Swiftly - Hardcover

Roberts, Adam

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1892389711 ISBN 13: 9781892389718

Publisher: Night Shade, 2005

Synopsis

From the Land of Lilliput to Jupiter Magnified In 2000, British author Adam Roberts published his first SF novel, Salt, to wide acclaim. Locus magazine described Salt as "... in the same vein as Frank Herbert's Dune." And in 2001, the beginning of a new millennium, Salt was named a finalist for the prestigious Arthur C. Clarke Award for best science fiction novel of the year. Now, five SF novels later, Adam Roberts presents us with Swiftly, his first short fiction collection. These twelve handpicked tales - eight published here for the first time - showcase Roberts's authorial expertise at interweaving world-building with style, tone, and image. Roberts, whom award-winning author Jon Courtenay Grimwood calls "the king of high concept," is the rare hard-sf writer who emphasizes character over construct. In "Swiftly," the title story to this collection, mid-1840s Europe is at the height of its manufacturing prowess, due in large part to the finely honed skills of the enslaved Lilliputian-like people. But the French Army threatens the English shore, and one British citizen dares to assist the French in order to free the enslaved.

Skyhorse Publishing, under our Night Shade and Talos imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of titles for readers interested in science fiction (space opera, time travel, hard SF, alien invasion, near-future dystopia), fantasy (grimdark, sword and sorcery, contemporary urban fantasy, steampunk, alternative history), and horror (zombies, vampires, and the occult and supernatural), and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller, a national bestseller, or a Hugo or Nebula award-winner, we are committed to publishing quality books from a diverse group of authors.

About this title

About the Author

From the Land of Lilliput to Jupiter Magnified In 2000, British author Adam Roberts published his first SF novel, Salt, to wide acclaim.

Reviews

The dozen stories in this impressive collection from British author Roberts (Salt), his first U.S. publication, form a natural progression. The style echoes classic British speculative fiction with its focus on individual characters, each meticulously drawn and authentically voiced (particularly the non-Brits). They all steal the spotlight from fantastical surroundings, from the woman in "Dantesque," who has become bored with heaven and begins to look for a way back to hell, to the man in "The Time Telephone," who is so caught up in thoughts of his ordinary life that he dismisses a cry for help from the future. These simple, honest tales showcase heroism, forgiveness and understanding, while not shirking from stark portrayals of error, cowardice and clumsiness. Truth may be stranger than fiction, but this fiction feels strange because it's determined to tell the truth. Unfortunately, it's the same truth every time—in essence, that people remain people no matter where they are—leaving one feeling a bit sledgehammered on reaching the otherwise satisfying conclusion. American readers may be caught unprepared by Roberts's departure from the plot-driven norm, but perhaps this change of pace is just what they didn't know they were looking for.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The title story in Roberts' first collection of short stories, which is also the British novelist and Arthur C. Clarke Award nominee's first original publication in the U.S., brings Jonathan Swift's outlandish lands of Lilliput and Brobdingnag to life again, with an alternative-history twist, for England has exploited Dr. Gulliver's discovery by enslaving the diminutive Lilliputians and nearly exterminating the giant Brobdingnagians. In "The Time Telephone," Roberts imagines a novel breakthrough in telephone technology whereby one can communicate with one's past self, with potentially disastrous results. "Jupiter Magnified" explores what happens when gigantic Jupiter suddenly fills Earth's sky due to an unexplained atmospheric phenomenon; the unexpected event produces equally unexpected, even comical, effects on humans' views of the world and one another. May the display of boldly original ideas Roberts makes in these stories attract the larger audience he well deserves. Carl Hays
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Night Shade
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1892389711
• ISBN 13: 9781892389718
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256