Author: Neal Asher

Writing News Update

Posted on by Neal Asher

Okay, that’s a wrap. Gardner Dozois has accepted a story for his New Space Opera II. It’s called Shell Game, involves the Polity and another new set of rather nasty aliens. Other news: I’ve just sent off the short story collection to Macmillan. Some of you will have read some of the stories since they are ones that have appears in Asimov’s, Interzone and various ‘Year’s Best’ collections, but I guarantee none of you will have read them all. Here’s a list of the stories, which may be subject to change:

1. Softly Spoke the Gabbleduck
2. Putrefactors
3. Another England
4. Garp and Geronamid
5. The Sea of Death
6. Alien Archaeology
7. Acephalous Dreams
8. The Veteran
9. Snow in the Desert
10. Strood
11. Choudapt
12. Adaptogenic
13. The Gabble

At some point, when I can easily work out how to change an Adobe image to a jpg I’ll put up the cover here with its seriously weird gabbleduck picture.Addition: Here’s something I probably haven’t mentioned. You can go listen to one of these stories over here at Escape Pod!

Writing News Update

Posted on by Neal Asher

Here’s a bit of an update on the writing and so forth: My Czech publishers – Polaris – have offered for rights of The Voyage of the Sable Keech. Publication will be within 12 months, licence limited to 4 years. Nightshade books are publishing Shadow of the Scorpion on May 1st this year. This is a book (longer than Prador Moon) covering some early episodes of Cormac’s life: Raised to adulthood during the end of the war between the human Polity and the vicious arthropoid race the Prador, Ian Cormac is haunted by childhood memories of a sinister scorpion-shaped war drone and the burden of losses he doesn’t remember. In the years following the war he signs up with Earth Central Security, and is sent out to help either restore or maintain order on worlds devastated by Prador bombardment. There he discovers that though the old enemy remains as murderous as ever, it is not anywhere near as perfidious or dangerous as some of his fellow humans, some closer to him than he would like. Amidst the ruins left by war-time genocides, he discovers in himself a cold capacity for violence, learns some horrible truths about his own past and, set upon a course of vengeance, tries to stay alive. As for writing done while in Crete: I completed the above mentioned book, a 10,000 word story for Gardner Dozois’s New Space Opera II and am more than a third of the way into Orbus, a follow-up to The Voyage of the Sable Keech: The Old Captain, Orbus – a sadist in charge of a crew of masochists – became a reformed character at the end of The Voyage of the Sable Keech and took over the captaincy of the spaceship the Gurnard. Meanwhile, the Prador Vrell, mutated by the Spatterjay virus into something powerful and dangerous, had seized control of a Prador dreadnought, killing its entire crew, and was heading back to the Prador Third Kingdom to exact vengeance on those who tried to have him killed. Both these characters are heading for ‘The Graveyard’ (mentioned in Alien Archaeology – Asimov’s) a buffer zone between the Polity and the Prador Kingdom, the perhaps into the kingdom itself. Orbus has a few unresolved issues about the Prador and about Vrell in particular …

Cretan Adventure: Episode One.

Posted on by Neal Asher

Alright, I feel completely out of the loop at the moment because, for the last four months, me and Caroline have been living on Crete, specifically, living in the house we bought there and trying to solve its numerous problems. Now, before I hear cries of, “Rich fat bastard author!” let me point out a few facts: it is still possible to buy a place out there for less than it would cost to buy a garage in Essex, there’s plenty of people reading this who earn a damned sight more and are worth a damned sight more than us, and we are unencumbered by children, but, most important of all, mine is a job that can be done anywhere in the world. Glad to get that bit out of the way. We went to Crete in October aware that we would have plenty to do. The house was provided with a shower, sink and toilet in an untiled bathroom and though there were sockets and light switches in the walls there were no lights – just wires sticking out of the walls. The only furnishings there, were the kitchen sink unit, a cupboard above it, and a set of shelves. The walls had been repainted, covering up the mould, and the water and power were off. First off we stopped in a hotel in Heraklion while visiting our lawyer to collect the deeds and buy some essentials. Caroline got some bedding and a kettle, whilst my first aim was to get hold of an electric drill, then we drove a rental car on the two hour journey to Eastern Crete. Upon our arrival there we discovered from the agent that the key was in the usual place, under a rock on the window sill, then found out from him where we might be able to get hold of a bed which, making a mockery of deliveries from British firms, turned up that very evening. We were in quite easily, since we were expecting to sleep on liloes that night, and spent the first evening by lamplight sitting on our suitcases, drinking Metaxa.

God is not Great — Christopher Hitchens

Posted on by Neal Asher

Having watched, listened to and enjoyed numerous video clips of Christopher Hitchens on You Tube I decided to buy his book God is not Great (How Religion Poisons Everything) and now, being about a third of the way in, I can make some comparisons between it and the Richard Dawkins’ book The God Delusion. In essence the two writers have assaulted the same territory and the books are very similar, but they have approached it from different directions. Dawkins is a scientist used to conveying his ideas in an as clear and concise a manner as possible and, having donned some literary garb, is still doing the same thing but in a much more palatable way for the general reader. Hitchens has approached the whole territory from the literary side and is more focused on that angle than the sometimes quite arid and exact scientific viewpoint, which certainly comes out when you hear Dawkins speak. Certainly Hitchens is just as sincere and strong in his opinions as Dawkins, but he’s also more concerned with writerly flourishes and probably the opinion of the literary critics in his circle. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still enjoying his book’s pyrotechnics immensely, and recommend it, however, thus far I prefer The God Delusion.

Hospital MRSA.

Posted on by Neal Asher

Our Health Secretary will apparently say, “Today I am setting out how we will equip the new regulator with tougher powers, backed by fines, to inspect, investigate and intervene where hospitals are failing to meet hygiene standards.” So, apparently, this is going to help crack down on MRSA, but who I wonder is going to be fined? Is it going to be the Nigerian illegal immigrant mopping all the floors and wiping down all surfaces with the same bucket of dirty water? Is it going to be the doctor who failed to wash his hands after taking a dump? Or the nurse whose education now tells her more about how she should treat the Nigerian cleaner than about hygiene? Is it going to be the wanker politicians who so overloaded the NHS with red tape, targets and useless bureacrats to deal with all this that there’s not enough money for a bottle of Domestos? Is it going to be the waste-of-space hospital managers who sit quivering in their offices? No, of course it isn’t. The dirty hospital will be fined, the guilty parties will continue trousering their inflated salaries, more red tape will be generated, the doctors and nurses will be wasting their time filling in paperwork, and stumbling over a new strata of ideologically correct bureaucrats incapable of dealing with the real problems and, because the hospital budget has been reduced, patient services will be trimmed down, hurried, cut. And where will the money from the fine go? To another hospital? Well maybe a small portion of it, after most of it has been hoovered up by the twats administering it all. End result: microscopic change in services, huge amounts of money wasted.