In his first novel, Salt ( 2000), two groups of human migrants settle on the eponymous planet, whose radical and demanding simplicity – it is salt-covered – make it into a sounding board (see Islands) against which the dire incompatibilities of the two societies become drastically clear: one of them being a patriarchic hierarchy and the other anarchical. Roberts has written no series, each novel tending to present a new, self-contained Thought Experiment whose expression exhausts the frame of the venue, leaving little room for sequels.

Roberts, several of whose novels are clearly meant as Satire, seems relatively indifferent to consequences and he displays, moreover, little of the hard sf writers' typical bias in favour of non-governmental protagonists whose Inventions or applications of new Technologies fix the planet. Though his novels reiterate and intensify many of the central topoi of twentieth century Hard SF, they do so within contexts that seem estranged from the paradigm hard-sf focus on worlds extrapolated directly from our own, tales whose outcomes are conspicuously consequential for Homo sapiens. The reader versed in the history of twentieth-century sf may find that the Thought Experiments that shape most of Roberts's novels are strangely detached, that the worlds described are remarkably remote. In a sense, however, the same may be said of his fiction, with the exception of the Parodies, listed separately below, which are clearly intended for those familiar with his targets. He has perhaps become better known for his fiction than for his alertly told, strongly argued criticism, as most of his Critical and Historical Works About SF have been published by academic presses for a specialized readership. (1965- ) UK academic (currently Professor of Nineteenth-Century Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London) and author who began his two intertwined writing careers – as an sf novelist and as a critic – in the same year with the release of his first work of fiction, Salt ( 2000), and his first work of scholarship, Science Fiction ( 2000 rev vt Science Fiction: Second Edition 2006).

The this by adam roberts