Keith Roberts – författare

America and Russian both explode huge H-bombs simultaneously. The tests go wrong, cracking the seabed, rupturing continents and engulfing cities. The Thames flattens into a flood plain, London is drowned.Now comes cosmic retribution - giant wasps, monstrous and deadly, directed by a supernatural intelligence, invade a reeling world. In England, isolated guerrillas fight on...

1588: Queen Elizabeth is felled by an assassin''s bullet. Within the week, the Spanish Armada had set sail, and its victory changed the course of history.

1968: England is still dominated by the Church of Rome. There are no telephones, no television, no nuclear power. As Catholicism and the Inquisition tighten their grip, rebellion is growing.

Most people think witches are old and ugly - but ANITA isn''t.ANITA doesn''t cackle and hiss as she works dark curses, either. Oh, she casts witch''s spells and incantations, but not the usual kind.ANITA''s main interest is boys, just like any other girl her age. And she doesn''t really need things like love potions - not with her face and figure.But ANITA is a witch, and she''s young and a little reckless. Which means she sometimes makes mistakes (usually with boys), and when she does... all Hell might break loose....

Raised, tested, trained and indoctrinated in the Blocks, Molly Zero is being groomed for the governing Elite. Rebelling against her fate, she flees. An innocent searching for truth, Molly finds the world outside the Blocks alien and frightening. Her flight plunges her first into the heart of a small community. Next, attracted by their eccentric gaiety, she joins the travelling gypsies, roaming the country in Commercial Air Cushion Vehicles. And then Molly gets caught up in urban terrorism...

The Realm of Kiteworld has survived nuclear catastrophe and is governed by a feudal and militant religious oligarchy - the Church Variant.In the outer Badlands, real or imagined Demons are kept at bay by flying defensive structures of giant interlocking Cody kites piloted by an elite and brave Corps of Observers.Through a series of Kite stories we are drawn compellingly into a strange but recognizable world where loyalty to the Corps is everything and non-conformity is a sin. Keith Roberts depicts the fortunes, passions and failings of his characters against this background of a fragile and superstitious society. As the fanatical Ultras embark on a religious campaign of destruction, the Realm starts to disintegrate fast.

Winner of the BSFA Award for best novel, 1987Meet Gráinne: blue-stocking seductress, darling of the media, painfully human yet mysterious as her great namesake, the proud girl-goddess who plunged all Ireland into war and shadow...

Kaeti branches out, moves farther from her beloved London. In the process she makes a whole range of new, intriguing friends; and lands herself in some scrapes startling even by her standards. The shadows she sprays on the pavement of a Thames Valley town come alive to haunt her; later, the magic Tiger Sweater she acquires does more than haunt the subjects of her wrath. While for a time her latest experience of France also looks like being her last. In a Thames-side hotel she conjures Hell on request; on a deserted airfield, and in the Green Palace, Glasgow, Hell returns to haunt her. In the West Country, she meets an eighteenth century benefactress; or is she? Certainly the experience lands Kaeti in hospital; for a while it seems she''s about to cross the Bridge of Dreams herself. Finally she circles back to London'' but a London neither you nor she has never seen... But it''s all in a day''s work for Kaeti, the Bow Bells actress who is in touch with things magical and eternal.

Ladies from Hell contains five long stories. "The Shack at Great Cross Halt" describes a Britain dominated by motorways, juggernauts and a tyranny, in which the unfortunates of society eke out a miserable existence scavenging items that fall off lorries. "The Ministry of Children" shows comprehensive schools having become terrifying battlegrounds dominated by vicious gangs. "The Big Fans" concerns an experiment in wind-powered electricity which accidentally unleashes an apocalyptic storm of effects. "Our Lady of Destruction" ironically depicts a future in which a Stalinist British government taxes ''non-productive'' people (i.e. artists) at over 100% and assigns them individual Overseers to regulate their work. "Missa Privata" shows an opera singer in a communist-dominated Britain making a defiant individual gesture which will bring about her own ruin. These are not stories of spaceships and alien worlds; rather they are studies of imminent social change, written out of passionate concern about the directions in which our society may be heading - stories, in fact, in the great Orwellian tradition. Most importantly, they are stories about people: believable, defiant individuals struggling against oppressive forces.

''We reap and we thresh; grain for half the world. We are the Grain Kings raised of old.''They call them the Grain Kings. Gigantic mechanical monarchs of the wheat-bearing plains that were once the frozen Alaskan wastes. Whole eco-systems in themselves, they can supply the food so desperately needed by the teeming millions of our overpopulated planet. But even now, as the whole world waits in hungry suspense, the great powers battle for control of the prairies and two competing combine harvesters find they are heading on a course of collision. A collision with catastrophic consequences - not only for the hundreds of crewmen aboard each massive machine but for the future survival of all mankind.

A garage owner is called on to repair an Unidentified Flying Object; the seductive rhythmic pulse emanating from beyond a continental shelf village mysteriously beckons the younger submarine generation; a small town cinema projectionist screens 3-D rushes for a 24th century film crew; a divorce case in which the co-respondent is a synthetic human...Keith Roberts injects his own brand of immediacy and realism through his punchy, readably style and his considerable technical know-how into these stories, ten rare new gems in the dazzling treasury of SF.

Plant cell walls are complex, dynamic cellular structures essential for plant growth, development, physiology and adaptation. Plant Cell Walls provides an in depth and diverse view of the microanatomy, biosynthesis and molecular physiology of these cellular structures, both in the life of the plant and in their use for bioproducts and biofuels. Plant Cell Walls is a textbook for upper-level undergraduates and graduate students, as well as a professional-level reference book. Over 400 drawings, micrographs, and photographs provide visual insight into the latest research, as well as the uses of plant cell walls in everyday life, and their applications in biotechnology. Illustrated panels concisely review research methods and tools; a list of key terms is given at the end of each chapter; and extensive references organized by concept headings provide readers with guidance for entry into plant cell wall literature.Cell wall material is of considerable importance to the biofuel, food, timber, and pulp and paper industries as well as being a major focus of research in plant growth and sustainability that are of central interest in present day agriculture and biotechnology. The production and use of plants for biofuel and bioproducts in a time of need for responsible global carbon use requires a deep understanding of the fundamental biology of plants and their cell walls. Such an understanding will lead to improved plant processes and materials, and help provide a sustainable resource for meeting the future bioenergy and bioproduct needs of humankind.

As author and illustrator, Keith Roberts did more than most to define the look of UK science fiction magazines in the 1960s. In addition to his BFSA Award wins, he was nominated for the Hugo, Nebula and Arthur C. Clarke Awards. He is perhaps best known for his seminal alternate history novel, Pavane, but his work covered a broad range of SF''s tropes and settings, as can be seen from the titles collected in this omnibus: The Chalk Giants, Kiteworld and The Grain Kings. THE CHALK GIANTS: After the apocalypse the hazardous evolution of mankind continues. And in primeval response to the disaster, humanity''s solutions to catastrophe carve the harsh new world in violent patterns of magic and myth, rite and religion. Brave images scar the ancient hills, the clash of swords and the ageless power of sexuality sign-post another, bloodsoaked path to civilisation.KITEWORLD: Powerful churches have long kept their grip on the people with a theology of fear that makes formidable demons out of the poor, weak mutants of the surrounding badlands. To ward off these specters, an elaborate, tradition-encrusted system of kites with hex signs or armed observers fly over the realm. The men of this Kite Corps, performing hazardous duty to sustain a myth, are driven to find a separate peace, to transform, if they can, disillusionment into enlightenment, to move forward from an assumption of guilt to an assumption of responsibility.THE GRAIN KINGS: They call them The Grain Kings. Gigantic mechanical monarchs of the wheat-bearing plains that were once the frozen Alaskan wastes. Whole eco-systems in themselves, they can supply the food so desperately needed by the teeming millions of our overpopulated planet. But even now, as the whole world waits in hungry suspense, the great powers battle for control of the prairies and two competing combine harvesters find they are heading on a course of collision.