Science Fiction

SET in the tumultuous year of 1848, Swiftly by Adam Roberts (Gollancz, £10.99) is an extraordinary novel which shows us a world where Lemuel Gulliver's famous account of his travels was fact, not fiction.

Tiny Lilliputians work as slaves in British factories, while giant Brobdingnagians are living weapons.

The war between France and the British empire is going badly for the home team - it won't be long before the Tricolour flies over London.

But young idealist Abraham Bates is more concerned with liberating the Lilliputians from their chains.

The small people have white skin and Bates knows that using whites as slaves is forbidden by the same Bible which allows the enslavement of blacks.

What no-one seems to have thought about, however, is this - since humans are to Brobdingnagians as Lilliputians are to humans, might the pattern of scale not continue in either direction?

This is very much science fiction, not fantasy, in its approach and its philosophy. It is also a strange love story, a satirical social history and a book about the horrors of war.

At times, the reader needs a strong stomach and, sometimes simultaneously, strong laughter muscles.

Roberts has perhaps the most untrammelled imagination in current British fiction and here, in the best traditions of the picaresque novel, he lets it roam freely to unforgettable effect.

Definitely to be categorised as fantasy, but with an unusual and refreshingly rigorous approach to magic as a science, is The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss (Gollancz, £14.99).

This opening volume of a new series takes place in the standard, mock-medieval, sword-and-sorcery world of taverns, demons and magicians.

It's irresistible to describe it as an adult version of Harry Potter. A brave and resourceful orphan manages against all odds to win a place at university, determined to learn all that he can about the evil beings who killed his Romany-like family of travelling entertainers.

There, he makes a mortal enemy of a nasty posh kid who resents the impoverished Kvothe's prodigy status.

But there's lots more to it than that - too much to describe and, occasionally, just too much altogether. The story is so good that the detours seem irritating every now and then.

This is a first novel and one that is sure to cause a stir for the high quality of its writing and the striking freshness of its imagination. It's well worth a read even for those of us who are not normally fans of this kind of fantasy - partly because one gets the impression that the author isn't, either.