCENTRIC ORBITS: If you’re ‘Counting’ on the government, count again.”

Jim describes Adam Robert’s Gradisilthusly, minus a medium-sized spoiler in the middle:

“Ahh, governments! How about Libertarians in Low Earth Orbit? When Gradisil’s grandfather develops a way to use old aircraft, instead of huge rockets, to get into orbit, Things Change. With ‘Elemag’ technology, a suitably sealed and adapted airplane can become a spaceplane, climbing the branches of the Earth’s magnetic field, like Yggdrasil out of old Norse mythology. …and there’s more than one betrayal. It seems, as the story closes, that the blood of patriots must water even Yggdrasil, as well as the tree of liberty.”

Of Justina Robson’s Keeping It Real, he says:

“Robson’s cyborg heroine, Lila Black, is hired as bodyguard for an Elven rock star, which is a much bigger job than it seems. This is not YA material, but, yeah, even an embittered cyborg can grow up.”

Also reviewed are titles by Kim Stanley Robinson, Hal Duncan, China Miéville, and Eliot Fintushel.

Libertarians in Low Orbit, Cyborgs Come of Age Read More »

Hmmmm…. that’s interesting.

Okay, first go read this. It’s an article from New Scientist which begins, “Future spacecraft may surf the magnetic fields of Earth and other planets, taking previously unfeasible routes around the solar system, according to a proposal funded by NASA’s Institute for Advanced Concepts. The electrically charged craft would not need rockets or propellant of any kind.”

Now go read this. It’s a book by Adam Roberts, of which Starburst says, “the magnetic boost technologies he uses to put planes into orbit has the smack of an SF trope that’ll become a universal cliché in a few years.”

Or just a reality.

Update: Technovelgy has picked up on the story. Although the post mentions not having heard back from Adam, we are putting them in touch.

Hmmmm…. that’s interesting. Read More »

3 Pyr Titles @ the Library Journal

The Library Journal reviews three more Pyr titles, all recommended:

Kenyon, Kay. Bright of the Sky.
“Reminiscent of the groundbreaking novels of Philip K. Dick, Philip Jose Farmer, and Dan Simmons, her latest volume belongs in most libraries.”

Roberts, Adam. Gradisil.
“A picture of a possible future … that is both chillingly possible and dryly tongue-in-cheek. Fans of sf sagas will appreciate the attention to detail and engaging characters.”

Robson, Justina. Keeping It Real.
“…skillfully builds a seamless connection between sf and fantasy in this fast-paced series opener featuring a strong, action-oriented heroine and a unique world setting.” They go on to recommend the book to fans of both “contemporary culture” and “mature YA.”

3 Pyr Titles @ the Library Journal Read More »

Adam Roberts Interviewd on SFRevu

Gradisil author Adam Roberts is interviewed on SFRevu. Adam is a great interview – in fact, he first came to my attention some years ago when he was being interviewed about his novel, On. I was impressed enough with his thoughts that I knew I wanted to work with him and invited him into my anthology, Live Without a Net. We’ve worked together several times since then, including in the anthology FutureShocks. I consider Adam to be one of the most stunningly smart people I know. Please go read the whole interview, but here’s a taste:

People love SF and Fantasy—on screen. And I think this has changed the logic of the genre. The most culturally ubiquitous SF has been visual SF, and almost always worked through by a ‘visual spectacularism’ predicated upon special effects, the creation of visually impressive alternate worlds, the realisation of events and beings liable to amaze. In part because of this, I think, SF has become less centrally a ‘literature of ideas’ and become much more to do with images: I’m talking about both conventional poetic or literary images, but more strikingly potent visual imagery that penetrates culture more generally. It is in the nature of images that they cannot be parsed, explicated and rationalised in the way ‘ideas’ can. Accordingly there is something oblique about the workings of the best SF of the later century; something allusive and affective that can be difficult exactly to pin down. My favourite SF films are not necessarily the most mind-expanding, but they are the most beautiful: 2001.

Adam Roberts Interviewd on SFRevu Read More »

3 Pyr Books @ SFRevu

SFRevu has chimed in on three recent and upcoming Pyr novels.

First, my own Fast Forward 1: Future Fiction from the Cutting Edge is given a glowing review from Colleen Cahill, who says that, “this collection has a bit of something for everyone. Anders has gathered a truly outstanding set of science fiction, all with images and worlds that are new, different and exciting. It is safe to say that Fast Forward 1, hopefully the first in several such books, is a worthy successor to the Knight and Pohl series and a book every science fiction fan will want in their collection.”

Next up, Todd Baker has some great things to say about Adam Robert’s out-any-day now hard SF of near-future war in space, Gradisil. Praising the “intricacies of the plot, the richness of character development, and the intriguing scientific extrapolation,” Baker comments that “it is not surprising that it has been shortlisted for the 2007 Arthur C. Clarke award for best new novel.” Also of interest to me personally is Baker’s singling out of this quote from the book, with its accusations about our very modern life:

You know for how much money the EU government sold the latest mobile netlink rights? Bandwidths were going for a billion euros, minimum. . . . Think of the gross! So you tell me–is that the best way of spending humanity’s money, webbing friends, playing games on the bus? A fraction of a single percent of that money, we could have bases on Mars in five years. Destiny–possibility–glorious, but no, we’ll keep frittering our money on games, on cosmetics, on flim-flam, and we’ll turn around in five hundred years and still be right here where we are now.

Finally, Ernest Lilley, who admits to not liking the book as much as he wanted to, still makes Keeping It Real (Quantum Gravity, Book 1) sound pretty darn good in his introduction: “Lila Black used to be a pretty girl, but that was before she had her arms and legs ripped off by an elvish interrogator and delivered back to her human world intel agency more dead than alive. So, in the best tradition of these things, they rebuit her with cyborg battle ready parts and a Mr. Fusion heart. Unfortunately for her they either took away too much or left too much intact, depending on your point of view, because her emotions are all still quite intact, just jumbled up in a ball of revenge, remorse and oh yes…love. Now back in the field to protect an elvish rock star she’s got to come to terms with who she is before she can save her charge, and of course, the world as we know it. Well, maybe not quite as we know it…”

3 Pyr Books @ SFRevu Read More »

Adam Roberts Up on a Wire

Adam Roberts talks to John Joseph Adams of Sci Fi Wire about his Arthur C. Clarke Award nominated novel, Gradisil, described by The Times as being “reminiscent of the best of Robert Heinlein.” As Adam says:

“When I set down to write Gradisil, I wanted to write something hard SF, something near-ish future, something Robert Heinlein or Stephen Baxter-like. As with all my novels, I think it’s fair to say that something weird and dislocating happens to these great authors when I force them into the woodchipper of my own imagination, but there’s something tech-SF-y and war-story about this particular novel.”

Gradisil is out in March, but you can read the first four chapters online now. I certainly recommend that you do, especially if you’ve never read Adam before, because, as SFX said recently, “Roberts belongs in the front rank of hard SF writers.”

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A Love-Hate Letter to American SF?

The February 12th issue of Publishers Weekly on Adam Robert’s Gradisil, coming in March in trade paperback from Pyr:

“Written like a love-hate letter to American SF, Roberts’s latest is a multigenerational saga of space colonization and betrayal. Centered on the life of Gradisil Gyeroffy, it covers the early years of plucky (and/or wealthy) Uplanders, individuals who take up residence in low Earth orbit, through their transforming war with America and Gradi’s sacrifices to weld them into a nation. The forward-looking, freedom-oriented space colonists stand in contrast to their tradition-bound, systems-wedded opponents. Roberts (The Snow) suggests that popular access to space is just a technological improvement away, though the government as represented by the USUF (aka the U.S. Upland Force), rather than rugged individuals, would (and should) lead the way…. Rewarding the patient reader are some witty asides of social changes (like going from one to three to 14 popes) and an unsparing portrait of a social revolution and its costs to the revolutionaries.”

A Love-Hate Letter to American SF? Read More »

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