Justina Robson | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | June 11, 1968 Leeds, England |
| Genre | Speculative fiction |
| Notable works | Quantum Gravity Series |
| Notable awards | Arthur C Clarke (nominee), BSFA (nominee), John W Campbell (nominee) |
Justina Robson (born 11 June 1968 in Leeds, England) is a science fiction author from Leeds, England.
Justina Robson was born in Leeds on 11 June 1968, [1] and studied philosophy and linguistics at the University of York. She worked in a variety of jobs – including secretary, technical writer, and fitness instructor – until becoming a full-time writer. [2]
Robson attended the Clarion West Writing Workshop and was first published in 1994 in the British small press magazine The Third Alternative, but is best known as a novelist. Her debut novel Silver Screen was shortlisted for both the Arthur C Clarke Award and the BSFA Award in 2000. Her second novel, Mappa Mundi, was also shortlisted for the Arthur C Clarke Award in 2001. It won the 2000 Amazon.co.uk Writer's Bursary. In 2004, Natural History, Robson's third novel, was shortlisted for the BSFA Award, and came second in the John W Campbell Award.
Robson's novels have been noted for sharply-drawn characters, and an intelligent and deeply thought-out approach to the tropes of the genre. She has been described as "one of the very best of the new British hard SF writers". [3]
Living Next-Door to the God of Love is a loose sequel to Natural History, inasmuch as it is set in the same universe. Keeping It Real marks the beginning of a series, the Quantum Gravity Books.
On 27 July 2008 she spoke on BBC Radio 3 about Doctor Who and various other science fiction shows for 25 minutes during the interval of the Doctor Who Prom .
Robson was announced in November 2008 as the guest of honour at the following year's Novacon.
Robson was announced in April 2010 as an international guest of honour at Swancon 36 to be held 21 to 25 April 2011 in Perth Australia.
Robson announced in November 2010 the forthcoming publication of her first story collection, Heliotrope, to be published in April 2011[ needs update ] by Australian independent publisher Ticonderoga Publications.
| Name | Published | ISBN | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Silver Screen | London: Macmillan, 1999 (paper) | ISBN 0-333-75437-9 | British Science Fiction Award nominee, 1999; [4] Arthur C. Clarke Award nominee, 2000; [5] Philip K. Dick Award nominee, 2005 [6] |
| Mappa Mundi | London: Macmillan, 2001 (paper) | ISBN 0-333-75438-7 | Arthur C. Clarke Award nominee, 2002 [7] |
| Glorious Angels | London: Gollancz, March 2015 | ISBN 978-0-575-13401-0 | British Science Fiction Award nominee, 2015 |
| The Switch | London: Gollancz, Mai 2018 | ISBN 978-0-575-13407-2 |
Natural History (Stuff Universe) series
| Name | Published | ISBN | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Natural History | London: Macmillan, 2003 | ISBN 0-333-90745-0 | British Science Fiction Award nominee, 2003; [8] Campbell Award nominee, 2004; [9] Philip K. Dick Award nominee, 2005 [6] |
| Living Next-Door to the God of Love | London: Macmillan, 2005 | ISBN 1-4050-2116-0 | British Science Fiction Award nominee, 2005; [6] Philip K. Dick Award nominee, 2006; [10] Campbell Award nominee, 2007 [11] |
Quantum Gravity series
| Name | Published | ISBN | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Keeping It Real | London: Gollancz, 2006 | ISBN 0-575-07861-8 | |
| Selling Out | London: Gollancz, 2007 | ISBN 0-575-07863-4 | |
| Going Under | London: Gollancz, 2008 | ISBN 0-575-07866-9 | |
| Chasing the Dragon | London: Gollancz, August 2009 | ISBN 978-1-59102-746-1 | |
| Down to the Bone | London: Gollancz, January 2011 | ISBN 978-0-575-08565-7 |
Transformers Cinematic Universe
| Name | Published | ISBN | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Transformers: The Covenant of Primus | 47North, December 2013 | ISBN 978-1477805992 | Historical backdrop material |
| Name | Published | ISBN | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Heliotrope | Greenwood: Ticonderoga Publications, April 2011 | ISBN 978-0-9807813-3-5 |
Based on M-Theory, the Unity lives in all 11 dimensions and watches our 4 dimensions for individual intelligences to entice into the Unity aggregate. It reads mental attitudes, desires, and intentions and can alter 4-D reality by action in the other 7 dimensions. While a mind is never truly lost translating into Unity, its identity is soon subsumed into the collective.
About translation into Unity: "Nobody has died. They are all within, every life perfectly recorded, every experience distributed." "Translated individuals remain alive in the sense they are able to continue the natural process of consciousness." "the Translated were in a state of superposition, being both themselves and alive and conscious, but also unified with all other conscious beings within Unity." [12] Physical bodies are gone from 4-D, but theoretically can be re-manifest as they were.
Stuff is Unity's manifestation in 4-D, appearing as an atomically undistinguishable mass that responds to intense thought and adapts itself to satisfy implicit need or desire. For example, Stuff appears as an instantaneous transfer FTL engine to a stranded inter-stellar ship, and transforms into a weapon needed by a scientist to defend himself against torture. [13]
Physical contact with Stuff can bleed one's intellect into Unity, normally transferring consciousness into 7-D after several uses unless Unity agrees otherwise. Strong personalities with disciplined minds can resist longer, or minds can voluntary translate immediately. While Unity purports to be benevolent and respectful, it has arbitrarily translated million-plus sized groups of individuals.
Sidebar pocket realities have been negotiated with Unity, who manifests them in Stuff and moves 4-D people between them and mainline human reality. They are maintained by Unity created engines, similar to today's computer games which implement a rule based virtual reality. Sidebars include Metropolis (the DC Comics Justice League of America), Dindsenchas (historical Celtic), Sankhara (Buddhist Saṅkhāra).
An ancient galactic race boot-strapped itself into 11-D and Unity, leaving a mechanism built of stuff as two artificial moons around an earth-like planet. The continued existence/operation of these is probably essential to Unity. The Unity mechanism allows for multiple unconnected Unities, whose uncoordinated actions in 11-D can destroy the conditions that permit the existence of expanded 4-D space-times.
 | This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (May 2022) |
Kenneth Macrae MacLeod is a Scottish science fiction writer. His novels The Sky Road and The Night Sessions won the BSFA Award. MacLeod's novels have been nominated for the Arthur C. Clarke, Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and Campbell Memorial awards for best novel on multiple occasions. A techno-utopianist, MacLeod's work makes frequent use of libertarian socialist themes; he is a three-time winner of the libertarian Prometheus Award. Prior to becoming a novelist, MacLeod studied biology and worked as a computer programmer. He sits on the advisory board of the Edinburgh Science Festival.
Paul J. McAuley is a British botanist and science fiction author. A biologist by training, McAuley writes mostly hard science fiction. His novels dealing with themes such as biotechnology, alternative history/alternative reality, and space travel.
Timothy Thomas Powers is an American science fiction and fantasy author. Powers has won the World Fantasy Award twice for his critically acclaimed novels Last Call and Declare. His 1987 novel On Stranger Tides served as inspiration for the Monkey Island franchise of video games and was optioned for adaptation into the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean film.
The BSFA Awards are literary awards presented annually since 1970 by the British Science Fiction Association (BSFA) to honour works in the genre of science fiction. Nominees and winners are chosen based on a vote of BSFA members. More recently, members of the Eastercon convention have also been eligible to vote.
Christopher Priest is a British novelist and science fiction writer. His works include Fugue for a Darkening Island, The Inverted World, The Affirmation, The Glamour, The Prestige, and The Separation.
Jonathan Samuel Carroll is an American fiction writer primarily known for novels that may be labelled magic realism, slipstream or contemporary fantasy. He has lived in Austria since 1974.
Jon Courtenay Grimwood is a Maltese born British science fiction and fantasy author. He also writes literary fiction as Jonathan Grimwood, and crime fiction and thrillers as Jack Grimwood.
Gwyneth Jones is an English science fiction and fantasy writer and critic, and a young adult/children's writer under the pen name Ann Halam.
Ian McDonald is a British science fiction novelist, living in Belfast. His themes include nanotechnology, postcyberpunk settings, and the impact of rapid social and technological change on non-Western societies.
Accelerando is a 2005 science fiction novel consisting of a series of interconnected short stories written by British author Charles Stross. As well as normal hardback and paperback editions, it was released as a free e-book under the CC BY-NC-ND license. Accelerando won the Locus Award in 2006, and was nominated for several other awards in 2005 and 2006, including the Hugo, Campbell, Clarke, and British Science Fiction Association Awards.
Graham William Joyce was a British writer of speculative fiction and the recipient of numerous awards, including the O. Henry Award and the World Fantasy Award, for both his novels and short stories.
American writer C. J. Cherryh's career began with publication of her first books in 1976, Gate of Ivrel and Brothers of Earth. She has been a prolific science fiction and fantasy author since then, publishing over 80 novels, short-story compilations, with continuing production as her blog attests. Ms. Cherryh has received the Hugo and Locus Awards for some of her novels.
Lavie Tidhar is an Israeli-born writer, working across multiple genres. He has lived in the United Kingdom and South Africa for long periods of time, as well as Laos and Vanuatu. As of 2013, Tidhar lives in London. His novel Osama won the 2012 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel, beating Stephen King's 11/22/63 and George R. R. Martin's A Dance with Dragons. His novel A Man Lies Dreaming won the £5000 Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize, for Best British Fiction, in 2015. He won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel in 2017, for Central Station.
The Separation is a novel by British writer Christopher Priest, published in 2002. It is an alternate history revolving around the experiences of identical twin brothers during the Second World War, during which one becomes a pilot for the RAF, and the other, a conscientious objector, becomes an ambulance driver for the Red Cross. The author introduces a deliberate confusion by giving these brothers identical initials – J.L. Sawyer – one known as Jack and the other as Joe.
The Extremes is a 1998 science fiction novel by the English writer Christopher Priest. The novel received the BSFA Award.
Pyr was the science fiction and fantasy imprint of Prometheus Books, launched in March 2005 with the publication of John Meaney's Paradox. In November 2018 it was sold to Start Publishing.
Bold As Love, first published in 2001, is a science fiction novel by British writer Gwyneth Jones. It is the first of a series of five books written by Gwyneth Jones and set in a near-future version of the United Kingdom. The full title of the novel is Bold as Love: a Near Future Fantasy. It combines elements of science fiction, fantasy and horror while dealing with issues of gender, politics, and environmental concerns. The subject matter refers heavily to popular music.
The BSFA Awards are given every year by the British Science Fiction Association. The Best Novel award is open to any novel-length work of science fiction or fantasy that has been published in the UK for the first time in the previous year. Serialised novels are eligible, provided that the publication date of the concluding part is in the previous year. If a novel has been previously published elsewhere, but it hasn't been published in the UK until the previous year, it is eligible.
The Dervish House is a 2010 science fiction novel by British author Ian McDonald. The novel was shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 2011, and won the BSFA Award and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award in the same year. It was a nominee for the 2011 Hugo Award for Best Novel. The French translation La maison des derviches won the Planete-SF Blogger's Award in 2012.
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