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"The Snow strikes home as a cautionary tale. Engrossing, disturbing... a clever and thought-provoking post apocalyptic novel" (DREAMWATCH )
"Adam Roberts is becoming increasingly masterful at stage-managing the props of science fiction, at revisiting the concerns of earlier writers with a modern eye" (ALIEN ON LINE )
"Intruiging, convincing and well thought-out" (Simon Withers SFX magazine ) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
"Adam Roberts is becoming increasingly masterful at stage-managing the props of science fiction, at revisiting the concerns of earlier writers with a modern eye" (ALIEN ON LINE )
"Intruiging, convincing and well thought-out" (Simon Withers SFX magazine ) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Simon Withers, SFX magazine
"Intruiging, convincing and well thought-out"
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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First Sentence
The snow started falling on September 6th, soft noiseless flakes filling the sky like a swarm of white moths, or like static interference on your TV screen whichever metaphor, nature or technology, you find more evocative. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
The snow started falling on September 6th, soft noiseless flakes filling the sky like a swarm of white moths, or like static interference on your TV screen whichever metaphor, nature or technology, you find more evocative. Read the first page
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Snow (2004) is an apocalyptic sci-fi novel by the ever-philosophical Adam Roberts.
Much to everyone's delight, snow starts falling all over the world. But as it piles up, the charm quickly wears off. And by the time the Earth is covered in three miles of packed snow, everyone is too dead to complain.
Roberts follows the snowfall from start to finish - the early days of panic, the boredom and the pain of captivity and then the fledgling society that emerges on the other side. With only 150,000 survivors around the world, the human race is a very different entity (and a very cold one). The attempts to rebuild society are awkward - people must choose between looking forwards or finding someone to blame.
Snow is an awkward fusion of two different books. One, exploring the snow's human impact, is terrific. I've always been a sucker for post-apocalyptic thrillers, and this is a good one: even the most mundane aspects of government become tricky when you're standing on top of a pile of powder. The power politics are well-developed, as are the various players - the close-minded general, the awkward revolutionary and the scheming wife.
The novel's style, a collection of government papers, interviews and testimonials, gives this more impact. Snow is a gathering of unreliable narrators. The reader has to work at deciphering what to believe and how the stories click together. Hard work, but rewarding.
Roberts also makes the snow's impact felt on the personal level. We understand what it is like to scrounge for food or cross a hundred-foot drift... even the joy of smoking a carefully-husbanded cigarette.
The latter part of Snow is another book entirely. For some perverse reason, the (slightly goofy) science-fiction origin of the snowfall is explained. Not only is this explanation unnecessary, but since it is bizarre, unanticipated, and completely out of left-field, it undermines the rest of the book. What was a Ballardian thriller about human beings in adverse circumstances suddenly transforms into ponderous retro pulp.
I highly recommend Snow for its auspiciously apocalyptic beginning. It is beautifully written and presents a fascinating take on the downfall (and tenuous resurgence) of human civilization. I also recommend it as a case study on disappointing endings. It's a valuable lesson for all science fiction authors: sometimes humans are enough.
Much to everyone's delight, snow starts falling all over the world. But as it piles up, the charm quickly wears off. And by the time the Earth is covered in three miles of packed snow, everyone is too dead to complain.
Roberts follows the snowfall from start to finish - the early days of panic, the boredom and the pain of captivity and then the fledgling society that emerges on the other side. With only 150,000 survivors around the world, the human race is a very different entity (and a very cold one). The attempts to rebuild society are awkward - people must choose between looking forwards or finding someone to blame.
Snow is an awkward fusion of two different books. One, exploring the snow's human impact, is terrific. I've always been a sucker for post-apocalyptic thrillers, and this is a good one: even the most mundane aspects of government become tricky when you're standing on top of a pile of powder. The power politics are well-developed, as are the various players - the close-minded general, the awkward revolutionary and the scheming wife.
The novel's style, a collection of government papers, interviews and testimonials, gives this more impact. Snow is a gathering of unreliable narrators. The reader has to work at deciphering what to believe and how the stories click together. Hard work, but rewarding.
Roberts also makes the snow's impact felt on the personal level. We understand what it is like to scrounge for food or cross a hundred-foot drift... even the joy of smoking a carefully-husbanded cigarette.
The latter part of Snow is another book entirely. For some perverse reason, the (slightly goofy) science-fiction origin of the snowfall is explained. Not only is this explanation unnecessary, but since it is bizarre, unanticipated, and completely out of left-field, it undermines the rest of the book. What was a Ballardian thriller about human beings in adverse circumstances suddenly transforms into ponderous retro pulp.
I highly recommend Snow for its auspiciously apocalyptic beginning. It is beautifully written and presents a fascinating take on the downfall (and tenuous resurgence) of human civilization. I also recommend it as a case study on disappointing endings. It's a valuable lesson for all science fiction authors: sometimes humans are enough.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I wanted to like The Snow. I really did.
The idea of this refreshingly different post-apocalyptic tale had great potential and the opening 50 pages were genuinely interesting, ringing faint echoes of Terry Nation's seminal "Survivors".
Then, however, following the central character Tira's rescue, the tale loses direction and gets hopelessly bogged down. I have to confess that I found neither Tira nor any of the other characters particularly likeable or engaging and, regarding the accounts of their endless politics, cumbersome characterisation and yawn-inducing relationships, I, quite frankly, couldn't give a damn.
Furthermore, Roberts' excessive use of [blank] and [expletive deleted] to express the regime of censorship under which Tira is obliged to write her journal, is immensely irritating to plough through. One chapter of this material would surely have sufficed? But no. Roberts gives us hundreds of pages of the stuff and by around page 200, I very nearly gave up.
Early on, Tira writes that "at the beginning people were happy..." then though things "became tiresome, and then oppressive, and then something worse, became calamitous". That kinda echoes how I felt waking up to realise I still had a gruelling 250 pages to read!
I persevered though and was partly rewarded by a moderately interesting twist as the closing revelations approached.
Then, though, the book merely peters out to nothing.
An opportunity lost.
The idea of this refreshingly different post-apocalyptic tale had great potential and the opening 50 pages were genuinely interesting, ringing faint echoes of Terry Nation's seminal "Survivors".
Then, however, following the central character Tira's rescue, the tale loses direction and gets hopelessly bogged down. I have to confess that I found neither Tira nor any of the other characters particularly likeable or engaging and, regarding the accounts of their endless politics, cumbersome characterisation and yawn-inducing relationships, I, quite frankly, couldn't give a damn.
Furthermore, Roberts' excessive use of [blank] and [expletive deleted] to express the regime of censorship under which Tira is obliged to write her journal, is immensely irritating to plough through. One chapter of this material would surely have sufficed? But no. Roberts gives us hundreds of pages of the stuff and by around page 200, I very nearly gave up.
Early on, Tira writes that "at the beginning people were happy..." then though things "became tiresome, and then oppressive, and then something worse, became calamitous". That kinda echoes how I felt waking up to realise I still had a gruelling 250 pages to read!
I persevered though and was partly rewarded by a moderately interesting twist as the closing revelations approached.
Then, though, the book merely peters out to nothing.
An opportunity lost.
8 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
A snowfall of Biblical proportions covers the Earth, and pretty much everyone dies. For the few survivors, life is white, cold and a repetitive daily struggle to carry on. Yet Adam Roberts manages to take this minimalistic world of endless hardship, and instead of grinding down the reader's patience with how many different ways he can describe blank vistas and snowdunes, he manages to use the white world more to invoke a feeling of "what lies beneath".
By concentrating on only two main characters, and splitting the "action" equally between their present-day troubles on the snow and their lives before the world changed, Roberts builds complete lives for his protagonists, and I found it very easy to care about what happens to them (though they are both far from sympathetic !).
For my money, the underlying plot (where did all this snow come from?) takes a backseat to the pervading sense of loss, as everything and everyone the survivors ever knew is buried beneath miles of snow. Not buried and gone, but buried and "still there" ; frozen but whole, untouchably distant. There is a well thought-out and interesting ending/explanation, but that is not really what the book is all about.
Not a lot happens, in truth. But this is a book that cries out to be read s-l-o-w-l-y, to let your mind wander, to think about your loved ones and what it would be like to leave them buried in a preserved world, miles under your feet. For a novel that is set under a blue sky, with a blank white horizon at every turn, I actually felt quite claustrophobic reading it.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Filler Text.
Having enjoyed Stone, and kinda struggled to the end of Salt, giving up half way through Gradisil, I was hoping this would be a good book by an author I was starting to enjoy. Read more
Published on 13 Sep 2007 by Russell J. Watts
A very frustrating novel
I have a great love of disaster movies and books and so I thought I was pretty safe with this one. The set-up itself is fairly intriguing: what if it snowed and never stopped. Read more
Published on 27 Feb 2007 by Mr. M. D. Horne
About [blank]
"The Snow" is a low-key ,science fiction novel which has the quality of being a page turner ,even though nothing much ever seems to happen in it. Read more
Published on 11 May 2006 by L. Davidson
Brrrrrrr
I love armageddon end-of-the-world novels, "Day of the Triffids" being one of my all time favourite books. Read more
Published on 3 Mar 2006 by J. S. Meins
Thats a generous 4 stars, probably closer to 3.3.
Ok, 1st things 1st why 4 stars not 3 if I felt it was about 3 1/3 stars, well this book did somethings that really annoyed me most particularly [Blank] spoke to [Blank] about... Read more
Published on 23 Aug 2005 by Mr. A. J. D. White
Confused
The Snow is a great book if you read the first 5 chapters, and then skip through the middle to the last few chapters. Read more
Published on 8 May 2005 by Richard Steventon
Disappointing
I've read all the other books by Adam Roberts and the description of the book made it seem like a great idea - but in the end I was disappointed. Read more
Published on 17 Oct 2004 by A. J. Sudworth
Compelling page turner!
This is the first book I have read by this author and I couldn't put it down. Starting with an environmental catastrophe namely an overwhelming snow fall, the story is told from... Read more
Published on 10 Sep 2004 by S
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