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Keith Roberts ( September 20, 1935 - October 5, 2000) was a British science fiction author. He began publishing with two stories in the September 1964 issue of Science Fantasy magazine, "Anita" (the first of a series of stories featuring a teenaged modern witch and her eccentric granny) and "Escapism." .

Several of his early stories were written using the pseudonym Alistair Bevan. His second novel, Pavane, which is really a collection of linked stories, may be his most famous work. It is an alternate history in which Elizabeth I is killed and England never gains ascendency.

A later series of stories features Kaeti, a young woman who turns up in different guises at different historical periods, but always with the same name and usually the same "supporting cast" of friends and lovers. The name Kaeti is almost an anagramAn anagram ( Greek ana "back", and graphein "to write") is the result of permuting the letters of a word or words in such a manner as to produce other words that possess linguistic meaning. The meaning of the new word so created is seen in the context of of Keith, suggesting that she may represent Roberts' animaAccording to Carl Jung, the anima is the feminine side of a man's personal unconscious. It can be identified as all the unconscious feminine psychological qualities that a man possesses. Jung also believed that every woman has an analogous animus within h.

Roberts wrote numerous novels and short stories, and also worked as an illustrator. His artistic contributions include covers and interior artwork for New WorldsNew Worlds was a British Science Fiction Magazine which was first published professionally in 1946. For 25 years it was widely considered the leading science fiction magazine in Britain, publishing 201 issues up to 1971. Since 1971 the name of New Worlds and Science Fantasy, later renamed Impulse.

Many of his stories have been published posthumously.

He also edited the last few issues of Impulse although the nominal editor was Harry HarrisonHarry Maxwell Harrison (born March 12, 1925 in Stamford, Connecticut) is an American science fiction author who has lived in many parts of the world including Mexico, England, Denmark and Italy. He currently lives in Dublin, and is Honorary President of t.

Partial Bibliography

Novels

• The Inner Wheel
• Pavane
• The Boat of Fate (a historical novel set in Britain at the end of the Roman Empire's power)
• The Furies
• The Chalk Giants

Collections

• Anita
• Kaeti and Company
• The Grain Kings

• Lemady: Episodes of a Writer's Life (autobiography)