Adam Roberts

An interstellar craft is decelerating after its century-long voyage. Its destination is V538 Aurigae ?, a now-empty planet dominated by one gigantic megastructure, a conical mountain of such height that its summit is high above the atmosphere. The ship's crew of five hope to discover how the long-departed builders made such a colossal thing, and why: a space elevator? a temple? a work of art? Its resemblance to the mountain of purgatory lead the crew to call this world Dante. In our near future, the United States is falling apart. A neurotoxin has interfered with the memory function of many of the population, leaving them reliant on their phones as makeshift memory prostheses. But life goes on. For Ottoline Barragão, a regular kid juggling school and her friends and her beehives in the back garden, things are about to get very dangerous, chased across the north-east by competing groups, each willing to do whatever it takes to get inside Ottoline's private network and recover the secret inside. Purgatory Mount, Adam Roberts's first SF novel for three years, combines wry space opera and a fast-paced thriller in equal measure. It is a novel about memory and atonement, about exploration and passion, and like all of Roberts's novels it's not quite like anything else.

Golden Age SF meets Golden Age Crime in this British Science Fiction Award winner for best novel, from the author of Swiftly, New Model Army, and Yellow Blue Tibia Jack Glass is the murderer—we know this from the start. Yet as this extraordinary novel unfolds, readers will be astonished to discover how he committed the murders and by the end of the book, their sympathies for the killer will be fully engaged. Riffing on the tropes of crime fiction (the country house murder, the locked room mystery) and imbued with the feel of golden age SF, this is another bravura performance from Roberts. Whatever games he plays with the genre, whatever questions he asks of the reader, Roberts never loses sight of the need to entertain. Filled with wonderfully gruesome moments and liberal doses of sly humor, this novel is built around three gripping HowDunnits that challenge notions of crime, punishment, power, and freedom.

In the grand tradition of the blockbusting parody Bored of the Ring , comes this uproarious literary spoof of Tolkien's other (much shorter) masterwork, The Hobbit . It has already sold 80,000 copies in hardcover--and is still going strong. Tolkien was never this funny--and that's why we need this delicious parody. It follows the adventures of Bingo "Sac" Grabbings, a rather unremarkable Soddit of Upper Middle Earth. He ventures forth (despite very sore and swollen feet indeed!) alongside Gandef the Coughing Wizard and a band of psoriasis-scratching, who-knows-what's-in-the-pipe-puffing dwarves, as they set out to relieve the haughty dragon Smug of his ill-gotten gold. With the blockbuster box office success of the Lord of the Rings films, and the continued interest in the original books, the time is ripe for someone to poke a bit of good-natured fun at the phenomenon that is The Hobbit , and this hilarious satire succeeds brilliantly. Written by an acknowledged expert on all things Tolkien, it both salutes and skewers the classic novel, reinventing the tale of a courageous little being whose amazing persistence--and more than a bit of Soddit luck--belies his diminutive stature.

Adam Roberts turns his attention to answering the Fermi Paradox with a taut and claustrophobic tale that echoes John Carpenters' The Thing. Two men while away the days in an Antarctic research station. Tensions between them build as they argue over a love-letter one of them has received. One is practical and open. The other surly, superior and obsessed with reading one book - by the philosopher Kant. As a storm brews and they lose contact with the outside world they debate Kant, reality and the emptiness of the universe. The come to hate each other, and they learn that they are not alone.

A lampoon of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code

In a world where we have been genetically engineered so that we can photosynthesise sunlight with our hair hunger is a thing of the past, food an indulgence. The poor grow their hair, the rich affect baldness and flaunt their wealth by still eating. But other hungers remain... The young daughter of an affluent New York family is kidnapped. The ransom demands are refused. Years later a young women arrives at the family home claiming to be their long lost daughter. She has changed so much, she has lived on light, can anyone be sure that she has come home? Adam Roberts' new novel is yet another amazing melding of startling ideas and beautiful prose. Set in a New York of the future it nevertheless has echoes of a Fitzgeraldesque affluence and art-deco style. It charts his further progress as one of the most important writers of his generation.

Gathered together for the first time from a major publisher are the short stories of Adam Roberts. Unique twisted visions from the edges and the centre of the SF genres. Stories that carry Adam Roberts' trademark elegance of style and restless enquiry of the genre he loves so much. Acclaimed stories, some that have appeared in magazines, some in anthologies, some appearing for the first time. Stories to make you think, to make you laugh, to make you wonder, to make you uneasy. Stories that ask questions, stories that sow mysteries. But always stories that entertain. Contents: 1 • Preface (Adam Robots: Short Stories) • (2013) • essay by Adam Roberts 3 • Adam Robots • (2009) • shortstory by Adam Roberts 14 • Shall I Tell You the Problem with Time Travel? • (2011) • shortstory by Adam Roberts 32 • A Prison Term of a Thousand Years • (2008) • shortstory by Adam Roberts 38 • Godbombing • shortstory by Adam Roberts 44 • Thrownness • (2011) • novelette by Adam Roberts 75 • The Mary Anna • (2010) • shortstory by Adam Roberts 83 • The Chrome Chromosome • (2009) • shortstory by Adam Roberts 89 • The Time Telephone • (2002) • shortstory by Adam Roberts 98 • Review: Thomas Hodgkin, Denis Bayle: a Life • shortstory by Adam Roberts 107 • S-Bomb • (2008) • shortstory by Adam Roberts 125 • Dantean • (2004) • shortstory by Adam Roberts (variant of Dantesque) 134 • Remorse® • (2007) • shortstory by Adam Roberts 139 • The World of the Wars • shortstory by Adam Roberts 144 • Woodpunk • (2009) • shortstory by Adam Roberts 156 • The Cow • (2010) • shortstory by Adam Roberts 157 • The Imperial Army • (2002) • novelette by Adam Roberts 206 • And Tomorrow and • (2006) • shortstory by Adam Roberts 222 • The Man of the Strong Arm • (2008) • shortstory by Adam Roberts 246 • Wonder: A Story in Two • (2007) • shortstory by Adam Roberts 263 • Pied • shortstory by Adam Roberts 273 • Constellations • novelette by Adam Roberts (variant of The Order of Things 2005) 294 • The Woman Who Bore Death • shortstory by Adam Roberts 309 • Anticopernicus • (2010) • novelette by Adam Roberts 346 • Me:topia • novelette by Adam Roberts (variant of Me•Topia 2006)

A man is about to kill a cow. He discusses life and death and his right to kill with the compliant animal. He begins to suspect he may be about to commit murder. But kills anyway... It began when the animal right movement injected domestic animals with artificial intelligences in bid to have the status of animals realigned by the international court of human rights. But what is an animal that can talk? Where does its intelligence end at its machine intelligence begin? And where might its soul reside. As we place more and more pressure on the natural world and become more and more divorced Adam Roberts' new novel posits a world where nature can talk back, and can question us and our beliefs. Roberts is an award winning author at the peak of his powers and each new novel charts an exciting new direction while maintaining a uniformly high level of literary achievement.