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For Adam Roberts, the finest sf takes its readers on a conceptual flight away from mundane and literal-minded ways of regarding reality and into spectacularly metaphorical representations of it. There are traces here of the Romantic concept of the sublime, and it is therefore apt that Roberts teaches nineteenth-century literature when he isn't writing sf. Another of his passions is comedy, which he argues operates in much the same way as transcendental sf; the efficacy of a punchline can often be measured by how strange or surprising a departure it is from its setup. Roberts's new book, Adam Robots, is clear proof that he practises as a storyteller what he preaches as a critic. Manifest in these two dozen short stories are various "conceptual breakthroughs" (260) that elucidate a number of timely matters, from the theological to the political, the ontological to the technological. But while Roberts consistently takes us to new places and show us things we haven't seen before, his referential, sometimes intertextual style never loses sight of the time-honoured conventions of the genre that excites him so much. Although in the introduction he admits to wanting to write "at least one thing in all the myriad sub-genres and sub-sub-genres of SF" (1), this doesn't equate to some superficial box-ticking exercise in homage or fan fiction. It is much more about satirising, subverting and reinventing what has come before. Book details - Adam Roberts by Adam Roberts , Gollancz, 2013, ISBN: 9780575130340 (pbk), 391pp.

Scholars studying the processes that lead to significant alterations in public policies have identified two major sources of change: policy-oriented conflict and policy-oriented learning. Many investigations of specific cases of consequential policy change also suggest that "shocks" from outside the policy subsystem, (that is, the specific political arena where a policy issue is formulated and implemented) are often necessary for significant policy change to occur. Rather than being competing explanations of policy change, this paper argues that external shocks, conflict, and learning often interact to generate windows of opportunity which enable policies to be significantly altered. These perspectives on policy change are then qualitatively applied to recent changes in U.S. national security policy which have allowed formerly secret spy satellite technology to be used in commercial data gathering systems. The final part discusses the implications of this research for the theory of policy change and for U.S. national security policy.

Historical review of changes in US national security policy on use of satellite technology, and implications of policy change research on US security policy in general. Mentions early Land Remote Sensing (Landsat) policy, 1984 Landsat Law, foreign programs and Reagan's 1988 NSP Directive, end of Cold War, Gulf War, 1992 Landsat Law, I-Meter Data, Clinton's 1994 Presidential Decision Directive, the Earlybird Failure, and competition between Departments of State and Commerce.

Beginning at least with Brown in 1977, scholars have argued that environmental concerns be incorporated into the security calculations of nation-states. In recent years, the "environmental security" thesis has been used to justify rhetorical and institutional changes within the U.S. national security policy subsystem. The first part of this article develops a set of criteria to distinguish between narrow and broad interpretations of environmental security. The second part presents several examples of changes to U.S. national security policies and programs, analyzes these changes in terms of the criteria developed in Part 1, and concludes that many are indicative of a fairly narrow interpretation of environmental security. Finally, this essay relates the findings of this investigation to international relations in general and to the international environmental problematic in particular.