Tag: Bits

Failed Genetic Rackslub

Posted on by Neal Asher

Here’s a couple of pictures from our very own Vaudeviewgalor Randisraisins (I wish you’d shorten that name, Vaude) which are, I quote, ‘ just did a title page for a paranormal easter bbq book coming out 2010. sending the attachment and an illos for a jack vance game’.


Not quite sure what a paranormal barbecue is … kebabs with ectoplasm sauce? But certainly the name Jack Vance interest me.


Incidentally the title of this post comes from the subject line of the email. I suspect there’s a strange hidden society blossoming somewhere in Berkeley, but I guess that’s not unusual for California.

Competition Winnners!

Posted on by Neal Asher

Okay, after much consideration of the various Mr Crane images I have to give special mention to Ivan Halen and Bob Lock, but the winner is this one by Carlos Mendez, who gets first prize.


The runners up are Vaudeviewgalor Randisraisins (try saying that without taking a breath) for his psychedelic glister, which touches on the fact that if you eat glister brains it makes you high, and Robert McGregor for his gabbleduck. Regarding the latter: this is not really the image in my head but, if I’d seen it before I’d started writing about gabbleducks, it would have been.

So, now I have to get the prizes to the various winners. Please, if any of you three are reading this, email me with your addresses at ndotasheratvirgindotnet.

Video Clip

Posted on by Neal Asher

Well, I did my first video clip a few posts ago and have been thinking on what to do next. Just prior to this I’ve posted an interview from Death Ray Magazine. Interviews generally demonstrate the interest of the interviewer (if any) and what he thinks might interest his audience, and he won’t necessarily get that right. So, why don’t we dispense with the interviewer sitting between me and you? YOU ask me questions. Put them here in the comments section and once I’ve compiled enough I’ll do another video clip to answer them, if I can, if they’re not to personal or abusive!

Death Ray Interview

Posted on by Neal Asher

Being as Deathray seems on the skids, I thought I’d post their interview with me here. I’ve a whole collection of interviews which I intend, gradually, to post here. The first question here relates to one of my stories published in their magazine.

Death Ray Magazine Interview.

Neal Asher Questions:

First tell us why you have chosen the story you have.

Neal: It’s the first gabbleduck story I had published in which I start to look more closely at the weirdness of them, and I like it.

Do you think that your Polity is a relatively accurate in its depiction of the relationships between men and machines, or is it just a heap-load of fun?

Neal: In the context of the Polity I try to suspend the reader’s disbelief as best I can but, frankly, if an accurate depiction of the relationship between man and machine was boring I’d drop it like scorpion sandwich. Always, with me, entertainment first. That being said I do think we will develop artificial intelligence and still be questioning what the Hell it is (hence the odd reference in my books to the X-hundreds of revisions of the Turing test); we will be attaching up our wetware to hardware and probably, in years to come, be walking about with memory extensions, increased processing and modems inside our heads. Perhaps a more likely scenario than the machines taking over is that the lines will become so blurred we’ll be almost indistinguishable from them.

It’s mentioned on your website and in a number of other places that you’ve tried writing fantasy on a few occasions. Is this still a genre you’d like to get into?

Neal: All those years ago, when I made the decision to pursue this profession, my first aim was to write the good old fantasy trilogy, which I did, along with the first book of a second trilogy. At that point, despite having an agent for a short while, I remained unpublished but didn’t want to stop writing. I thought it pointless continuing with the second trilogy when the first had yet to be placed so turned elsewhere, first doing a contemporary novel (also sitting in my files) then to the British small presses where I got my first successes writing short SF. From that it was a natural progression to longer works, steadily growing success until taken on by Macmillan. I write SF because I enjoy it more now, and I’m known for it and it sells, but one day I will have a go at rewriting the fantasy books, mostly because they are just unfinished business.

Mason’s Rats is your other most published ‘universe’. What was the inspiration behind this? It’s like the Rats of NIMH done in a classic BBC1 comedy style…

Neal: They’re not really my ‘other most published’ since there’s only three short stories, but they seem to be stories a lot of people have enjoyed. The inspiration? I guess living in rural Essex and seeing the bureaucratic bullshit farmers have to put up with, and also thoughts on how human beings are now one of the largest evolutionary pressures on all other living creatures on this planet. What’s going to develop intelligence next, and when? And hey, rats with crossbows are cool.

It’s been said to me ‘Neal Asher gives good monster’. Do you agree?

Neal: Well, I hope so – I try. I like my monsters as much as many others do and whilst trying to make them fit properly into some alien ecology I like to also venture into that mythical territory occupied by snarks and jabberwocks. Monsters are fascinating and fun when they’re in a book or film, hence the success of such human monsters as Hannibal Lector and others like the H R Giger Alien. Even in the real world they remain fascinating, hence the interest in serial murderers and surfer-gobbling white sharks. Just not so much fun, though.

Cretan Raki.

Posted on by Neal Asher

From October to December the Cretans start producing raki. Just prior to this you’ll see pick-up trucks motoring around loaded with crates of grapes or big brown plastic barrels as preparations are made. Traditionally the stuff was supposed to be produced from whatever was left of the grapes after pressing for wine, but I saw none of that. The grapes were transported straight from the vine to the barrels, were mashed up and left to ferment with their natural yeasts. Anyone who knows anything about wine making will know that the largest quantity of alcohol is produced in the first few weeks of fermentation. All the time the wine spends in demijohns or barrels thereafter is just to improve the quality of the wine, and wine was not the aim here.


The fermented mash is then loaded into the raki still and distilled. The result, raki, is a bit like grappa and is not ouzo. What you get is pure alcohol (with a bit of water) rather like whisky before it’s spent time in a sherry barrel to give it extra flavour and colour.

This stuff is made all over the island, even small villages will sometimes have three or four different raki stills. Some is for personal consumption and some for sale. We can buy Ziros raki from from a garage just a few miles away. It costs 4.50 Euro for a litre and a half. I’ve visited the place often enough now that I just go round the back to the barrels and fill up my bottles myself. It is also frequently a gift, along with olive oil, when eating with Greeks. In kafenions you can buy a karavache of raki for 1.50 Euro, which gives you about five good shots. Along with this you’ll also get mezes (usually for free) – plates of usually seasonal food: cold cooked broad beans and segments of sweetcorn, olives (always), raw broad beans, pear and apple, peanuts, tomato and cucumber sprinkled with sea salt, artichoke hearts with lemon juice and salt, cooked ‘horta’ … the list is a long one.


When the Cretans run a kazani (I’m still not sure what this name applies to: the still, the place where the still is located, or the party they have there) they usually fire it with olive wood. Since distilling sometimes hundreds of litres of raki takes some time they make an occasion of it. Guests are invited, raki glasses are never allowed to grow empty, and either on the fire or on a barbecue made with hot coals plenty of food is cooked – brisolas (marinated belly pork), baked potatoes, roast sweetcorn, chestnuts, sausage, rabbit, garlic bread – whilst other raw veg and fruit is also provided – pomegranites, cabbage with lemon juice and salt, artichoke hearts etc.

We’ve been fortunate enough to be invited to a number of these kazanis. The first picture is of the still at a Greek friends house (the guy standing there is Mikalis – excellent fellow). We’re also fortunate enough to have one of these stills located about thirty feet from our front door – a good staggering distance. The second picture is of that.

Deathray and Borders.

Posted on by Neal Asher

The credit crunch (silly name) continues to bite, though maybe in the case of Borders that’s credit crunch plus Internet and supermarket competition:

Borders UK, the bookshop chain, went into administration last night, putting 1,150 jobs at risk and raising the prospect of a firesale before Christmas.

It also seems we might not be seeing further issues of Deathray, which is a shame:

As some of you may have heard, and others who popped along the shops to pick up the latest issue of Filmstar may have feared, Blackfish’s two magazines, Filmstar and Death Ray, are currently ‘on hold’. What this means is that there will not be another issue of either of them along for a number of weeks – or, likely, months. Indeed, whether there will ever be another issue of either is a moot point, and at this moment in time impossible to answer. But we hope so.

Art Competition

Posted on by Neal Asher

Okay, I haven’t forgotten about this. I’m going to sort through all the pictures and pick winners in four days time, so if you’ve got something left to send, get it to me now.

Thanks to Julie and Chloe at Macmillan the prizes are these:

1st place: A signed proof copy of Orbus, a signed copy of The Gabble and signed brand new reissues (with the new covers) of Gridlinked, The Skinner, Cowl & The Line of Polity.

2nd & 3rd place: A signed proof copy of Orbus and a signed copy of The Gabble each.

Flood

Posted on by Neal Asher

It is a terrible thing to have your home flooded, and your belongings destroyed. It is a terrible thing when one of those working to save people’s lives is killed. And of course it all looks like a disaster of Biblical proportions … if you believe the press. And nothing like this has ever happened before … if you believe the press. Hell, has no one read any history books, or even any history novels? This is Britain, it rains here, it floods here, and it always has. Go on the Internet and check up on some history for goodness sake!
Cockermouth – Rivers Cocker and Derwent
Description

Cockermouth at the confluence of the Rivers Derwent and Cocker has been designated a ‘gem’ town by the Council for British Archaeology to be preserved as part of the National Heritage. It has an extensive conservation area within the town and numerous listed buildings/structures. The Flood Warning Area covers an urban area of 0.77 square kilometres. Number of Properties at Risk in FWA 574
Flooding History

Earliest recorded flooding was in 1761, since then flooding has occurred in 1771, 1852, 1874, 1918, 1931, 1932, 1938, 1966, 1999 and 2005. (and now)
In 1938 flooding under Cocker Bridge washed away a section of sewer and Barrell Brewery Bridge collapsed (Waterloo Bridge stands there now). The town centre and Main Street were badly affected. It was claimed that trout and even a large pike were caught on the High Street.

On 7th and 8 th January 2005, although the River Cocker was in spate with a return period of 1 in 25 years, the main source of flooding was the overtopping of the defences by the River Derwent with a return period estimated at 1 in 100 years.
… Flooding then extended onto the northern half of the Main Street and then covered the whole of the Main Street to a depth of 100mm. Parts of Waterloo Street suffered flooding up to 900mm deep. 113 properties flooded in the Waterloo and Main Street areas and 2 properties from Tom Rudd Beck (Main River). In the Gote area, which is undefended, initial flooding occurred to a low level area of Sandair from a rising water table. Shortly after this the area in front of the allotment gardens started to flood, initially from highway drainage connected to the river. River levels continued to rise and reached the rear of Gote Road, flowing through the properties onto Gote Road. At peak river levels a flow route was established via the entrance to the cricket ground down Gote Road to the low point. At roughly the same time a flow route was established to the river from the north end of Gote Road. Some 34 properties suffered internal flooding with the maximum flood depth on the road being some 900mm
Note the parts I’ve highlighted. These things are cyclical and the only reason they are getting worse in Britain (if they are) is because we’ve concreted over vast swathes of this country and the water has no where to soak away. But come on now – this sort of thing, historically – was not uncommon:
Thames flood in 1869:

Victorian floods in Windsor 1869, 1872, 1875, 1877, 1891 & 1894
and how about

The East Coast flood of 1953.

Laptop Steering Wheel Desk

Posted on by Neal Asher

My thanks to Dick Puddlecote for this one – it made my morning:

I loved my Laptop Steering Wheel Desk so much I got one for my 90yr old mother. She is an avid crossword puzzle fan and now she can work on them while she is driving back and forth from bingo at the senior center. One cautionary note be careful of those jerks that stop at yellow lights, my poor mother rear ended one and the airbag drove the desk back into her stomach which ruptured her spleen, well after a short down time I’m glad to say she is back on the road and cranking out those NY Times crosswords once again. Thanks Laptop Steering Wheel Desk you have made my mothers life more complete.

Wow is this thing great! I use it as a “mini-bar” when the friends and I go out to the bars. I can quickly fix multiple shots of tequila for myself and the friends as we drive from one bar to the next. We also discovered that if you place a pillow on top of it and turn on the cruise control you can catch quick naps on the interstate. If you swerve to the left or right the rumble strips on the road wake you up in plenty of time before you get into trouble. I can now take longer trips without being tired!

Also, i am now dating a midget and she fits nicely on the steering wheel desk which allows us to experiment sexually while driving. This thing is like WD-40 or duct tape, it is a million and one uses!

There’s 270 reviews like this. Gives me hope for the human race.

Update: 187 reviews here of a Bic pen.