The Roamers

From the award winning future-thinker comes a Solar Punk novel packed with near-future ideas from the streets of Rome, with elements of David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas and Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer

The pulldogs, a group of people at the twilight of Western civilisation, undergo an anthropological transformation caused by the dissemination of nanites (nanorobots capable of assembling molecules to create matter). This technology changes the way they eat and gives rise to a culture which, while reminiscent of an ancient nomadic society, is creative and new. Liberation from the imperative of food, combined with the ability to 3D print objects and use cloud computing, makes it possible for the pulldogs to make a choice that seems impossible and anachronistic – a new life, but is it really an Arcadia?

Author information

Francesco Verso (Bologna, 1973) is one of the most relevant voices of Italian Science Fiction and editor of Future Fiction. Over the last 12 years, he has won many SF awards (including the Best Publisher Award by the European SF Society in 2019) and for 7 years he’s the editor of the multicultural project Future Fiction. His books include: Antidoti umani, e-Doll (Urania Award 2009), Nexhuman (Odissea and Italia Award 2013), Bloodbusters (Urania Award 2015) and I camminatori (made of The Pulldogs and No/Mad/Land). His novels Nexhuman and Bloodbusters – translated in English by Sally McCorry – have been published in the US, UK, and soon in China with the translation of Zhang Fan and Shaoyan Hu for the publisher Bofeng Culture. His short stories appeared in magazines like Robot, MAMUT, International Speculative Fiction #5, Chicago Quarterly Review #20, Words Without Borders, Future Affairs Administration and international anthologies such as A Dying Earth (Flame Tree Press) and The Best of World SF (Head of Zeus).

Together with Bill Campbell he has co-edited Future Fiction: New Dimensions in International Science Fiction (Rosarium Publishing, 2018). He has also edited a SF anthology called What’s the Future Like? for Guangzhou Blue Ocean Press that has been distributed to Chinese high schools and universities in 2019. He’s a public speaker and panelist to many SF Cons across the world, including WorldCons, EuroCons, and Chinese SF Conventions. In 2020 he has organized the FutureCon an online SF convention with 67 panelists coming from more than 25 countries.

From 2014 he works as editor of Future Fiction, a multicultural project, scouting and publishing the best SF in translation from 10 languages and more than 20 countries with authors like James P. Kelly, Ian McDonald, Ken Liu, Xia Jia, Liu Cixin, Chen Qiufan, Pat Cadigan, Olivier Paquet, Vandana Singh, Lavie Tidhar, Fabio Fernandes, Ekaterina Sedia and others. He lives in Rome with his wife and daughter. He may be found online at http://www.futurefiction.org.

My thoughts

This is such an interesting concept and its unique for me as I haven’t seen this before. I am excited at this type of book especially as there are many cyberpunk style books but few have a unique take on this style.

Allan is the son and Miriam is the mother and they seem to have an interesting relationship. I am enjoying it.

The accident that happened and what I am reading shows a huge great ability to think outside the box.

It is very strange and seems more futuristic and very hard to believe but in a lot of ways this is what I like about it. They don’t go with what could make sense but what feels right for the story.

I have always been a huge fan of books that have some medical items such as the nanites. It makes me very happy to read these books as to what could be.

The next part is about Nicolas who is a heavyset man who seems to want to be thinner. I can understand that as I am larger than what I should be and would love to be able to take nanites and prevent the weight gain or even eating.

The first part flowed very well but now that i am going through Nicolas part I feel it doesn’t have the same flow it is still good just I don’t feel it is as fluid.

The story being split into multiple parts can be difficult for some people however I found that it was done well even if I found the second part not as fluid.

Sylvia is one of the characters and in the third part she is the main focus. I am not that fond of her as a character but she fits in well with this story.

The technology that they use, nanites are such a great idea and I really think that the mutations that they bring makes things very interesting.

Even after reading this the story confuses me and I don’t think I picked up all the nuances of the plot but I really enjoyed it and think it definitely is a strong book.

I want to thank the author and publisher and the tour organizer for allowing me to take part in the blogtour and for a advanced reader copy of this book.