Yellow Blue Tibia Book

Adam Roberts is the Tesla Model S of Science Fiction. Smart, technologically impressive and capable of 0-60 in three sentences.

When you ride with Roberts you can expect smooth prose-suspension, hair-raising action-sequence cornering and perfectly plotted cup holders for every sea... OK, OK I've pushed the car analogy too far. Suffice to say that Roberts is one of the most interesting writers working in 21st century Science Fiction, a big, prolific talent with a an imagination to match.

From his debut 2000 novel Salt to Stone, Bete and New Model Army I have been consistently amazed by Robert's work, and even his lesser books, such as On and Polystom are interesting reads in unique settings filled with memorable set pieces.

In Yellow Blue Tibia Roberts once again uses a completely different setting from his other works, this time situating the action in the Soviet Union, during the period of 1946-1986. He nails this setting, along with the portrait he creates of his compelling central character Konstantin Skvorescy.

Roberts has a knack for characters that are outside the norm, and Konstantin is true to form - he is an aged, damaged, recovered alcoholic with facial scars that he earned by getting drunk and setting his own beard alight. He is no Mary Sue (unless your dream is to become wheezy and require a breather after dragging your geriatric self up a handful of steps), but continuing a long tradition of writers creating characters that are themselves writers (write what you know...) Konstantin is a former Science Fiction author, a career that see him drawn into events that imperil both the USSR and the wider world.

In 1946 Konstantin and a group of war-weary Soviet science fiction writers are summoned to a dacha (a Russian holiday home) in the countryside by sinister government men. When they arrive they are met by Stalin himself, who of course terrifies the assembled writers (as he would any normal person). Stalin informs them that with the defeat of Germany, the USSR will need a new foe that the people can be rallied to fight. The United States will not be sufficient in this role, so the assembled writers must invent a new enemy, and that enemy is to be extraterrestrial.

Konstantin and the others toil away at this task, spinning a tale of energy based aliens made of radiation, who plan to invade earth and begin by destroying the Ukraine. They complete a rich and convincing story, but upon its completion they are abruptly sent home, warned never to speak of the project again on pain of death.

Nearly forty years later, Konstantin, aged and wrecked by years of alcoholism and poverty, stumbles across Jan Frenkel, one of his fellow writers from the dacha. Frenkel tells him something that sets off a life-threatening chain of events- the story they wrote together was somehow more than a fiction, and the cataclysmic events they wrote about are coming true.

A tired and defeated ironist, Konstantin is a committed nonbeliever in the fantastic and extraterrestrial, but the events he becomes central to challenge these beliefs, and everything he knows about the world.

There are slight shades of The Thing Itself in the narrative of Yellow Blue Tibia, in its treatment of the visible and invisible forces around us, and the burnt out nature of that book's facially scarred protagonist, but the similarities end there.

This is a ripping yarn, a real page-turner and yet another standout book in Roberts ever-growing body of work.

I rate Roberts as one of the must-read SF authors of this century, a constantly inventive, always surprising writer prepared to take risks and write concept based novels that don't sacrifice story on the altar of ideas.

Read him. Buy his books. They deserve a proud position on your shelves.