Yellow Blue Tibia by Adam Roberts (Gollancz)
Published: 22 Jan 2009
Russia, 1946, the Nazis recently defeated. Stalin gathers half a dozen of the top Soviet science fiction authors in a dacha in the countryside somewhere. Convinced that the defeat of America is only a few years away, and equally convinced that the Soviet Union needs a massive external threat to hold it together, to give it purpose and direction, he tells the writers: ‘I want you to concoct a story about aliens poised to invade earth … I want it to be massively detailed, and completely believable. If you need props and evidence to back it up, then we can create them. But when America is defeated, your story must be so convincing that the whole population of Soviet Russia believes in it–the population of the whole world!’ The little group of writers gets down to the task and spends months working on it. But then new orders come from Moscow: they are told to drop the project; Stalin has changed his mind; forget everything about it. So they do. They get on with their lives in their various ways; some of them survive the remainder of Stalin’s rule, the changes of the 50s and 60s. And then, in the aftermath of Chernobyl, the survivors gather again, because something strange has started to happen. The story they invented in 1946 is starting to come true …
Comment:
I have a bit of a mixed opinion when it comes to Adam Roberts. Stone is one of my favourite ever sci-fi novels. It’s all told by a prisoner to a stone, hence the title. Then I’ve tried Salt and On and was unable to recapture the feeling that I had for Stone. But as with all authors that have you’ve read something you’ve loved by you’re always looking to recapture that feeling.
I’m not sure I’m going to find it with Yellow Blue Tibia. It’s had some great reviews. But it has Nazi’s in it and I’m not overly keen on WWII stories I’m not too keen on Modern War stories in general but then this one .Oh, it’s Communists and it’s post war and does have the basis of an alien invasion… so I’m very tempted.
Links:
Simon A @ Bookgeeks.co.uk – review
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