Justina Robson

Justina Robson (born 11 June 1968 in Leeds, England) is a science fiction author from Leeds, England.

Justina Robson
Born11 June 1968
Leeds, England
GenreSpeculative fiction
Notable worksQuantum Gravity Series
Notable awardsArthur C Clarke (nominee), BSFA (nominee), John W Campbell (nominee)

Biography and publishing history

Justina Robson was born in Leeds on 11 June 1968[1], and studied philosophy and linguistics at the University of York. She worked in a variety of jobs – including secretary, technical writer, and fitness instructor – until becoming a full-time writer.[2]

Robson attended the Clarion West Writing Workshop and was first published in 1994 in the British small press magazine The Third Alternative, but is best known as a novelist. Her debut novel Silver Screen was shortlisted for both the Arthur C Clarke Award and the BSFA Award in 2000. Her second novel, Mappa Mundi, was also shortlisted for the Arthur C Clarke Award in 2001. It won the 2000 Amazon.co.uk Writer's Bursary. In 2004, Natural History, Robson's third novel, was shortlisted for the BSFA Award, and came second in the John W Campbell Award.

Robson's novels have been noted for sharply-drawn characters, and an intelligent and deeply thought-out approach to the tropes of the genre. She has been described as "one of the very best of the new British hard SF writers".[3]

Living Next-Door to the God of Love is a loose sequel to Natural History, inasmuch as it is set in the same universe. Keeping It Real marks the beginning of a series, the Quantum Gravity Books.

On 27 July 2008 she spoke on BBC Radio 3 about Doctor Who and various other science fiction shows for 25 minutes during the interval of the Doctor Who Prom.

Robson was announced in November 2008 as the guest of honour at the following year's Novacon.

Robson was announced in April 2010 as an international guest of honour at Swancon 36 to be held 21 to 25 April 2011 in Perth Australia.

Robson announced in November 2010 the forthcoming publication of her first story collection, Heliotrope, to be published in April 2011 by Australian independent publisher Ticonderoga Publications.

Bibliography

Novels
Name Published ISBN Notes
Silver Screen London: Macmillan, 1999 (paper) ISBN 0-333-75437-9 British Science Fiction Award nominee, 1999;[4]
Arthur C. Clarke Award nominee, 2000;[5]
Philip K. Dick Award nominee, 2005[6]
Mappa Mundi London: Macmillan, 2001 (paper) ISBN 0-333-75438-7 Arthur C. Clarke Award nominee, 2002[7]
Glorious Angels London: Gollancz, March 2015 ISBN 978-0-575-13401-0 British Science Fiction Award nominee, 2015
The Switch London: Gollancz, Mai 2018 ISBN 978-0-575-13407-2

Natural History (Stuff Universe) series

Name Published ISBN Notes
Natural History London: Macmillan, 2003 ISBN 0-333-90745-0 British Science Fiction Award nominee, 2003;[8]
Campbell Award nominee, 2004;[9]
Philip K. Dick Award nominee, 2005[6]
Living Next-Door to the God of Love London: Macmillan, 2005 ISBN 1-4050-2116-0 British Science Fiction Award nominee, 2005;[6]
Philip K. Dick Award nominee, 2006;[10]
Campbell Award nominee, 2007[11]

Quantum Gravity series

Name Published ISBN Notes
Keeping It Real London: Gollancz, 2006 ISBN 0-575-07861-8
Selling Out London: Gollancz, 2007 ISBN 0-575-07863-4
Going Under London: Gollancz, 2008 ISBN 0-575-07866-9
Chasing the Dragon London: Gollancz, August 2009 ISBN 978-1-59102-746-1
Down to the Bone London: Gollancz, January 2011 ISBN 978-0-575-08565-7

Transformers Cinematic Universe

Name Published ISBN Notes
Transformers: The Covenant of Primus 47North, December 2013 ISBN 978-1477805992 Historical backdrop material

Story Collection
Name Published ISBN Notes
Heliotrope Greenwood: Ticonderoga Publications, April 2011 ISBN 978-0-9807813-3-5

Literary Universes

Natural History (Stuff) Universe

Based on M-Theory, the Unity lives in all 11 dimensions and watches our 4 dimensions for individual intelligences to entice into the Unity aggregate. It reads mental attitudes, desires, and intentions and can alter 4-D reality by action in the other 7 dimensions. While a mind is never truly lost translating into Unity, its identity is soon subsumed into the collective.

About translation into Unity: "Nobody has died. They are all within, every life perfectly recorded, every experience distributed." "Translated individuals remain alive in the sense they are able to continue the natural process of consciousness." "the Translated were in a state of superposition, being both themselves and alive and conscious, but also unified with all other conscious beings within Unity." [12] Physical bodies are gone from 4-D, but theoretically can be re-manifest as they were.

Stuff is Unity's manifestation in 4-D, appearing as an atomically undistinguishable mass that responds to intense thought and adapts itself to satisfy implicit need or desire. For example, Stuff appears as an instantaneous transfer FTL engine to a stranded inter-stellar ship, and transforms into a weapon needed by a scientist to defend himself against torture.[13]

Physical contact with Stuff can bleed one's intellect into Unity, normally transferring consciousness into 7-D after several uses unless Unity agrees otherwise. Strong personalities with disciplined minds can resist longer, or minds can voluntary translate immediately. While Unity purports to be benevolent and respectful, it has arbitrarily translated million-plus sized groups of individuals.

Sidebar pocket realities have been negotiated with Unity, who manifests them in Stuff and moves 4-D people between them and mainline human reality. They are maintained by Unity created engines, similar to today's computer games which implement a rule based virtual reality. Sidebars include Metropolis (the DC Comics Justice League of America), Dindsenchas (historical Celtic), Sankhara (Buddhist Saṅkhāra).

An ancient galactic race boot-strapped itself into 11-D and Unity, leaving a mechanism built of stuff as two artificial moons around an earth-like planet. The continued existence/operation of these is probably essential to Unity. The Unity mechanism allows for multiple unconnected Unities, whose uncoordinated actions in 11-D can destroy the conditions that permit the existence of expanded 4-D space-times.

Quantum Gravity Universe
gollark: Go(lang) = bad.
gollark: ``` [...] MIPS is short for Millions of Instructions Per Second. It is a measure for the computation speed of a processor. Like most such measures, it is more often abused than used properly (it is very difficult to justly compare MIPS for different kinds of computers). BogoMips are Linus's own invention. The linux kernel version 0.99.11 (dated 11 July 1993) needed a timing loop (the time is too short and/or needs to be too exact for a non-busy-loop method of waiting), which must be calibrated to the processor speed of the machine. Hence, the kernel measures at boot time how fast a certain kind of busy loop runs on a computer. "Bogo" comes from "bogus", i.e, something which is a fake. Hence, the BogoMips value gives some indication of the processor speed, but it is way too unscientific to be called anything but BogoMips. The reasons (there are two) it is printed during boot-up is that a) it is slightly useful for debugging and for checking that the computer[’]s caches and turbo button work, and b) Linus loves to chuckle when he sees confused people on the news. [...]```I was wondering what BogoMIPS was, and wikipedia had this.
gollark: ```Architecture: x86_64CPU op-mode(s): 32-bit, 64-bitByte Order: Little EndianCPU(s): 8On-line CPU(s) list: 0-7Thread(s) per core: 2Core(s) per socket: 4Socket(s): 1NUMA node(s): 1Vendor ID: GenuineIntelCPU family: 6Model: 42Model name: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E31240 @ 3.30GHzStepping: 7CPU MHz: 1610.407CPU max MHz: 3700.0000CPU min MHz: 1600.0000BogoMIPS: 6587.46Virtualization: VT-xL1d cache: 32KL1i cache: 32KL2 cache: 256KL3 cache: 8192KNUMA node0 CPU(s): 0-7Flags: fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx rdtscp lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good nopl xtopology nonstop_tsc cpuid aperfmperf pni pclmulqdq dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx smx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm pcid sse4_1 sse4_2 x2apic popcnt tsc_deadline_timer aes xsave avx lahf_lm pti tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority ept vpid xsaveopt dtherm ida arat pln pts```
gollark: I think it's a server thing.
gollark: My slightly newer SomethingOrOther 5000 does too.

References
  1. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 15 May 2008. Retrieved 1 February 2009.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  2. Justina Robson bio
  3. "Meat vs machine". The Guardian. London. 7 June 2003. Retrieved 7 May 2010.
  4. "1999 Award Winners & Nominees". Worlds Without End. Retrieved 5 July 2009.
  5. "2000 Award Winners & Nominees". Worlds Without End. Retrieved 5 July 2009.
  6. "2005 Award Winners & Nominees". Worlds Without End. Retrieved 5 July 2009.
  7. "2002 Award Winners & Nominees". Worlds Without End. Retrieved 5 July 2009.
  8. "2003 Award Winners & Nominees". Worlds Without End. Retrieved 5 July 2009.
  9. "2004 Award Winners & Nominees". Worlds Without End. Retrieved 5 July 2009.
  10. "2006 Award Winners & Nominees". Worlds Without End. Retrieved 5 July 2009.
  11. "2007 Award Winners & Nominees". Worlds Without End. Retrieved 5 July 2009.
  12. Robson, Justina (2006). Living Next Door to the God of Love, p. 90, 98. Bantam Dell, US. ISBN 978-0-553-58742-5.
  13. Robson, Justina (2003). Natural History
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