Category: Articles

John Carter of Mars

Posted on by Neal Asher

Well, I watched John Carter with mixed reactions. It was visually gorgeous with its landscapes, cities and weird flying machines (which bore some resemblance to the things in Cowboys and Aliens) and the creatures were spot on. I loved the Tharks which often seemed to be better actors than the humans and the star of the show had to be Woola which, but for the fact it was a six-legged amphibian, was the spit of a Staffordshire bull terrier my brother once owned. At times I also got a bit of a lump in my throat because this was John Carter of Mars from the books of Edgar Rice Burroughs which were some of those that introduced me to science fiction.

However, I didn’t like the interplay between Carter and Deja Thoris. I felt the urge to giggle inanely and hide my face in embarrassment. I found them both unconvincing and frankly feel that the arch baddy would have been better cast as Carter, while the princess was just eye-candy. A lot of the acting seemed B-movie and flat, but then that might also be down to the directing.

The jumping was plain silly – yes Carter had Earth muscles and was stronger etc. but him jumping half a mile while carrying someone was ridiculous. Now, I can’t remember how that was in the books and it might well have been some of the silliness of them coming through… Also, were metal and stone somehow weaker on Mars? I can’t remember.
Did the books have too many faults that could not easily transfer to the modern age? Were they in themselves just too silly and dated? I don’t think so. I live in an age when fiction from my formative years is appearing on the screen with the required CGI. I still think the first new Spiderman movie is great, Conan the Barbarian couldn’t have been better and better cast (I read the Robert E. Howard books about the same time as I was reading the Carter books) and Lord of the Rings left me gob-smacked. 
I did enjoy this film, but would I have enjoyed it without the nostalgic connection in my mind? In the end, without that connection, it would have been a film consigned to the category ‘it was okay’ which, of course, is not the result you’re after when you spend 200 million. 

Tor Books Blog

Posted on by Neal Asher
Tor Books has a blog over here for anyone interested in keeping up with what they’re producing. The most recent post is about Zero Point.

‘Fast, furious, violent, slightly tongue-in-cheek (I think), and a whole lot of fun that makes 1984 seem like a children’s tea party, with a great cover from regular artist Jon Sullivan . . . Go on, dive in, you won’t be disappointed’
 British Fantasy Society
‘Asher is brilliant at conveying the vastness of deep space . . . and the sweep of planetary horizons’
SFX
‘Rail-guns rattle off, pulse rifles fire out shots and explosions ring out. This is what Asher does best’
SciFiNow
‘Action packed and thrilling, The Departure is a must for all fans of contemporary science fiction who haven’t experienced Asher’s visceral novels before’
We Love This Book

I Wii on my Blood Pressure…

Posted on by Neal Asher
Interesting: I’m 51, I smoke and often drink more than the government’s silly recommended limits. On January 1st after Christmas excesses my blood pressure was at 144/90 which, if you check the graph below, you’ll see is getting dodgy. As is our custom we knocked drinking on the head throughout January and after that just found ourselves disinclined to drink as much as we had been before (the hangovers just get worse and worse).

About mid-February a brief exchange with someone we know, who bought a Wii after hearing us singing its praises, reminded us about that device, which we hadn’t used since coming back from Crete. At Caroline’s instigation we started using it again, dancing to various songs for half an hour a day. This half hour, every time, has resulted in me with my shirt off while a drip sweat. At about this point, probably because of January’s abstinence, my BP was 136/87. Ten days later it was down to 131/75. Now, a month after we started in on this, it is at 124/79.

Of course BP readings can change all the time and you need to take a lot more readings than I have been taking and average out, but there’s definitely been a downward trend. It’ll be great if it continues on down until both diastolic and systolic are both in the green area. Perhaps to get there I need to shed the extra stone I’m carrying…

Starship Sofa

Posted on by Neal Asher
Heh, I never spotted this picture before. It’s from Starship Sofa and the audio version of my short story The Gurnard. To the right you have Erlin (of Spatterjay fame) in the background you have one of the carnivorous sheep, and the hero, Sirus Beck, having disposed of one of the bad guys, is carrying the Gurnard itself in that fish bowl.

Other audio versions of my stories can also be found. Here you can find Adaptogenic. And here over at Escape Pod you can find Acephalous Dreams and The Veteran.

That’s not forgetting that The Skinner, The Voyage of the Sable Keech and Orbus can be obtained from Audible.

A Chapter Break

Posted on by Neal Asher
 After working backwards through Jupiter War I next worked through it forwards again and at last it was time to send it off. ‘Sending off time’ arrives not when I feel I’ve finished a book, but when I realize I’m starting to make changes out of boredom with text I’ve read just too many times. So, today I sent off Jupiter War to Macmillan.

I was undecided about what to do next, whether to write synopses and blurbs or just get back to the Penny Royal thing. I decided on the former because Jupiter War is still clear in my mind. I was going to describe the process I use for this, but we’ve been there before. Anyway, at 5.30 I now have a 3,000 word rough synopsis (six pages), which I will tidy up and from which I will produce a one-page synopsis. From this, I will then produce a selection of blurbs – exciting descriptions of the book that don’t give the game away. I can then dust off my hands with satisfaction, and go back to Penny Royal. Of course it’s not all over. Peter Lavery or some other editor will attack it with a pencil, a couple of copy edits will come my way too…

Right, I am now feeling quite smug as I sip a glass of red wine prior to enjoying a nice curry. It’s a brief stop along the way, a page or chapter break, but I’ll be back at the keyboard soon enough. I sometimes try to envision stopping, or retiring, but that’s for those who don’t enjoy their jobs. The morticians will have to lever my cold dead fingers from the keyboard, I think.  

USA Rights to the Owner Trilogy

Posted on by Neal Asher

Okay, Night Shade Books has made an offer for the US rights for all three titles in the Owner trilogy: The Departure, Zero Point and Jupiter War. The rights are for a trade hardback, trade paperback, mass-market paperback and e-book. They would like to publish the first book in February 2013, following that up with Zero Point in May or June 2013, with the third one coming out simultaneously with the Macmillan edition. They’ll also be taking on the Jon Sullivan covers in some form.

Night Shade Books, incidentally, previously published Prador Moon and Shadow of the Scorpion in America. When I first sent in Prador Moon to them they were a small press publisher (basically just Jason Williams and Jeremy Lassen) but now, after a number of hiccups (due to that being ‘victims of their own success’), they’ve grown substantially. Let’s hope they do a good job of this!