Roberts’s novel beings with a ‘Forward,’ introducing the reader to the ship and crew (well played, Adam). The five advanced humans are on the ‘Forward,’ an interstellar exploration craft. In all this it resembled the mountain of Purgatory, as described in Dante’s medieval Italian epic, and so the crew began referring to it with that name.

There were many terraces running around the circumference, but twelve main ones. It had been constructed so as to resemble a massively elongated mountain, with its peak outside the air. The sandwich’s SciFi filling focuses on humans who are living in America, in a slightly defamiliarised setting, in a time similar to ours. The five individuals are barely recognisable as humans, sharing their living spaces with an artificial intelligence, and a plethora of uplifted animals (a staple of Roberts’ successful SciFi). The novels beginning and end are the SciFi slices of bread, baked from a narrative of the far-future of humanity, following five technologically enhanced humans who are on a ship, traveling to explore an alien-type structure named Purgatory mount. The novel is neatly sliced into sections, constructed like a speculative fiction sandwich. ‘ Humankind’s first forays into technological enhancement was, after all, precisely the restoration and propping up of functioning memory.’ Purgatory Mount is an intelligent, inventive, and profound piece of fiction, with a bludgeoning and beautiful impact, imprinting emotional scars on the reader. This 2021 novel explores haunting possibilities of humanity’s flawed and technological future, whilst drawing clear and relevant allusions to a variety of other fictions.

Purgatory Mount, is another superb example of Roberts’ mastery of the genre. His 2014 novel Bête, is an important contribution to the field of science fiction and considers post-humanism theory and technological advancements. His most recent novel, The This (Gollancz 2022), is a pulp-sf novelisation of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit.Īdam Roberts is a renowned Science Fiction Writer, Critic, Historian and Professor. He is a professor in English and Creative Writing at Royal Holloway, University of London, and is FRSL. ‘I’m more interested in the past than the future’Īdam Roberts is the author of 23 science fiction novels, many short stories and a number of critical and non-fiction books, including The Palgrave History of Science Fiction (2nd edition 2016) and H G Wells: a Literary Life (2020).

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