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Category: Articles
Trying out a Poll…
Martin Asher
Whilst I was struggling up the writing ladder and beginning to cast an eye over those new-fangled Amstrad word processors, my brother Martin, having worked as a diesel fitter then bus driver, took an electronics course, then a job with a company repairing printers, computers and other office hardware and, as time passed, sorting out software too. He suggested to me that I needed an IBM clone computer to do my writing on. I demurred, I was a writer, so why would I need anything more than a glorified typewriter? So much for the foresight of this science fiction author.
Because he could and because he knew better (he did), Martin provided me with one nonetheless and, after a period of painful adjustment, I saw the advantages in this green screen Wordstar computer with its one megabyte hard drive. Martin moved on, working in various other computer repair companies, and upgrading me throughout that time to what I have now. He went through a divorce, has a daughter called Dawn who is now thirty, hooked up with Kathy and, after they were together for a number of years, eventually married her. He scuba dived, wind surfed, took holidays, read books, watched TV, got drunk, spent too much time on his computer, ate meals… He did all those things we all do as we live a life, and some things we don’t all do. He ended up running servers and sorting out computers at Essex Police HQ in Chelmsford and was valued there, made a lot of friends there. Throughout that time he was the one I could rely on when my computer went wrong, the one who sorted it all out for me, and incidentally sorted computers out for the rest of our family and numerous other people besides.
But not any more.
I had three brothers: Paul is four years older than me and Bob is ten years older than me, and Martin was six years older than me. Difficult to write in the past tense here. I grew up with them all, they’re all a part of my life, my history. From Martin I read my first Edgar Rice Burroughs John Carter on Mars book, and some J T Edson’s… The first and only shotgun I fired was his. Two small memories from a great mass of them; two small aspects of that large chunk of existence that was, well, my brother.
We’re not one of those families that need to live in each other’s pockets – it’s enough to know that the others are there, and we get on with our own lives. On occasional family get-togethers you realise you still have a lot in common, but less and less as the years pass. But still.
Martin was, I think, proud of my success. But as I said, we were not so close that we needed continuous contact, so I wondered why when he called me over the phone whilst we were in Crete this summer. It was to inform me that he’d been diagnosed with cancer of the oesophagus. He would have six weeks of chemo then an operation to remove the affected part. All very matter-of-fact, and maybe some degree of unconscious self-preservation stopped me checking out statistics on the Internet.
He was operated on about the time we got back – part of his oesophagus and stomach removed, and the two severed ends sewn together again. He spent many weeks in hospital. We went in to see him and it shocked me to see how thin he was, but then, he hadn’t eaten food in four weeks, the food fed in by tube. Even the water was fed in by tube and all he could do was rinse his mouth out and not swallow. While he was in hospital he had problems, things weren’t healing up, he had a leak inside, then, all at once he was out. Looked like he was getting there.
Out of hospital for just a few weeks and he didn’t improve, almost died and was taken back. Eventually they got round to testing the fluid in his abdomen only to discover a secondary inoperable cancer. Quite bald statement then: he is going to die, and soon. How do you handle that? It’s something you can neither deny or ignore. You can get angry, but it doesn’t change the verdict, and in the end you just feel a horrible hollow misery. We went to see him in hospital, he was skeletal, barely coherent, obviously uncomfortable. His life-span was one week, then two weeks, then a few days, then twenty-four hours. He died today on Sunday 24th January, and has left a hole in my life. He was 54 years old and too damn fucking young to die.
I guess I’m not the first person to say that.
Dirty Jobs – Gooey Ducks
Little Story
Here’s one from Max Thompson who joined up on my FaceBook site:
I also have a tale of synchronicity involving one of your books.
I was living in Kuala Lumpur a few years ago and Hilldiggers has just been released. I could not get it anywhere and was mightily disappointed as wanted to take it on a trip to Langkawi to read on the beach. On arriving at the aforementioned island after settling myself in I went for walk along the seafront and came across a flea market. Bugger me if the wasn’t a 2nd hand copy sitting there on a book stall for about 5 ringit !! The only English book in sea of German bodice rippers. I was the happiest bloke alive and you have never seen a anybody get their wallet out so fast.
I’ve seen by books right round the other side of the world, plenty of them in New Zealand and I even signed a wall in a bookshop there, but it is nice to find out where else they appear.
Who Reads My Books? Seth Samuel.
Dear Neal,
I’ve been enjoying meeting some of your other readers and decided to chime in myself.
Amazon recommended The Skinner to me about 6 or 7 years ago, and I checked it out of my school’s library (Oberlin College in Ohio), read it way too fast, bought my own copy, and read it again. I never read books twice.
And I’ve subsequently read fifteen more of your books (all of them?)
You may be happy to know that you’re now one of my four favorite Neals! (Neal Asher, Neil Gaiman, Neal Stepheson. And my friend — Neil — who is not an author.) I’m also a big fan of China Mieville, Stanislaw Lem, and Jonathan Carroll, among others, in case you’re interested.
I am a 25-year old composer living in San Francisco, not yet making a living with music. Soon enough, I hope, though! (I’ve put a ton of my original music on my website — www.sethgsamuel.com ). I worked at two bookstores in Atlanta while in high school and summers during my college years — Chapter Eleven and Wordsmiths — and now both are gone, which is sad. I got a Masters in Film Scoring at NYU after getting my Bachelor’s in Composition at Oberlin, and while in New York I interned at the literary agency Black, Inc — the agency of, among others, Mitch Albom. Yep. I got Mitch Albom coffee! He said “thanks.” To me!
And now I live biking distance from a great, great store in San Francisco called Borderlands that carries all your books. I got my last two Ashers there, and they were pleased. Maybe I’ll work there.
Anyway, 99.9% of my books are back in Atlanta, in my parents’ house, but I’ve catalogued just about every book I’ve read to date on librarything.com. I’ve attached a screenshot of page one from it to this message.
Right between Woody Allen and Isaac Asimov — that’s you!
Best,
Seth
H is for Heinlein and Herbert
PETER HAMILTON | SECOND CHANCE AT EDEN |
CHARLES L HARNESS | THE ROSE THE PARADOX MEN |
HARRY HARRISON | STAR WORLD PLANET OF THE DAMNED ONE STEP FROM EARTH |
ROBERT A HEINLEIN | STARSHIP TROOPERS FARMER IN THE SKY THE STAR BEAST THE GREEN HILLS OF EARTH THE MAN WHO SOLD THE MOON PODKAYNE OF MARS THE PUPPET MASTERS |
FRANK HERBERT | THE JESUS INCIDENT HELLSTROM’S HIVE THE GREEN BRAIN THE SANTAROGA BARRIER THE DOSADI EXPERIMENT THE BOOK OF FRANK HERBERT THE WORLDS OF FRANK HERBERT DUNE DUNE MESSIAH CHAPTER HOUSE DUNE HERETICS OF DUNE GOD EMPEROR OF DUNE |
PHILIP E HIGH | COME HUNT AN EARTHMAN |
Injustice
A millionaire businessman jailed for attacking an intruder who kidnapped his family and held them at knife-point was freed by the court of appeal today.
This man should never have been put in prison in the first place, and his brother shouldn’t be there now. You know, we are citizens of a society so surely the police and judicial whine that, “You must not take the law into your own hands,” is anti-society, it’s a charter to renege on any societal responsibility, it’s an excuse to say, “Nothing to do with me mate.”
This is all about the state not wanting any of its citizens to have any power at all because, really, its power over you is more important to it than its power to prevent criminals harming you. If some shite kills you in your own home, the state isn’t threatened, but you having personal responsibility, the power to act for yourself and think for yourself is plain dangerous to it.
Hussain, 53, had discovered three masked men in his house when he returned with his family from prayers at their local mosque. The burglars forced them into the house, tied them up and threatened to kill them before Hussain managed to escape and alert his brother, Tokeer Hussain.
The pair returned to the house in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire and chased and caught one of the gang, Walid Salem, a criminal with more than 50 previous convictions. The court heard Salem was then subjected to a “dreadful, violent attack” during which he was hit so hard with a cricket bat that it broke into three pieces, leaving him with brain damage.
So, because of the time delay this is a revenge attack. Revenge is only something the state is allowed, when it is being harmed. It’ll throw you into prison for tax fraud, for example, but nutters with knives threatening someone’s family get a get-out-of-jail-free card:
Walid Salem, 57, was set free by a judge while Munir Hussain, the householder, was jailed for two-and-a-half years.
Oh, and apparently Walid Salem’s brain damage was not sufficient to stop him going on to commit further crimes:
Salem was arrested on January 4 this year carrying 20 counterfeit credit cards, a false driving licence in the name of Gamal Ben Ghali, a stolen driving licence photocard in the name of Brenda Gray, and a stolen driving license photocard, National Insurance Card and Halifax card belonging to Lucie Taylor. It is thought Brenda Gray and Lucie Taylor are the names of two crime victims.
I think there are some definite lessons to be learned here. The first and most important is: buy an aluminium baseball bat – it won’t break.
Who Reads my Books? Phil Ackerman.
Hi Neal
You asked who was reading your books, well here I am an Electronic Engineer designing radios for air-traffic control. Small department of approx 20 people so have to put my hand to all sorts of designs, audio, PSU, RF etc.
I have been reading SF since finding my older brothers collection of Asimov and Heinlein, though I was put off Heinlein after reading Stranger in a strange land, too hippy.
I love reading most proper SF, you, Reynolds, Hamilton, Vogt, Smith, Egan etc etc. Best thing with SF though is getting Interzone every other month. My other hobbies include cycle racing, bird watching and walking.
Can find photos of me at www.PhilAckerman.co.uk and I have attached photos of part of my collection.
Phil Ackerman.
Pushing Ice — Alastair Reynolds
So Janus, one of Saturn’s ice moons abruptly takes off out of the solar system, shedding ice and rock as it goes to reveal the alien spaceship underneath. Fortunate choice, and in every sense, since Janus is the two-faced Roman god of gates and doorways. I could ramble on like the most anal of SF reviewers about how this was an ongoing theme throughout the whole book, but such themes can be found in any book.
Then, after Bella Lind puts it to a crew vote, the mining ship Rockhopper sets off in pursuit. A human story aboard that ship, friendships tested, broken, healed, life and death decisions to be made and sometimes not made too well.
I had a little problem with some of the characters, not because they weren’t well-drawn or weak as some reviewers seem to think, but because they were annoying. I constantly felt that they needed a kick up the behind, whilst one of them could have done with a rock chisel through the back of her head quite early on. Also there was what I’ll describe as a black box MacGuffin that fizzled a bit. Minor points, really.
All this was set against a backdrop of the immensity of space and deep time lovingly illustrated by Reynolds’ knowledge of astronomy and relativity, vast and ancient alien technology, human technology taken to the limit too, and aliens. Yup, sensawunda here, and Pushing Ice pushed all my buttons in that respect. I enjoyed this and I’m glad I bought it.