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4 out of 5
by
David
from
The United Kingdom | Mar 7, 2009
This is Adam Roberts’s tenth novel, which of course means there were nine before it. Nine that I haven’t read. How on Earth have I allowed this to happen? If they’re all as enjoyable as Yellow Blue Tibia, I have been missing out.
Yellow Blue Tibia is presented as the memoir of one Konstantin Skvorecky, a science fiction writer who was gathered together, along with four others, by Stalin in the aftermath of (what I know as) the Second World War. Stalin charged the writers with the task of creating a new enemy — an enemy from outer space — which the ruling party could claim to be fighting, thereby strengthening the prestige of communism. The authors come up with some outlandish nonsense about ‘radiation aliens’, and hammer out a future history — but the project is promptly cancelled, and the writers instructed never to speak of it again.
Skvorecky sees neither hide nor hair of the others until 1986, and a chance encounter with another of the group, Ivan Frenkel — who claims that the story they constructed four decades previously is now coming true, beginning with the Challenger disaster (caused by radiation aliens!!). Sounds ridiculous, of course: but then Skvorecky (who works as a translator) meets the American James Coyne, who insists something similar — and then dies in mysterious circumstances.
After various turns of the plot, we find Skvorecky racing to Chernobyl, along with Ivan Saltykov, a nuclear physicist turned taxi driver who says he has Asperger’s syndrome (though he never gets to name it in full), and ceaselessly reminds people of the fact; and Dora Norman, Coyne’s hugely overweight compatriot. And, after Skvorecky survives a grenade attack against all the odds, things start to get really strange…
My strongest abiding memory of Yellow Blue Tibia is how much of a pleasure it was to read. Though not (I would say) primarily a comedy, it is nevertheless one of the funniest books I have read in some time: witness, for example, the scene in which Skvorecky is first translating for the two Americans, and frantically trying to think of acceptable ways to ‘translate’ his colleague’s insults.
More than this, the novel also provides plenty to think about. Roberts bases his fiction on a paradox about UFOs: there are so many reports of them, yet such a paucity of evidence for their concrete existence. The author’s fictional solution to this paradox is fascinating to think about; I particularly like the wayhe takes some well-worn ideas and spins something fresh out of them.
Roberts also effectively plays tricks with the narrative. Skvorecky undergoes a pre-frontal lobotomy during the novel, which subtly alters his narrative voice, and disrupts his sense of the passage of time, something Roberts exploits to extend the mystery of his plot. Skvorecky stresses at the beginning that ‘[t:]here are no secrets in this book’, but of course there are — they’re just hidden from the narrator as much as from the reader (reading back the paragraph I’ve quoted from, I also discovered several subtle hints that seem innocuous at first, but change in meaning once you’ve read the book).
Another strand of Yellow Blue Tibia concerns parallels between science fiction and communism; but lacunae in my knowledge of history and politics prevent me from really getting to grips with it. A further strand that I did appreciate, though, was the love story. It might seem unexpected to find such an element in this novel, but its title refers to a phonetic way of saying, ‘I love you’ in Russian — and it is indeed central to the story.
One recurring feature of Yellow Blue Tibia is that a character may say that something can be in one state or another (one could go somewhere accompanied or alone, for example), but that there could (and, in some instances, could not) be a third option. Well, I finished the book with a big smile on my face. Or it could be that I finished it with my imagination fizzing over at the possibilities Roberts put forward. Then again, it was probably both.
1 people found this review helpful
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4 out of 5
by
Tim
from
Kent & London, E2, The United Kingdom | Aug 3, 2010
This is not so much a science fiction book (the sci fi is crammed into the last thirty or so pages but I refuse to do a spoiler here) as a book about science fiction - the old Soviet science fiction tradition.
This Soviet tradition followed a different trajectory from that of the West with Zamyatin, Jules Verne and H.G. Wells as its masters. Its most well known writers outside the 'East; are probably Mikhail Bulgakov and the Strugatsky Brothers ('Roadside Picnic') to whom might be added the Polish writer Stanislas Lem ('Solaris'). There is plenty of good material on this on Wikipedia.
The book does not entirely convince as an evocation of Soviet life. It comes across, despite some very fine characterisation, and well researched period detail, as a very Western interpretation of local reality. Occasionally, we see ideas that could only have come from the contemporary West slip in, to be articulated by mildly stereotyped Russians. There is one scene that is pure X-Files - I mean 'pure', a nice lift of a key theme: see if you can identify it.
Nevertheless, the basic thesis is intriguing and well played. A group of science fiction writers are commissioned to write an alien invasion scenario by Stalin (mimicking a similar trope from cold war conspiracy theory surrounding Western UFOs). The story then jumps into the era of sclerosis and perestroika as the events postulated then become reality 'now'. To tell more would be to ruin the tale ...
What we can say is that Roberts is writing a book about the social construction of reality and there are some insights around pages 275 to 290 (in this edition) that show a mood of the moment that we have seen elsewhere - to say more would ruin the story.
The book is well written (very occasionally, we might do with more 'pace'), very entertaining and recommended. The end might boggle the mind a bit after what went before but that's what science fiction writers are supposed to do for us.
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4 out of 5
by
Jo
from
Belgium | May 25, 2009
What pleasant surprise ! '86 was one of those years in my life that saw major changes and Chernobyl in some odd ways became one of those turning-point moments which assumed more and more convoluted and throuroughly over-determined significance as life went on. To come across a novel which does not shy away from playing with exaclty those issues is almost redeeming in a way. Not of course that I ever suspected mysterious radiation aliens to plot an attack on planet earth following a script provided / inspired by or in Soviet Socialist Republic Science Fiction and or propaganda writers. Popular historical parallels are drawn; 'Now that the Great Patriotic war is over we need to create new enemies' neatly transmogrifies into 'Now that the cold war is over we need to create new enemies' and the whole story line is accompanied by a beautiful sub-plot of one man's systematic dialectical self-loathing slowly turning into grudging self-respect and love.
Much more likeable than many of Adam Roberts' previous books and very enjoyable indeed.
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5 out of 5
by
DC
from
Glasgow, The United Kingdom | Sep 8, 2009
This is a very difficult book to describe (without, at least, revealing much too much of how the story unfolds). The bare details of the plot revealed on the covers are that that this is "Konstantin Skvorecky's memoir of the alien invasion of 1986", and that in the immediate aftermath of the Great Patriotic War Stalin gathered together a group of Soviet SF writers and instructed them to concoct the story of an alien invasion threat, a foe against which the Soviet people could unite once the next foe (America) had been dealt with — say, after five years or so. They do their job, but then are suddenly told that their work is finished, and they are never to speak of it again. Then, in 1986, it appears that their alien invasion scenario is coming true.
That's the basics. What it doesn't hint at is the engaging wit of the book, which could be classed as a satirical comedy on life in the Soviet Union (two people on the street is just two people, but three: that's a queue), as well as being a gripping adventure, a love story, and perhaps — this is not something you can be sure about either way until the end of the book — SF. It does not overlook the central contradiction of the UFO claims: millions claim to have seen them, but it is impossible to demonstrate their existence: they obviously don't exist, as Skvorecky states in the book. This is one of those books where a great part of the pleasure in reading it is the way it is written (for a book written by an English author, it is completely convincing as being told by a Russian character: that's very rare).
There is only one real gripe with the book. At one point, the tibia is referred to as one of the arm bones, which it of course isn't. Granted, this is Skvorecky talking, and Skvorecky could be wrong — but an educated man who knows it is a bone not knowing where one of the largest bones in the body is...? Yes, that's a trivial complaint, really: it's not as though the tibia is important. It says something that that is the only thing wrong I found with the book. I was concerned that the end would be a let-down. It was not.
I am definitely going to read this again.
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5 out of 5
by
Liviu
from
White Plains, NY | Feb 19, 2009
Excellent book; darkly funny, superb narrative and ending. It instantly became a top 5 sf for 09 and a co-Adam Roberts favorite alongside Stone.
Some quotes from the first pages that take place in 1945 in a dacha near Moscow where Stalin himself commissions some Russian sf writers to concoct an alien invasion scenario will give you the flavor; the rest of the novel takes place in Moscow and Kiev of 1986 and it's just brilliant darkly funny modern sf
" 'A fine story', said Asterinov ....
'Six months in prison, that tale,' said Sergei
'Was it the witch?', I asked 'I never know where the Party stands on issues of the supernatural...'
.....
'It was, - understand, I do not know for sure, I heard this at second or third hand - it was the walk through the forest. Apparently I was just too convincing in the representation of a poor man's yearning for money...' "
" 'You're talking nonsense Sergei', said Ivan Frankel "Ants live in big collective groups. Ants are communists. We need a solitary insect - a spider'
'Spiders are not insects' retorted Sergei "
"A realist writer might break his protagonist's leg, or kill his fiancee; but a science fiction writer will immolate whole planets, and whilst doing so he will be more concerned with the placement of commas than the screams of the dying"