Here’s a recent picture of our Crete house courtesy of Richard Graves. It looks like our first week back there will be spent weeding!
Tag: Bits
Where's My Banner?
Now let’s play a game of ‘Where’s My Banner?’
The first place I find it is at Mark Chitty’s Walker of Worlds.
The next place is at Gecko Mines, Railguns and Crab-Paste the website belonging to the poster here Jebel Krong (where does he get these outlandish names?)
I’m told it should be appearing at Civilian Reader, but it hasn’t yet.
Anywhere else?
Update: now on http://www.sffnews.com/
Living on Mars.
I can see the future. One day (after the flags have been planted, and after the Readymix lorries have departed and the property developers have set up shop) we will live on Mars. I see a future version of me trudging out across the Martian peneplain for a first look at my new home, whereupon, out from behind a boulder, will step a man clad in improbable shorts and a Hawaiian shirt. “Neal Asher?” he’ll enquire whilst consulting a clipboard. “Yes…” I’ll reply, worried that my instinct for avoiding time-share salesmen has deserted me. “So can I sign you up for the darts night, or the karaoke?” You’ll hear my screams long before I reach and tumble over the cliff edge of Coprates Chasma.
Banner
Chloe Healy just supplied me with this banner produced by their web team for panmacmillan.com. It should also be appearing here http://www.walkerofworlds.com/ and here http://civilian-reader.blogspot.com/ shortly.
Crete House
I recently tried to send some pictures of our Cretan house to Julie Crisp and Chloe Healy at Macmillan, but got blocked by their email security. So, for when someone asks me about that place, I’m putting a few here to direct them to. The dates on these vary so, for example, the shot below of the spare room is from when we first went to look at the place.
1) The front of the house. Pergola yet to be put up.
2) The front of the house, repointed and pergola and grape arbour now visible.
3) Front garden, looking towards the front terrace.
4) View from the front terrace.
5) Side gate.
6) View from the roof.
7) Ruin around the back — at some point to be turned into a guest room with double bed, shower and a little kitchen.
8) Central heating system.
9) Main room.
10) Main room (other direction).
12) Main bedroom.
13) Spare room.
You Gotta Laugh.
It is hilarious to read some of the sniping from that wankland occupied by many critics and wannabe academics of SF world. In that place it is possible to get away with the most egregious left-wing fuckwittery but, if you do not agree with their common purpose, you are first described as a clumsy and generally bad writer, then farcically branded ‘too political’! If an author writes the most grotesque Marxist diatribe dressed up as SF, the critics from this region will be fulsome in their praise, their literati masturbation frenetic as they mount his leg like over-excited terriers.
The above is my brief reaction to some shite I’ve read on the Internet about my stuff. Some while ago an American SF writer was in contact with me. With a degree of disbelief he said, “You’ve actually admitted to being Conservative … and you write science fiction?” Actually, I disagree. Since you’d have difficulty slotting a fag paper between the British Conservative and Labour parties, and since they are equally undemocratic and authoritarian, I style myself Libertarian i.e. I’m for small government, less interference and hey, let’s stop the growth of the thought-police right now. But I knew precisely what that writer meant by his comment, and am relatively unsurprised by the reaction I get from some quarters.
Damn but it must peeve these people to know that despite my not buying the party line I’m simply not failing and fading away into obscurity.
No, I’m not paranoid, though I’m sure the guy following me is.
Cretan Things
Since the sun is starting to put in an appearance and I am presently typing all my Crete journals into a file, I’m thinking more and more about Crete. Now, is my table still okay? I found it in a village dump, stripped it, re-glued it and stained and varnished it. It now resides in Nectarius and Elly’s house next door where it served during their ‘kazanis’, which is a name attributable to a raki still, the place where a raki still can be found or the party they have whilst stilling the raki – I haven’t made my mind up about that just yet.
Water Scorpion
Interesting Post Chain
I just had a look at Whatever, John Scalzi’s blog which often has interesting stuff about the business of writing. I read this and was intrigued, so went over to the post by Charlie Stross. This then led me to further interesting posts. You can learn a lot here about the processes involved in getting a book into your hands.
Ansible
I’ve been meaning to say something about this for some time. Many of you may know about Dave Langford’s Ansible – you’ve maybe read some of his articles in various magazines. I get this newsletter by email and get filled in on the various doings in the SF world. Particularly enjoyable are ‘How Others See us’ in which he records the ludicrous statements of those who don’t want to be accused of science fiction, and ‘Thog’, in which he points out some of the silly errors many fiction writers make (still waiting to be thogged). Dave Langford is an erstwhile weapons physicist, fan and fiction writer and recipient of an embarrassing number of Hugos.
Update: You can subscribe to the email newsletter or get the RSS feed up in the top lefthand corner here.