Yellow Blue Tibia: A Novel

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Lieku 7 no 10 ballēm. Lasīt var jo sižeta centrālā ideja ir patiesi unikāla. Taču lasot jāatceras, šī grāmata ir rietumu cilvēka mitoloģiskais skatījums uz PSRS. Autors nav izdarījis neko, lai pietuvinātus stāstu realitātei, un par to viņam liels fuj. Slinkums nav attaisnojums, tā ir lasītāja uzskatīšana par pamuļķi.

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. I also didn't manage to connect with the characters on any level at all - I laughed at their antics, but I ended up caring very little as to the resolution of their story. This particular quote, I believe, sums up the novel perfectly: XL Tangent: The British are eating more sandwiches, according to the British Sandwich Association. Jen argues there is nothing bleaker than a British sandwich, with Sandi being really annoyed by sandwiches where the filling is just in the middle. The British Sandwich Association has an annual awards ceremony called the Sammies. In 2020, the winner of the New Sandwich Award - Hot Category was won by Deli Lites Irish Stout Pastrami. It took Frenkel a second or so to process this, and then he laughed briefly and unconvincingly. It sounded like a horse sneezing. “I see what you mean, of course,” he said, his face serious once more. “My question is ambiguous between, Do you believe UFOs are a feature of contemporary culture?— which of course they are — and Do you believe in the literal reality of UFOs? Am I right? So do you believe in the literal reality of UFOs?”And this is what I found (quality edition): I largely agree with Abigal Nussbaum's review when she writes "I found it interesting rather than likable or unlikable. Beneath its farcical surface, it seems deeply cynical about both science fiction and the revolutionary impulse." Now, farce is all well and good, and I enjoy bumbling KGB agents and autistic-spectrum cab drivers and grossly fat Americans, but these characters all seem cardboard without any particular reason for their shallowness. What is this farce in the service of? At first sight, the plot starts brilliantly but veers into the farcical. It begins just after the Second World War with Stalin bringing together a group of Russian science fiction writers to create a new menace to unify the people, a fiction that is then rapidly concealed - so far, a wonderful idea. But the menace the writers create seems to start becoming real an increasingly unlikely events. What Roberts manages to do, though, is to weave the same kind of magic as my favourite fantasy author, Gene Wolfe in his real-world set fantasies. When you read a Wolfe book, you know the whole thing may seem absurd, but somehow it will eventually all come together, even if you have to read it several times to real get into the depth of it. Similarly, Roberts manages in the end to tie together the unlikely and absurd threads in a way that makes a sense given some understandings of physics. It's a bit like my maths supervisor at Cambridge used to say: 'No one gets it immediately, but let it wash over you and eventually it all makes sense.' And it's very rewarding when it does. This is good, full-form Adam Roberts, which is to say it seems at first like a fairly conventional if unusually well-written high-concept SF/thriller story, only to take a whole bunch of unexpected turns and introduce a huge amount of ironic self-awareness and humor and general weirdness until you have absolutely no idea where Roberts is going to go next. Which is pretty exhilarating. There are points in this book that felt as truly open-ended as anything I've ever read. Roberts is positioned in this ideal middle point between genre fiction and literature, irony and straightforwardness, optimism and cynicism, etc., so that he's capable of doing pretty much anything, and in fact often seems to do just about everything, all in the span of a single book. Yellow Blue Tibia’ is a perfect example of Roberts’ virtues and faults, which are essentially the same thing. As with all Roberts’ novels it is based on an idea that, pitched as an idea to a certain kind of reader, would arouse immense enthusiasm – how could you not want to read such a book? And the actual execution is brilliant, no question of it, if ultimately not quite as brilliant as one had hoped (dreamed). It catches to the tone of Soviet comic-fantastic cynicism so well that I have actually included it on my Russian fiction shelves alongside writers like Aksyonov and Voinovich. Among many other things, this Janus-like quality allows Roberts to use some astonishingly ludicrous plot elements without breaking suspension of disbelief. Some of the plot twists in Yellow Blue Tibia are so surpassingly silly that if I told you about them right now you probably wouldn't believe me, or rather you wouldn't believe that I was endorsing a book that included them. But Roberts can actually pull this stuff off, thanks to his impeccable writerly grace and his sense of self-awareness (you could never accuse him of not knowing how silly this stuff is). Plus, he's a science fiction historian and most of the crazy concepts he uses have their origins in clever jokes or observations about the genre.

Red Player A uses the remaining powder on the yellow player B and thus, paints player B orange - the red player A now joins the orange wizard (1 point is added to the orange wizard counter) and cannot join any other wizard.You know how sometimes (all the time) American movies and books will flip the R in the title to indicate one out to HOLDUP, THISSHITISRUSSIAN, YO? Like so: я. This is, of course, maddening, no less than using a Greek lambda for an A when it is patently not an A. я is not an R, it goes: "ya." Incidentally, the cover of Yellow Blue Tibia is the single worst offender I have ever seen in this category, as it goes to bizarre lengths to make every English letter into some freakish version of a Russian one, including putting a line through a д to make an A, because I guess the Russian A--you know, A--wasn't Russian enough. I know the author isn't in charge of this, but I should have known, because the novel is the literary equivalent of this exact phenomenon. Player B cannot use his powder on player A either, he must find another player to use his remaining powder on. This can be either a blue coloured player (player B will join the green wizard) or red (player B will join the orange wizard). It cannot, however, be someone coloured orange, purple or green.

Trigger warning: references to cancer, unexplained swellings and such. I didn't have too much of a problem with it, but my anxiety is pretty well medicated right now. It helps that the narrator has very little anxiety about it for plot reasons. (Totally minor spoiler, but.) With the men Kaganovski and Rappaport in the room poor Jan Frenkel with his typically Slavic last name gets chaffed for being a Slav. Forgive me for being pedantic by the way, but what nation is “Slav” precisely? Slovak? Slovene? Yugoslav? I desire to have the country Slavia pinpointed for me on a map of Eastern Europe, and its capital named. Anyway… Everybody discourses on science fiction a lot, and then is told to forget all about it. Something like fourty years pass. Suddenly, the narrator, for all he knows the last surviving member of the Conspiracy Posse begins finding out that his plans and writings are coming true and that they may have been true even earlier than he thought! I heard so many good things about this book. I went out of my way to get it from the UK. And really, Imight as well have just added -ski to every word in this book and treated it like Communist Mad Libs for all that it had any point whatsoever, or any authenticity at all. Apparently cultural sensitivity just doesn't apply to those evil, evil Russians. Adam Roberts Lecture Podcast Now Available, The J.R.R. Tolkien Lecture on Fantasy Literature, 14 May 2014. Retrieved 20 June 2017. From coverage of the Queen Mother's funeral: "We'll now have a moment's silence for the Queen Mother", becoming: "We'll now have a moment's violence for the Queen Mother."

Padomju Savienība 1946. gads. Padomju armija nupat ir uzvarējusi Lielajā Tēvijas karā, taču cīņa ir nebeidzama, lai nestu komunismu pasaulē, armijai r dota vien neliela atelpa. Staļins plāno pāris gadus atkopties un tad iekarot pārējo pasauli. Par šī kara rezultātu nav nekādas šaubas un tādēļ ir jāgatavojas nākamajam karam, kurš spēs noturēt kopā visu cilvēci. Tādēļ kādā nomaļā valdības dāčā tiek sapulcināti vadošie padomju zinātniskās fantastikas autori. Viņiem ir jāizstrādā scenārijs, kurš ļaus saturēt pasauli kopā, jārada ārējais ienaidnieks. Šis ienaidnieks ir citplanētieši, kuru uzdevums ir iekarot pasauli, rakstniekiem ir jāizstrādā detalizēts plāns, kas simulētu citplanētiešu iebrukumu. Vēl jo vairāk, viņiem ir arī jāizskaidro, kā kosmosā nokļuvusi nekomunistiska rase. Taču projekts pēkšņi tiek pārtraukts, autori palaisti savā vaļā. Viss būtu labi, ja vien pēc četrdesmit gadiem, kāds no dzīvi palikušajiem rakstniekiem neievērotu, ka viņu izstrādātais plāns ir sācis piepildīties.

The writing is well-crafted at an extremely high intellectual level - I say this with a certain amount of pride, but it is a rare book these days that has me reaching for the dictionary to find out the meaning behind a word I have never encountered before, and Yellow Blue Tibia did this on a couple of occasions. The philosophical musings, the authentic settings that brought to life Communist Russia, the rampant humour - all of these factors made me delight in reading the book. The yellow player B who was painted orange by the red player A cannot be used/painted by other players anymore to help them join a wizard. Once you are marked with a colour, you need to find another player who is marked with a different colour and use your remaining powder on him or be used on by his remaining powder.Given the plot, the characters behaved as per their “design”, that is, in hindsight, you won’t call bull shit to any of their actions except for one instance when Saltykov decided not to jump a red signal even when a greater danger (of being shot) lurked at them.