The adjacent
Several decades from now in what has become the Islamic Republic of Great Britain, Tibor Tarent journeys across a landscape blasted by both war and terrible storms, and now rendered virtually uninhabitable by climate change. He learns that a device that using a type of quantum mechanics known as adjacency to make a target disappear has destroyed a vast area of London. Yet this is but one of several worlds in The Adjacent. During World War I, a magician is given the task of hiding the planes of the Royal Naval Air Service from the enemy. He suggests using the conjuror’s principle of adjacency, namely placing two objects close together with the aim of using one of them to distract the audience for a brief, crucial moment. Then, during World War II, a Polish aviatrix in Britain, Krystyna, meets a ground crew member who uncannily resembles the lover she believes has been killed by the Germans; now she dreams only of piloting a Spitfire to disappear into the clouds.
Available Copies by Location
Location | |
---|---|
Victoria | Available |
Browse Related Items
Subject |
Terrorism > Fiction. Weapons > Fiction. Space and time > Fiction. Great Britain > Fiction. |
Genre |
Science fiction. Historical fiction. Fiction. |
- ISBN: 0575105380
- ISBN: 9780575105386
-
Physical Description
print
419 pages - Publisher London : Gollancz, 2014.
- Copyright ©2013
Content descriptions
General Note: | Shortlisted for the 2014 Arthur C. Clarke Award |
Immediate Source of Acquisition Note: | LSC 15.99 |
Additional Information
Summary
The Adjacent
Tibor Tarent, a freelance photographer, is recalled to Britain from Anatolia where his wife Melanie has been killed by insurgent militia. IRGB is a nation living in the aftermath of a bizarre and terrifying terrorist atrocity - hundreds of thousands were wiped out when a vast triangle of west London was instantly annihilated. The authorities think the terrorist attack and the death of Tarent's wife are somehow connected. A century earlier, a stage magician is sent to the Western Front on a secret mission to render British reconnaissance aircraft invisible to the enemy. On his journey to the trenches he meets the visionary who believes that this will be the war to end all wars. In 1943, a woman pilot from Poland tells a young RAF technician of her escape from the Nazis, and her desperate need to return home. In the present day, a theoretical physicist stands in his English garden and creates the first adjacency. THE ADJACENT is a novel where nothing is quite as it seems. Where fiction and history intersect, where every version of reality is suspect, where truth and falsehood lie closely adjacent to one another. It shows why Christopher Priest is one of our greatest writers. Christopher Priest is a genre-leading author of SFF fiction. His novel, THE PRESTIGE, won a number of awards and was adapted into a critically acclaimed, Oscar-nominated film directed by Christopher Nolan (TENET, INCEPTION) starring Hugh Jackman (THE GREATEST SHOWMAN, X-MEN), Christian Bale (THE BIG SHORT, BATMAN BEGINS), Michael Caine (THE ITALIAN JOB) and Scarlett Johansson (MARRIAGE STORY, THE AVENGERS).