In the course of those official translator duties, Skvorecky comes into contact with an American by the name of James Tilly Coyne who claims to be a Scientologist looking to do research in the Soviet Union. In short, a fairly typical Adam Roberts kind of character. Smokes a lot, drinks himself through several years, quits drinking, ekes out a sad existence as a official translator. They are all informed to ‘forget’ about the entire thing, to never speak of it on pain of certain death. The writers work for several months on this project then it is suddenly shut down. Skvorecky and his comrades set about inventing a race of ‘radiation aliens’, advantageous because they would be invisible, along with a series of events which will prove their superior technological powers. Whilst America will serve as an enemy in the short term, they will eventually be defeated by the superior Soviet system, therefore they need the next enemy and that enemy must be sufficiently powerful as to unite the whole world in a communistic utopia. The reasoning behind this is simple: Stalin reasons that the war brought them together, it strengthened the communist whole. Stalin tasks them with a very important goal: they must invent an alien enemy. At the beginning of the book Skvorecky, along with a bunch of other sci-fi writers, are sent to meet Stalin at his dacha. The main character is a science fiction writer by the name of Konstantin Skvorecky. Yellow Blue Tibia is a fairly light sci-fi book, set in Soviet Russia. What it means, however, is I still have a few of Roberts’s books sitting in the backlong since before my book buying ban so I still have a few of those ‘easier’ reads to dip into. Sadly it still doesn’t overlap much, hubby will read Roberts but isn’t a fan. I bought a few Adam Roberts books for my hubby, he’s a total sci-fi fan and it’s not often our taste overlaps. For me Adam Roberts is one of those writers, even though I have struggled a bit with some of his more esoteric works (The This, I’m talking about you!). We all have them – perhaps a trusty crime novel, one of those British Library classics, perhaps something published by Persephone, or Pereine. Whenever I am feeling a bit bogged down with reading, I like to turn to those trusted writers who I know I can just chow down without effort.

The Real-Town Murders by Adam Roberts