Tag: Books

Who Reads My Books: Chris Haringa

Posted on by Neal Asher

I am Dutch, 65 years of age and what Neal would call a ‘stinking old hippy’. I read heaps and heaps of SF until I was 20-something, then suddenly had enough, and never touched the stuff again apart from some fantasy. I studied chemistry without realizing what I was in for, then after half a year I found out, and dropped out. Since then I’ve worked as a labourer, factory worker, white van driver, salesman in a DIY shop, and a patient transporter for a hospital, but spent at least half of the time not doing shit but talk with me mates stoned out of my mind….

I got married in the UK to an English lady somewhere along the line and, when our first son was due to arrive, decided it was time to take life seriously. I went to a state subsidised school to become a carpenter, again without a clue what it meant to be a carpenter in everyday life. So there I was at 7 in the morning amongst my fellow carpenters, who could only talk about sex, cars and sports, which made me feel kind of lonely…but I was a responsible person now so had to hold on. I did so for 3 years until one November morning – zero degrees above zero, 7 in the morning, a touch of flu but not enough to call in sick, me standing on a ladder in the door opening of a vast building screwing in a rail to hold up big sliding doors, with wind howling past me. I felt so desperate I started to pray ( never saw a church from the inside hahaha), ‘Please dear god help me out of here, can’t stand it anymore!’ At that moment one of my co-workers came up to me and said, ‘Chris please step down from the ladder, I have something to tell you.’ So I did, and when I reached the ground he talked to me for a bit and then suddenly pushed me in the chest because he saw the big metal ladder being blown over by the wind and coming in our direction. It hit me on the big toe and broke it in two places, and would have smashed my head to bits if he would not have pushed me….

So there I was with my foot in plaster, right next to the heater being served nice cups of tea by my lovely wife… and I never went back. My next job was as an EEG/EMG technician in a general hospital. I went to evening classes for that for two years, and kept the job for ten years. Nice and warm inside the hospital, friendly people, but I got bored and, because the Misses was English and kind of homesick, we decided to give it a go and try to make a living in GB. So off we went with our, by that time with 5 kids, to a winter let in the Cotswolds.

We had a good friend there: a very successful graphic designer who promised us to set up a business together, but he failed to do so because his marriage sort of exploded. The only work available at that time was carpentry again, for much less money than I would have made doing the same in Holland. And apart from that I’d done that, seen that. So back to the Netherlands again where an old friend told me that a local comprehensive school, close to where I lived, needed a teacher to take care of the practical part of the physics lessons. To be honest I don’t think they would have hired me was it not for the fact that one of my closest friends was on the board of directors at that time…

So that’s what I did for the last 25 years and now, being 65 and all, the big holiday has started! Met Mr Asher and his wife in Greece a couple of years ago, didn’t know he was a writer at first, pleasant people to talk to over a pint or a glass of wine (contrary of what one would expect reading his blog….hahaha) One day he told me to read one of his books, but I had my doubts not being interested in SF anymore (I prefer modern American literature like John Irving, Tom Wolfe, Donna Tart and the like) but thought, whatever, I’ll give it a go. After a few chapters of Gridlinked I thought that I made the right decision a long time ago, enough SF, but I felt I should finish the book. The funny thing was that although I was not interested at all in the story, the writer managed to grab my attention so I turned a page and another page until I realized I had a page turner in my hands, well done Mister Asher!

Dystopia Myopia

Posted on by Neal Asher

Okay, back to a bit of blogging every day. There’s an interview with me over here at Worlds in Ink where I ramble on about The Departure and where you’ll find the blurb for Zero Point. I also make some comments about ebooks, but nothing ground-breaking because I’m still undecided about the various issues that arise from piracy and DRM. I would like to believe that without DRM piracy would act as publicity and result in more sales for me, but I’m afraid I have a low opinion of human nature. Then again, this morning I got paid $40 by a reader who emailed me earlier in the week with this:

I need to send you some money, I “ahem” got your books at the library, and they are all fucking brilliant.

…so perhaps I shouldn’t be such a cynic?

***

What else? Oh yeah, we’ve had two democratically elected leaders ousted and replaced by ‘technocrats’. We now we have the BMA pushing the government to ban smoking in cars and doubtless the government will bow to this then to the later total ban on smoking i.e. your car will not be your own and later your house won’t be. Another one is the idea that unless you opt out your organs will automatically go for donation, so your body belongs to the government too. How long before you are legally obliged to keep that government property in top-notch condition? All of these are putting more power into the hands of the state, taking away our freedoms, and examples of how we move ever closer to the world of The Departure. As for the BMA, I think Underdogs Bite Upwards covers that organization in a recent post:

What is the point of going through medical school if you end up being less reliable in your diagnoses and advice than a rune-casting Druid? Alcohol units recommendations are made-up numbers. Five-a-day is a made-up number. Second hand smoke is entirely lies and third-hand smoke is beyond derisory from a profession that calls homeopathy bunkum. There is no science behind any of it. It is personal prejudice based on spite and malice and what is now called ‘science’ and the utter morons who now make up our government accept it all. The exclusion and demonization of huge tracts of the population is justified on the basis of… nothing.

***

I’m currently working through the Peter Lavery edits of Zero Point and finding that he hasn’t been quite so demonic in his application of his ‘scary pencil’. He tells me that this is because it doesn’t require so much editing, so hopefully this means I have learnt something from him over the last ten years.

Right, an hour of learning Greek now, then shopping, then back to work.

Well Spotted

Posted on by Neal Asher

Jin Liqun, chairman of the board of supervisors of China Investment Corp., slammed the welfare systems of European countries and said the continent must address its own problems to attract outside investment.

“If you look at the troubles which happened in European countries, this is purely because of the accumulated troubles of the worn out welfare society,” Jin told Al-Jazeera television in an interview broadcast at the weekend.

“The labor laws induce sloth, indolence, rather than hardworking.”

Spot on, but we’ll be a long time waiting for any such sanity from our ‘leaders’.

Incidentally, two elected leaders have been chucked out and replaced by Europhile shills (I will not call them ‘technocrats’ because the word implies a pragmatism that just doesn’t exist in the EU elite). How long do you reckon before they’ll start calling them ‘delegates’ … and how long before they start suggesting ID implants as a practical solution to border control?

Waterstones, Chelmsford

Posted on by Neal Asher

We popped into Chelmsford yesterday, mainly so Caroline could renew her driving licence (nearest post office with the facility to take her photo too) and, as is usual before these trips, I first printed up some of my bookmarks. I then went to Waterstones and offered to sign my books there. They were fine with that as usual and I went through about the 10 – 15 copies on the shelf. Meanwhile I was passing a greedy eye over a big fat Vernor Vinge tome, but on closer inspection discovered it to be a repackaging of Fire Upon the Deep & Deepness in the Sky, so gave it a miss. However, while browsing I did see some stuff I wanted to try. In the end I left Waterstones with the lot below:

Update:
Nope, I screwed up. The Vernor Vinge one isn’t a repackaging – I must have misread on the quick glance inside I had. I’ll be buying a copy shortly.

Resolutions

Posted on by Neal Asher

A lot of people tend to make New Year resolutions but for me it’s becoming the ‘back from Crete’ resolution. After my initial greedy splurge on the Internet, reading sometimes as much as seven months’ worth of various blogs, and discovering as always ‘same old shit; different month’, I resolve not to spend quite so much time on it. However, that’s just the same as my, ‘I’m never drinking again!’ after a particularly bad hangover.

Resolutions I will stick to are these: I will continue with my twenty sit-ups and twenty press-ups every morning, I’ll cycle during from Monday to Friday as much as weather permits, and I’ll do two weight-training sessions a week. Another thing I resolve to do, because I was lazy this summer in this respect, is spend one hour a day learning Greek. I want to return there (unless of course it becomes dangerous to do so) with at least every single phrase from my Rough Guide imbedded in my mind. Starting Monday I’ll get my head down with Jupiter War, finishing working backwards through it, and writing the rest of the chapter starts and inserting all of them. After that I need to write blurbs for Zero Point, and perhaps a synopsis, then it’s either time for some short stories or work on Penny Royal.

Another thing I’ll have a pop at will be more of those video clips I did last year, with you providing the questions and me either answering or muttering my way out of trouble. To that end please start asking your questions in the comments section here. Try to be precise and try to bear in mind stuff already known, like, yes I am returning to the Polity – I said so in the paragraph above.

On a Departure

Posted on by Neal Asher

On a previous post someone who signed in as Northern Fop had this to say in the comments section, and I’ve brought it here because my reply is going to be a lengthy one:

Hi Neal. I’m a long-time fan so I was a little taken aback by the negative reviews “The Departure” has received on Amazon. I was curious how a writer (well actually, you) deals with this.

Do you ignore it – after all, the book is still selling by the bucket-load – or try and view it as constructive criticism?

I suspect some of the whining is driven by the “but it’s not the Polity!” brigade, but the reality is these reviews will have a negative impact on your income, which has got to hurt. [I get the impression from your blog that you’re not yet on Tom Clancy levels of income…]

Nope, I’m not on Tom Clancy levels of income, but the pain is not about income. Even when I can logically rip apart such reviews, or when there are a hundred positive reviews to balance against them, they still hurt and feel personal. No writer wants his book to be disliked and no human being wants to be personally disliked. However, anyone who paid the entry fee, i.e. bought the book, has a right to a say. If what they say is constructive I’ll absorb and inwardly digest it, but let’s be honest here, when someone dislikes a book, their comments are usually completely negative. ‘Like’ or ‘dislike’ usually come first whereupon the reviewer searches for justifications. I can be as guilty of that as anyone and, because I know how it feels, I generally try to avoid reviewing a book I didn’t like, or didn’t finish.

So, what I have to do is just take it on the chin and carry on. The title The Departure, it’s now becoming evident to all, has a double meaning. It is also a dystopia which for me is also a bit of a departure in itself. The Polity books are all usually set on the Line – some border or war zone – but in essence are somewhat utopian and positive in their outlook: the people have all the wonderful toys of advanced technology, the prospect of living forever in a lurid and busy universe full of wonder. In writing The Departure, I half expected to be punished for ‘departing’, for there are those who feel betrayed when a writer doesn’t produce more of the usual. So why did I take this risk? Why not just keep on pumping out the Polity books?

When I look around at other writers I see many of them confined by their fans, by their publishers, and by fear of failure, to a single narrow milieu. Continuing to write the same thing they can become dry and stale, and quite often just fade away. Also, those who followed their initial success with lots more of the same, are always punished for daring to venture off into something different. After the lengthy Thomas Covenant fantasy, Stephen Donaldson tried science fiction and got pilloried (though I’m going to be reading his first two SF books soon). Martina Cole, trapped in her narrow London gangland milieu, is being steadily dropped by her fans. And I’m sure you can all also think of writers who produced one excellent series, then seemed to just disappear.

Because of this, right from the start I tried to keep myself out of the trap. This is why you didn’t get the Cormac series delivered one book after another, or the Spatterjay series, and why various outliers like Hilldiggers and Cowl were also dropped into the mix. In itself this wasn’t too risky, since most were Polity books, but I can see how, if I had written the Cormac series first then followed it with the Spatterjay series, there would have been those protesting the change and demanding another Cormac book. I did take a risk with Cowl and, when I delivered it, an editor’s response to someone else was, ‘We might have made a mistake here’ whereupon that book went on to be shortlisted for the Philip K Dick award. I took a risk writing Orbus in present tense, and that polarized opinion with some hating it and some thinking it my best book to date.

So, I departed with The Departure because I did not want to be trapped in the Polity forever. I took this risk because I didn’t want to become stale. I’ve opened up another option, another future in which to set books because I’m here to stay and intend to keep on writing books until they nail me into a coffin. Yes, I’m getting some negative responses, but I’m also getting some very positive ones too. I suspect that most of those Polity fans that dislike this book are not going to dump me at once. Maybe they won’t buy or read the next two books in this trilogy (which would be a shame because it gets a lot more sfnal), but they’ll probably pick up the next Polity book I produce (which I’m thinking of calling Penny Royal – I may have ‘departed’ but that doesn’t mean I’m never coming back to the Polity). Meanwhile, this book is attracting new people to my stuff, and it’s expanding my market, since many of those new people will go on to try my previous books.

Note One: I never judge a book’s success or otherwise from reviews on Amazon. Over the last ten years I’ve seen books there roundly praised in hundreds of comments, but have known, from those in the industry, how few copies actually sold. So, in answer to your question, Northern Fop, the reality is that there isn’t much in the way of a ‘negative impact on my income’ because of them. I’ll just wait and see what sales figures the publisher comes up with which, thus far with that visit to the top 20, may well be good.

Note Two: I don’t bother with reviews from those with a political axe to grind. I’m aware of reviewers who are quite prepared to attack me solely because my political views are contrary to their parochial left wing stance. Of course it’s okay for writers they agree with to wax lyrical about the delights of socialism and anti-capitalist greenery, but I must keep silent. Don’t you just love the stink of hypocrisy?

The Bully State – Brian Monteith

Posted on by Neal Asher

The End of Tolerance

‘Even if I am a minority of one, the truth is still the truth.’ – Mahatma Gandhi.

This is pretty good as it covers the lies and fact twisting used to push through legislation ‘for our own good’. I didn’t, for example, know about the measurable rise in deaths in countries that introduced the seatbelt law – the unintended consequence of people feeling safer so driving faster and closer to the car in front – nor how the statistics in Britain were skewed by the drink drive ban. Nor did I know the story of Fred Hill, who was a WWII dispatch rider, and his protest against being forced to wear a crash helmet – a protest that led to him dying in Pentonville prison. It was also interesting to read about how the IRA killed more people than any Muslim terrorist in this country yet no need was felt for ID cards and all the rest of the autocratic anti-terror legislation. I of course did know about the lies, fact twisting and ‘consultations’ with bought-and-paid-for NGOs used to push through the smoking ban, and how the same methods are being used on alcohol and ‘unhealthy’ foods.

‘The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule it.’ – Henry Louis Mencken.

This book ventures into the mindset of the people who want to control every aspect of our lives, and points out that though the majority of them are politically correct dicks in the Labour Party, and their useful idiots in local councils, they are by no means unique – the urge in politicians to lecture and admonish and generally treat voters like idiot children is a strong one. To a certain extent it is dated, in that it was published under the Anti-Midas Gordon Brown, and an awful lot has happened since then. However, this does not undermine the central thesis of the Nanny State turning into the Bully State in which advice and nannying to try and change people’s behaviour have turned into fines and prison sentences.

‘The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights, cannot claim to be the defenders of minorities’ – Ayn Rand.

Hyperion – Dan Simmons

Posted on by Neal Asher

Be warned: there are some spoilers here…

I really enjoyed many aspects of the Hyperion Omnibus and would certainly recommend it to anyone, however (isn’t there always one of those?), it was a bit of an up and down experience for me. The Priest’s Tale was excellent, with its cruciform parasites and how the horror of them for a catholic drove Father Dure to do what he did, and I quite enjoyed how that plot thread was woven in later on. But balanced against that, what later seemed the proselytising of the C. S. Lewis kind, with a bit of L. Ron Hubbard thrown in for good measure, had me gagging. Apparently love is a fundamental basis of the universe, whilst god, being woven in at the Planc level, transcends time and is the triune entity of the Christians … and lo the messiah is to be born!

The Soldier’s Tale with its violence, military technology, mysterious woman (and with Kassad’s yet to be explained encounter with the shrike as the mysterious woman) I much enjoyed too, though later on this was a plot thread that tended to fizzle. The Poet’s Tale, whilst still enjoyable, suffered from a problem I felt was endemic throughout the books: too much in the way of literary allusions and pretensions. How often I found myself skipping the obsessing about Keats and pointless quotations of poetry. There’s much about the power and wonder of poetry and poets, and the implication that isn’t the pen mightier than the sword? Yeah, well, take your Parker to your next sword fight and see how you get on. The Consul’s and The Detective’s Tales were great too, but by then I was starting to get anxious about the proliferation of ideas and plot threads and the possibility of this not completing.

The setting of Hyperion was excellent, with this whole story taking place under a sky lit by interstellar war, as was the interplay between the shrike pilgrims. The tree of thorns is a horrifying image that sticks, and the time tombs were the kind of idea just about any science fiction writer would be jealous of.

The shrike itself was good whilst only glimpsed, but suffered under close inspection. My feeling was that it started out as a monster from Dr Who and was not cured of the rubber mask syndrome by the later add-ons from Alien. And, now I’m reading Endymion, by its Terminator II transformation into a good guy.

There were lots of ideas and threads needing to be tied together in these books, and so they were, sometimes very well and sometimes in a kind of soapish babble. Simmons did manage to pull the rabbit out of the hat, but it had lost one ear and most of its fur during its stay. Still, don’t get me wrong, there are hours and hours of science fictional reading pleasure here. I in fact loved the whole massive chaotic canvas of this story which, really, wouldn’t have been possible without that mass of ideas and interweaving plot threads.