Tag: Books

Audio Books

Posted on by Neal Asher

They’re not up yet. I’m told:
                  

I’m sorry to say that although we planned that your series would be live tomorrow it appears there was some glitch in the upload on the US side. We have tagged this as ‘urgent’ for them, and they have promised to try and get it live by Friday. As soon as we release it we will promote it in all our social media channels. Also, if you’d like, we can provide a trackable link to the product page for the series for your blog.

In further news, look who’s narrated the three books: William Gaminara.

Before joining the cast of Silent Witness, William’s last major role was as Will in the dot com drama Attachments.

His other TV credits include The Law, People Like Us, Hope and Glory, and Dangerfield.

William played Dr. Richard Locke in the BBC Radio 4 drama The Archers. He previously starred as Casualty’s Dr Andrew Bower between 1989 and 1992, a character that returned in 2000 with Philip Bretherton in the role. William’s also played a doctor in The Bill.

As well as acting, William is an accomplished writer. His work includes episodes of This Life and The Lakes, and he recently adapted Ella and the Mothers for TV from Rachel Morris’ novel.

Orbus etc.

Posted on by Neal Asher

Here’s a nice commentary:

Neal Asher is another of those British writers of far future high tech space opera, like Iain M Banks, Ken Macleod, Alistair Reynolds, & Charles Stross (about whom I hope to write later). He’s constructed a particularly interesting & nasty future history of a distant & much changed humanity & what it meets in the far reaches of the universe. In his various novels, the star spanning Human Polity, run by massively intelligent AIs, has met an enemy species, the Prador, who apparently look a bit like huge & armoured crabs or lobsters. Asher has written a number of novels about the Polity Agent, Cormac, a few about other aspects of the Polity, & 3 about the effects of the planet Spatterjay & a peculiar genetic virus found there (which affects both humans & Prador). Although the Polity & the Third Kingdom of the Prador have ended a long war between them, there are still lots of border battles & lots of spying, etc, all of which come into play in Orbus.

And I can’t remember if I linked to Alex Cull’s review of Orbus. I particularly like the last comment:

As you have probably realised by now, I had a lot of fun reading this novel; and yes, I’m rather a fan of Neal Asher’s books, generally. Orbus isn’t The Catcher in the Rye, or Anna Karenina, but then it never sets out to be. There are indeed days when I prefer to read something like Anna Karenina. And there are other days, mostly after having done my level best to help prop up this country’s ailing economy for another twenty-four hours, when what I really, really want to read about – and nothing else will do – is aliens trying to murder one another with absurdly powerful military hardware.

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

Posted on by Neal Asher

You can probably guess the impression the book of this made upon me when you consider the name of Ambel’s ship in The Skinner. I called it the Treader, because that seemed like a good name for a somewhat weird ship undergoing a weird journey and, remember, Ambel’s ship even had a talking animal aboard…

However, if we are to judge by the way the last two books have been portrayed in film, I was missing the somewhat unsubtle message and the indoctrination bounced off my thick skin. When I read the books as a youngster I enjoyed the magic, swords, talking animals and not for one second did I think that I had ‘nothing without belief’ or that I had to ‘have faith’, nor did I notice that in our reality Aslan went under a different name. Even then I was realizing that suspension of disbelief was what I wanted, between the covers of a book.

The film was visually gorgeous and I would have enjoyed it immensely but for those two comments above dropped in like a roast pig in a mosque. From the first of them it lost me and I was sitting there with a bit of a sneer on my face, which became more pronounced at the end with all that Aslan’s kingdom nonsense.

Where the books so unsubtle? I don’t remember, maybe because as a youngster, having been brought up in an agnostic then firmly atheist household, I was making no connections at all. If they were then I find it surprising that my mother, a school teacher, used to read them to the kids at her school. One would suppose that they were, since in his other works C. S. Lewis was loudly banging his tambourine and arguing for belief, for faith. Or is it the case that those making these films too firmly bought into the idea of the Narnia books as a Christian allegory?

Where the books this loaded with doctrinal cudgels? Or were the products of this member of the Inklings not quite so consciously didactic? I don’t remember being quite so annoyed by the first film, The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe. Different directors, producers?

Lensmen Movies

Posted on by Neal Asher

The old E. E. ‘Doc’ Smith books are no longer in my collection any more, having fallen foul of one of my general clear-outs, but I do recollect enjoying them when I was a teenager (Lensman and Skylark series). I think I dumped them because I was allowing myself to be influenced by the opinions of others at the time. They were also old, as in ‘astrogator calculates course with a slide rule’ old. It’ll be interestng to see what kind of a movie these will make, since this was BIG space opera:

The internet movie database has the Lensmen movie listed as sometime in 2011.

Writer J. Michael Straczynski said in 2009 he’s finished his second draft for Lensmen, and producer Ron Howard and Universal are happy with it. He said it’ll be very character-based, typical of Howard’s work, and yet the special effects will be cutting edge. And it’ll keep the massive scale of the original novels, as much as possible.

The Babylon 5 writer and Ron Howard? Seems promising…

Audio Books

Posted on by Neal Asher

Many of you have been asking about the possibility of my books being turned into audio books. Now, I heard that this was going to happen and that negotiations were in progress. Recently getting another query from one of you I inquired about the progress of this and have been told that this is how things stand right now:

The Spatterjay books, The Skinner, The Voyage of the Sable Keech and Orbus are being turned into audio books at audible.co.uk. Production was completed around 1st December but there was a glitch with the audio file for The Voyage of the Sable Keech. That has now been sorted and the books are being processed for uploading to the Audible site. Processing takes approximately five days, so the titles should be live for download by Wednesday next week, 12 Jan.

Enjoy!

Line of Polity and The Technician Reviews

Posted on by Neal Asher

Nice review here of The Line of Polity from Mark Chitty over at The Walker of Worlds.

The Line of Polity is the second novel in Neal Asher’s Cormac series, following on from events in Gridlinked. I read Gridlinked quite a while back and enjoyed it and I’ve also read plenty of other works by Asher that I’ve thoroughly enjoyed. I picked up the complete series some time ago but, for some reason that eludes me at present, never got around to reading the sequels. Well, despite the long gap between reading the first and second I jumped straight in wondering what exactly I’d be getting here – and boy did it not disappoint!

 
 

Also another nice review here over at Temple Library Reviews of The Technician:

 

The Technician is about an intriguing alien mystery explored through the life of a few colorful characters. It is also a return to old familiar premises on the planet Masada for us old Asher fans.

Visiting Masada again for me was a bit like coming home and I got to enjoy some of the characters from previous books (You can read my review of them, links are below. The Line of the Polity is the one with most Masada in it).

Who Reads My Books: Spencer Van Schevensteen

Posted on by Neal Asher
My name’s Spencer, I’m 24 and live in Harold Hill, Essex. Grew up around Upminster and Romford, left school at 16 to work for Ford Motor Company. Did an apprenticeship, stayed there for 6 years doing fibreglass modelmaking, toolmaking, some CAD and CNC but nothing too complicated or involved!! After leaving there and drifting from job to job, I finally settled in Harold Hill with my girlfriend, and became a househusband… ish. She earns ten times more than I ever will, and with our baby girl nearly here it seemed only sensible that I take care of the ankle bitter!

I’ve been reading for as long as I can remember. Started out on things like Goosebumps, Terry Pratchett, and the Hobbit. As I got older I discovered Science Fiction, among many other genres, and its basically taken off from there. I enjoy listening to music, anything from the thrashy, insane time signature metal, all the way down to jazz, country, some classical, all sorts. Just as long as its not a manufactured band or artist. Nothing is worse than emotionless, mass produced pop drivel! I watch a lot of films, television and stand-up comedy. Favourites include Deadwood, The Wire, Boardwalk Empire, Breaking Bad, The Proposition, anything the Coen brothers have done, Bill Bailey and Doug Stanhope. I also waste a lot of time playing Xbox, far too much time if truth be told!

I enjoy walks, with and without the dogs, bike riding, a bit of skateboarding, and golf. I don’t drink, but occasionally indulge in other intoxicants. Moderation in all things.

Hope that’s not too long, I attached a few photos of myself and a part of our book collection. A lot of my comedy and WW II books are upstairs in boxes, as the 2nd floor is being re-done and there’s not enough space to get them all down yet. Antony Beevor’s Stalingrad is definitely one of the top ones not shown, as well as Stirling’s Men, a book about the birth of the SAS.

Anyway, enough of my rubbish!

Hope anyone reading this had a good break over Christmas and the New Year,

All the best,

Spencer & Rebecca.

Here’s Spencer’s book collection: