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Contemporary Arthurian Fantasy
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The Death of Sir Martin Malprelate By Adam Roberts Review
Posted: 1781705014 |
Mark Webster
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The Death of Sir Martin Malprelate by Adam Roberts tells the story of the death of railway magnate Martin Malprelate, or more accurately, the investigation into said death. A Scrooge-like figure with hidden depths, struck down in a 19th century Camden before seeing his dream of a train line running into London from Middlemarch reach its conclusion. A man with many enemies, accounts of his death range from the mundane to the fantastical. Who will have what it takes to get to the bottom of the mystery?If you were to tell me that Adam Roberts was a pseudonym used by several authors, I would believe you. The breadth of the styles in his writing is astonishing, from Victorian detectives to sci-fi stretching the farthest reaches of time, you never know what you're going to get.
The Death of Sir Martin Malprelate is a warm bath of beautiful prose from start to finish... the joy is in the journey.
There are certain books that change the way you think that take a while to fade once you've put the book down. Even now, having just finished the novel, I'm having to be conscious not to be too florid with my language, as The Death of Sir Martin Malprelate is a warm bath of beautiful prose from start to finish.
"Children walked lethargic towards their education, winding their inward springs as they did so ready to release them on the racing, gamboling journey home at the end of the school day."
Set in an amalgamation of the worlds of Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Arthur Conan Doyle, and their peers, the immersion into London of the 1840s is complete.
The story itself moves along at a pleasant pace, no mean feat given the complexity of the writing, which rather than feeling like wading through mud, forces you to slow down and fully absorb the story as it is told to you. Which is just as well, really, as if you step back and look at it as a whole, the story itself is reasonably lightweight.
With The Death of Martin Malprelate the joy is in the journey, and as such is impossible to fault.
A breathtaking 5 stars.
The Death of Sir Martin Malprelate by Adam Roberts is published by Datura Books.
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The Death of Sir Martin Malprelate
A gothic tale of murder and corruption set in 1840s Victorian London, taking inspiration from our most famous 19th century writers.
The 1840s.
Railway Baron Sir Martin Malprelate has been laying waste to the warren of Camden; buying up houses and clearing streets for his new railwa...
The 1840s.
Railway Baron Sir Martin Malprelate has been laying waste to the warren of Camden; buying up houses and clearing streets for his new railwa...
Watkins Media Limited
Adam Roberts
also By This Author
Science Fiction
'Science Fiction' offers a critical account of the phenomenon of science fiction, illustrating the critical terminology and following the contours of its continuing history. The impact of technological advances on the genre is discussed.
Robert Browning revisited
Robert Browning Revisited is an accessible and up-to-date analysis of Browning's entire poetic career. Presenting a detailed account of Browning's crucial engagement with the Romantics, especially Percy Bysshe Shelley, and his poetic development through The Ring and the Book, author Adam Roberts attempts to make good the critical neglect suffered by the work produced after 1869, giving fresh, innovative readings of the late lyrics, dramatic monologues, and long narrative poems.
Roberts writes that "only with a complete sense of Browning's whole career can a student fully come to terms with the enormity of his contribution to modern literature.".
This comprehensive study is arranged chronologically, covering the three main creative periods of Browning's life: the early phase (1833-1845), a middle phase of married life (1846-1861), and the final phase of tremendous productivity (1861-1889).
Framing his analyses generally around the dialectic between Romantic subjectivity and Victorian objectivity that drives Browning's strongest work, Roberts bolsters his critical arguments with relevant biographical and historical information, presents new readings while honoring others that have stood the test of time, and provides a select bibliography giving a richly detailed survey of the history of Browning criticism.
This introductory monograph gives the general reader and student alike a well-balanced examination of one of the most highly acclaimed Victorian poets.
Civil resistance and power politics
the experience of non-violent action from Gandhi to the present
"This book addresses the complex interrelationship between civil resistance and other dimensions of power. It explores the question of whether civil resistance should be seen as potentially replacing violence completely, or as a phenomenon that operates in conjunction with, and modification of, power politics. It looks at cases where campaignswere repressed, including China in 1989 and Burma in 2007. It notes that in several instances, including Northern Ireland, Kosovo, and Georgia, civil resistance movements were followed by the outbreak of armed conflict. It also includes a chapter with new material from Russian archives showing how the Soviet leadership responded to civil resistance, and a comprehensive bibliographical essay."--Jacket.
I Am Scrooge
A Zombie Story for Christmas
Marley was dead. Again.
The legendary Ebenezeer Scrooge sits in his house counting money. The boards that he has nailed up over the doors and the windows shudder and shake under the blows from the endless zombie hordes that crowd the streets hungering for his flesh and his miserly braaaaiiiiiinns!
Just how did the happiest day of the year slip into a welter of blood, innards and shambling, ravenous undead on the snowy streets of old London town?
Will the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future be able to stop the world from drowning under a top-hatted and crinolined zombie horde?
Was Tiny Tim's illness something infinitely more sinister than mere rickets and consumption? Can Scrooge be persuaded to go back to his evil ways, travel back to Christmas past and destroy the brain stem of the tiny, irritatingly cheery Patient Zero?
It's the Dickensian Zombie Apocalypse - God Bless us, one and all!
al- Iḥtilāl al-Amrīkī lil-ʻIrāq
ṣūwaruh wa-maṣāʾiruh
Iraq War, 2003-; United States; foreign relations; Iraq.
Yellow Blue Tibia
A group of Soviet authors are shocked to watch the science fiction story they wrote 40 years ago slowly come to life, beginning with Chernobyl.
By Light Alone
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.
Twenty Trillion Leagues Under The Sea
"Adam Roberts revisits Jules Verne's classic novel in a collaboration with the illustrator behind a recent ... edition of The Hunting of the Snark. It is 1958 and France's first nuclear submarine, Plongeur, leaves port for the first of its sea trials. On board, gathered together for the first time, are one of the Navy's most experienced captains and a tiny skeleton crew of sailors, engineers, and scientists. The Plongeur makes her first dive and goes down, and down and down. Out of control, the submarine plummets to a depth where the pressure will crush her hull, killing everyone on board, and beyond"--
The Riddles Of The Hobbit
Riddles have lost none of their power over us: we are as fascinated by mysteries, from sudoko to whodunnits, from jokes to philosophical conundrums. The Hobbit is a book threaded through with riddles; most obviously in its central Riddles in the Dark chapter, but everywhere else too. What is a burrahobbit? How many versions of the Hobbit are there? What is the buried secret in the nine riddles Bilbo and Gollum swap between one another? What are Ents? Dragons? Wizards? What is the magic of the magic ring? All these questions, and more, are answered in this book, the first critical engagement with Tolkien's great novel to take the riddle seriously as a key structuring principle of the novel. Riddles are more than a diverting pastime; they are expressive and beguiling rebuses that touch on larger mysteries, powerful questions and paradoxes also embodied in the Catholicism that informed so much of Tolkien's imaginative life. Ringing widely across Tolkien's creative life, this book explores the importance of riddles to the Anglo Saxon and Norse cultures that inspired him, and discusses scores of riddles offering more than one answer for each. This is a critical study of the playful aspect of a great writer that takes his playfulness seriously; it explores and embodies ingenuity; and comes to some original and startling new conclusions.
Jack Glass
Golden Age SF meets Golden Age Crime from the author of Swiftly, New Model Army, and Yellow Blue Tibia?an innovative literary voice working at the height of his powers Jack Glass is the murderer?we know this from the start. Yet as this extraordinary novel tells the story of three murders committed by Glass, the reader will be surprised to find out that it was Glass who was the killer and how he did it. And by the end of the book our sympathies for the killer are 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. This novel has some wonderfully gruesome moments, is built around three gripping HowDunnits, and comes with liberal doses of sly humor. Roberts invites us to have fun and tricks us into thinking about both crime and SF via a beautifully structured novel set in a society whose depiction challenges notions of crime, punishment, power, and freedom.
United Nations, divided world
This book, highly praised as an authoritative assessment of the United Nations and its place in international relations, brings together distinguished academics and senior UN officials in a clear and penetrating examination of how the UN has developed since 1945. It examines the UN's various roles in addressing long-standing and difficult problems in the relations of states in such fields as international security, human rights, international law, and economic development.
This extensively revised, updated, and expanded edition takes into account a wide range of developments in a world which remains very much divided: the rapid expansion of UN peacekeeping and election-monitoring activities; the consequences of the collapse of communist rule in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union; the 1990-1 Gulf conflict and its aftermath; attempts at settlement of many regional conflicts; UN involvements in fractured societies, including Cambodia, Somalia, and former Yugoslavia; and the increased focus on the political and resource limits of the UN's capabilities.
Soweto inside out
stories about Africa's famous township
viii, 239 p. : 20 cm
Adam Robots: Short Stories
"Gathered together for the first time, this collection of 24 short stories by the author of" Yellow Blue Tibia" includes new works Unique twisted visions from the edges and the center of science fiction, these are stories that carry Adam Roberts trademark elegance of style and restless enquiry of the genre he loves so much. Some of them have appeared in magazines, some in anthologies, and some are appearing for the first time. These are stories to make readers think, laugh, and wonder as well as to make readers uneasy. These tales ask questions, sow mysteries, and always entertain" -- Provided by the publisher.
Get started in writing science fiction and fantasy
Roberts explains how science fiction and fantasy can vary from standard fiction, and introduces you to the seven key science fiction and fantasy tropes. He shows you how to access and develop stories that will captivate readers, and help you generate original ideas.
Superfast primetime ultimate nation
"Who can foretell India's future? Mr. Joshi is a fortune teller in a slum in south Delhi who uses a soothsaying green parrot to make predictions. When Adam Roberts visited him in 2012, Joshi's parrot declared that India was destined to become the most powerful nation under Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The parrot also foretold that India would win the soccer World Cup. Parrots may not be the preeminent political authority, but many Indians were just as confident. So Adam Roberts spent five years traveling the length and breadth of the country from Kerala to the Himalayas, Bengal to Gujarat. As he encountered the power brokers, gate keepers, and elaborate social dynamics of the world's largest democracy, he asked if--and how--India can become a truly great economic power, more influential abroad and stable at home. He met prime ministers, multimillionaires, traveling salesmen, pilgrims, eco-warriors, farmers, and tech innovators, each wrestling with the trials posed by the world's most conspicuously nearly great power. He experienced an immense country that, despite daunting challenges, is entering the most optimistic period in its modern history. Through vivid storytelling and insight, Superfast Primetime Ultimate Nation examines the problems and promises of fast-growing India to reveal how it might reach its full potential and become, as Mr. Joshi's parrot predicted, a truly powerful nation"--
Civil Resistance in the Arab Spring
Triumphs and Disasters
Civil resistance, especially in the form of massive peaceful demonstrations, was at the heart of the Arab Spring-the chain of events in the Middle East and North Africa that erupted in December 2010. It won some notable victories: popular movements helped to bring about the fall of authoritarian governments in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen. Yet these apparent triumphs of non-violent action were followed by disasters-wars in Syria, anarchy in Libya and Yemen, reversion to authoritarian rule in Egypt, and counter-revolution backed by external intervention in Bahrain. Looming over these events was the enduring divide between the Sunni and Shi'a branches of Islam. Why did so much go wrong? Was the problem the methods, leadership and aims of the popular movements, or the conditions of their societies? In this book, experts on these countries, and on the techniques of civil resistance, set the events in their historical, social and political contexts. They describe how governments and outside powers-including the US and EU-responded, how Arab monarchies in Jordan and Morocco undertook to introduce reforms to avert revolution, and why the Arab Spring failed to spark a Palestinian one.
Paris
Explore behind the over-familiar facade of the world's most visited city. In this book, Paris-based writer and Invisible Paris blogger, Adam Roberts, provides a concise and informative portrait of the iconic metropolis. He uncovers the story of how a provincial backwater rose up to become the richest and most powerful city in Europe, and a world leader in fashion, the arts, and gastronomy - and why it continues to dazzle today. In short, illustrated chapters, Roberts casts his eye over 2,000 years of turbulent history, from a time when roaming Celtic tribes first set up camp to the present day: he covers the rise and fall of royalty, uprisings and invasions, destruction and magnificent redevelopments, and he explores the city's contributions to the world, including gothic architecture, city planning, mammoth museums and urban art. A section on the city today - perceptive essays and observations on topics ranging from Parisian Sundays to the inside workings of a historic hotel - reveal the twenty-first-century city of Paris.
H G Wells
This is the first new complete literary biography of H G Wells for thirty years, and the first to encompass his entire career as a writer, from the science fiction of the 1890s through his fiction and non-fiction writing all the way up to his last publication in 1946. Adam Roberts provides a comprehensive reassessment of Wells' importance as a novelist, short-story writer, a theorist of social prophecy and utopia, journalist and commentator, offering a nuanced portrait of the man who coined the phrases 'atom bomb', 'League of Nations' 'the war to end war' and 'time machine', who wrote the world's first comprehensive global history and invented the idea of the tank. In these twenty-six chapters, Roberts covers the entirety of Wells' life and discusses every book and short story he produced, delivering a complete vision of this enduring figure.
Landor's Cleanness
Cleanness, both in the sense of a neoclassical stylistic purity and of an individual moral and political probity, was centrally important to Walter Savage Landor's writing, both in his prose and poetry. At the same time, this commitment to purity was contaminated in a variety of eloquent and complicating uncleannesses: his own fiery temper and frequent rages; his sometimes scurrilous and sexually explicit Latin poems; and the innovative, compacted, proto-Modernist verse style of works such as his epic Gebir, as stylistically-tangled and potent a poem ever produced in the Romantic era. The present study, the first comprehensive study of Landor's writing for nearly half a century, addresses the whole of Landor's prodigious output over the seven decades of his writing life, in verse, prose, and drama, in English and Latin: from the brief lyrics by which (if at all) he is remembered today up to his idylls, tragedies, and epics; from his pamphlets and essays to historical novels like Pericles and Aspasia and the textual colossus of the Imaginary Conversations. 'Cleanness' becomes the organising principle by which this heterogeneous and multivocal body of work is read. At once a survey of Landor's output and life, a critically engaged reading of his work and an interrogation of the principles of poetry itself, Landor's Cleanness seeks to reconfigure the map of Romantic and Victorian writing, and move Landor's reputation at least some way in the direction of the eminence he once enjoyed: as a major writer of his time, both intensely characteristic of the nineteenth-century and startlingly relevant to the twenty-first.--Provided by publisher.
Publishing the Science Fiction Canon
Science fiction was being written throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but it underwent a rapid expansion of cultural dissemination and popularity at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century. This Element explores the ways this explosion in interest in 'scientific romance', that informs today's global science fiction culture, manifests the specific historical exigences of the revolutions in publishing and distribution technology. H.G. Wells, Jules Verne and other science fiction writers embody in their art the advances in material culture that mobilize, reproduce and distribute with new rapidity, determining the cultural logic of twentieth-century science fiction in the process.
Black Prince
"The Black Prince is a brutal historical tale of chivalry, religious belief, obsession, siege and bloody warfare. From disorientating depictions of medieval battles to court intrigues and betrayals, the campaigns of Edward III, the Black Prince, are brought to vivid life. This rambunctious novel, based on a completed screenplay and the notes for an unfinished novel by Anthony Burgess and approved by the Burgess estate, showcases Adam Roberts in complete control of the novel as a way of making us look at history with fresh eyes, all while staying true to the linguistic pyrotechnics and narrative verve of Burgess's best work."--Dust jacket flap
La "der" des étoiles
Un roman parodique de la célèbre série "La guerre des étoiles."
Mount Purgatory
"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."--Publisher description.
Bête
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 rights 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?
Bingo le Posstit
Bingo le Posstit vit confortablement jusqu'au jour où le magicien Glandalf et une compagnie de nains gallois l'entraînent vers des aventures rocambolesques. Ils ont pour projet de dérober un trésor gardé par Snob, un dragon.
Wodwo Vergil
Adam Roberts' incomparable versions of Vergil's Eclogues are wise, witty, reeking, rollicking, knurled, greenly flourishing, leaking and shimmering with fusions and fissions. These zephyrs have the guts to zigzag when requisite to give it to us straight.--amazon.com.
The This
The This is the new social media platform everyone is talking about. Allow it to be injected into the roof of your mouth and it will grow into your brain, allow you to connect with others without even picking up your phone. Its followers are growing. Its detractors say it is a cult. But for one journalist, hired to do a puff-piece interview with their CEO, it will change the world forever.
Adan just wants to stay at home with his smart-companion Elegy - phone, friend, confidante, sex toy. But when his mother flees to Europe and joins a cult, leaving him penniless, he has to enlist in the army. Sentient robots are invading America, but it seems Adan has a surprising ability to survive their attacks. He has a purpose, even if he doesn't know what it is.
And in the far future, war between a hivemind of Ais and the remnants of humanity is coming to its inevitable end. But one woman has developed a weapon which might change the course of the war. It's just a pity she's trapped in an inescapable prison on a hivemind ship.
Middlemarch
In Middlemarch, George Eliot draws a character passionately absorbed by abstruse allusion and obscure epigraphs. Casaubon's obsession is a cautionary tale, but Adam Roberts nonetheless sees in him an invitation to take Eliot's use of epigraphy and allusion seriously, and this book is an attempt to do just that.