When I first saw Steve Rawlings’ cover for Gridlinked, I have to admit to a degree of puzzlement and disappointment, since for so long I had been in love with old lurid SFF, covers like those produced by Foss, or like the thoroughly lurid ones found on one of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Mars books, maybe a green multi-armed Tars Tarkas weilding two or three axes or swords. However, it then being the case that, ‘this is your cover’and ‘you like it don’t you?’ I kept my mouth shut and, by the time the cover for The Skinner appeared with a similar design but in wonderful shades of Mediterranean blue, I was hooked.

On the fifth book, Brass Man, it seemed the time for a change had come as I was now ‘a name’, that name needing to be larger on a plainer background. So the hardback came out with a design similar to that of the previous four, whilst the paperback got the makeover. It was pretty cool – the brass man himself reflected in a lizard eye – and many of the ensuing covers have been as good. Yet how good was driven home to me as I became thoroughly aware of just how bad covers could be. For example the cartoonish American cover of The Skinner was a thorough disappointment, and the curious German habit of recycling covers was puzzling and annoying – it took me some while to work out what was going on with the Lubbe cover for Gridlinked, until I discovered they had reused the one for Arthur C Clarke’s 2010.

As the new design of cover progressed we decided on a main and thoroughly relevant picture on the front, along with one of my inevitable monsters displayed on the back. However, sometimes the monster turned out better than the main picture and in two cases was swapped around. The decidedly odd gabbleduck of The Gabble exchanged places with a somewhat difficult to identify piece of technology. But the Prador Moon revision has to be the best: the generic rocketship being relegated and the Prador itself moved to the front. Some readers have pointed out that the creature doesn’t quite measure up to those described in the book, however, a crab carapace sprouting all sorts of cybernetics along with a couple of Gatling cannons, is quite sufficient to float my boat.

In all, my favourite Macmillan covers are those for Hilldiggers, Prador Moon, Brass Man and Shadow of the Scorpion. But there have been many delights elsewhere: the Japanese cover of Cowl, the American Brass Man and the superb Stephan Martiniere cover for the first French version of The Skinner. And now the new German covers, at last.

So, Emily Wu, the Product Manager for Macmillan books in Australia, told me that they supply books to a good specialist science fiction/fantasy bookshop in Sydney called Galaxy Books, who asked whether I might be interested in providing a guest blog for their website. I’ve never done a guest blog before but, being an SF writer and avid SF reader, how could I possibly refuse a request from someone with a name like that?

Y’know, I loved Ringworld, and Ringworld Engineers by Larry Niven and maybe she’s related to Louis Wu? Maybe she’ll send a Pak Protector after me if I don’t do this blog. Maybe she is a Pak Protector!

I emailed the store manager Mark Timmony about this and he replied with ‘Basically I have been letting author’s run wild talking about the world(s) their latest title is set in and the themes they wanted to/were exploring that are not immediately obvious from the blurb’. Well, a chance for me to waffle on about one of my books… It’s a no-brainer really.

Okay, here’s one of the selection of blurbs I wrote up for The Technician:

Twenty years after the fall of the Theocracy, a religious policeman, Jeremiah Tombs, the only living survivor of a hooder attack, has escaped his sanatorium. The scorpion drone Amistad lets him run, for though Polity technology could cure him, the AIs are reluctant to meddle since it was the near mythical Technician that attacked him, and it did something to his mind that even they don’t understand.

The amphidapt Chanter pursues the Technician in his mudmarine, trying to understand the grotesque sculptures of bones the creature makes with its victim’s remains, trying to understand its art. He is recruited by Amistad, along with ex-rebel Commander Lief Grant, and a lethal black AI everyone thought was dead.

Tombs could possess information about the racial suicide of the Atheter, but his self-destructive madness needs to be cured by confrontation with the reality about him, a reality in which the religion-hating Tidy Squad wants him dead. And meanwhile, in deep space, the mechanism the Atheter used to reduce themselves to animals, stirs from slumber and begins to power-up its weapons.

***

Right, time to heat up the waffle iron.

The planet Masada, the planet where this is set, first puts in an appearance in the second book in the five-book Cormac series: 1. Gridlinked, 2. The Line of Polity, 3. Brass Man, 4. Polity Agent, 5. Line War. There was, quite simply, one reason I wanted to return there –gabbleducks – and, initially, that was the title of the book I was writing. These creatures are the deliberately devolved descendents of the Ather mentioned above, and they have grown in the telling, sparking off three short stories Softly Spoke the Gabbleduck, The Gabble & Alien Archaeology, which appeared in Asimov’s Magazine, some ‘Year’s Best’ collections and now finally reside in a collection with the overall title The Gabble. I wanted to write more about them, expand on them, but it didn’t quite work out that way.

First let’s take a look at Neal Asher’s desk and the preparations he’s making for his next book. Post-it notes on the pin board? No, just some Jon Sullivan covers, the Greek alphabet and last week’s shopping list. Rough synopsis on the screen. No, just a ranty blog about smoking bans or political correctness. Some ideas jotted down on that pad? No, they’re from the last book. Research notes? Get out of here, haven’t you heard of Google?

Actually, I did do a little preparation for The Technician by reading The Line of Polity and Alien Archaeology to remind myself of some cogent points. However, when I write a book I embark on the same voyage of discovery as you guys when you pick up a book and open it, except my voyage starts at a blank page.

With this book I started by writing about a toadman called Chanter and his interest in the grotesque art of a hooder called the Technician and, when on my voyage I found out that the Technician was a two-million-year-old biomech war machine, that kinda hooked my interest.

Next I wrote about Jeremiah Tombs, ensconced in a sanatorium for over twenty years, mad as a box of frogs after having had a very nasty encounter with the Technician, and it having done something quite odd to his mind. I wanted to know exactly what that hooder did to him, and the only way to find out was to write my way there. Along the way it seemed the right thing to do to drop in the war drone Amistad (The Shadow of the Scorpion), a black AI called Penny Royal (Alien Archaeology) and some inevitable interference from that alien entity called Dragon, who suicided on Masada, and rose again as an entire race. But even with all these, the threat levels weren’t quite high enough and the chances of planetary extinction remained low, so it was necessary to spice the mix with a billion tonne ancient genocidal mechanism.

Keep it simple, I say.

Of course there are gabbleducks here, but they don’t feature so much as the Technician itself, hence the change of title. I guess that leaves things open for me to do a book called Gabbleducks sometime in the future.

Now, to conclude, because I’m running out of steam and don’t know how to waffle on without giving too much away, I have to wonder if you are any the wiser for reading this? Probably not, but I hope you’re intrigued…