American author and editor Gardner Dozois has called Keith Roberts "one of the most powerful talents to enter the field in the past thirty years," while Canadian author and academic Douglas Barbour, writing in the 1986 edition of Twentieth-Century Science Fiction Writers, considers Roberts "the Thomas Hardy of Science Fiction." British editor Malcolm Edwards declared Roberts's best-known work, Pavane (1968), "one of the finest SF novels ever written" (Ansible, November 2000), and American author and critic Algis Budrys pronounced Roberts "the best English SF writer" (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, February 1978). Despite such high praise, Roberts has been, as Dozois notes, a "severely underappreciated author." Aside from three British Science Fiction Association Awards (for the short stories "Kitemaster" and "Kaeti and the Hangman" and the novel Gráinne, 1987), two nominations for the Science Fiction Writers of America Nebula Award (for the novellas "The God House" and "The Tiger...