Tag: Books

Who Reads My Books: Huan Tan.

Posted on by Neal Asher
Here’s Huan Tan — he’s the one on the right!

I thought I had better give you a short Bio. Currently living in Ireland and working for the Irish Sea Fisheries Board as a Fisheries Technologist. What that means is that I get to try and introduce new technology to the Fishermen. That could be as simple as another net design or as complex as sticking satellite tags into giant bluefin tuna and seeing where they go.

I have been working for this company for the last 12 years but before that I was a fisherman for 10years, I fished and drove boats around the world, Japan, Australia, Tahiti, Solomon Islands, Guam and New Zealand and the Flemish Cap were all places that I fished or delivered boats through. This gave me a great interest in marine life and is partly why I enjoy the Spatterjay series so much. There is plenty of weird stuff in the sea that hardly ever gets seen by people other than fishermen or avid documentary watchers. Especially the real deepwater stuff >1000m.

I also spent time as motorbike mechanic, a short order cook and a plastic double glazed window maker.
These days I like to spearfish, ride motorcycles and shoot firearms.

Funnily enough nearly all photos of me in the last 20 years or so have of me holding a fish….. Goes with the territory I guess. The backstory to this pic is that it was taken aboard a Norwegian research vessel called the G.O.Sars, way up past the arctic circle. We were doing some mad experiments to see if we could develop fishing gear that had a reduced environmental impact. Since then people have discovered that trawling is actually beneficial to some bottom types, a bit like ploughing a field I guess.

That cod was a big one, and went to make lots of pieces of boiled cod for the crew.

I hope this helps

regards

Huan Tan
County Cork
Ireland

Paul Cornell on E-books

Posted on by Neal Asher

Thanks to Neil Mullins (Skar) for directing me to this. Paul Cornell has some quite apposite things to say about the e-books market and piracy etc. Here’s the first two of his nineteen bullet-points:

1: Publishers have always thought that when you buy a hardback, what you’re paying more for is the chance to own it on the day of publication. Paperbacks are cheaper because they come out a year later. The reading public, on the other hand, always thought what they were paying more for was the extra physical mass and quality. (Actually, a hardback costs, one publisher told me, only from 50p to a couple of pounds more to make.) So obviously publishers think an e-book, out on the day of publication, should cost the same as a hardback. And obviously the reading public think it should cost less than a paperback. From this difference in perception stem all subsequent horrors.

2: British publishers are faced with an additional cost for e-books in the form of V.A.T., Valued Added Tax, currently set at 17.5% of the sale price going to the government, set to rise to 20% next year. This tax doesn’t apply to printed books. I asked Ed Vaizey MP, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries, if this was going to change, and was told there were no plans to alter the V.A.T. rate at the moment.

Gary Gibson on E-books.

Posted on by Neal Asher

Here’s another way of looking at the whole issue … with tongue firmly wedged in cheek.

I would like to make ‘a modest proposal’ concerning the ebook market, given that I agree fully that authors should get paid for their work. I should know, I’m one of them, and yet according to some we are about to be inundated by a vast wave of piracy that will see artists and creators of all types rendered destitute.

Now I must confess some of my sins.

Breaking Dawn — Stephenie Meyer

Posted on by Neal Asher

This was a bit of a struggle for me at first because, well, I’m male. The running round and the frocks and all the other palaver of preparing for a wedding hold about as much interest for me as … um, I was about to write ‘watching paint dry’ but that’s wrong. Watching paint dry wouldn’t irritate me as much. The ensuing wedding I skipped through, hoping to get to something interesting. But I have to say again that this is because I’m male. I can understand (sort of) how it was necessary to write this because a huge proportion of the readership of the Twilight series wanted this pay-off. I could have done without the first chapter or so.

After that things picked up very nicely. I’m not going to give any spoilers here, but I roared through the rest of the book and when I put it down I was satisfied. It worked. The series completed. I enjoyed it.

You Can Contribute.

Posted on by Neal Asher

Here’s just a little reminder for everyone, and some information for new members here: If you delve into the history of this blog you’ll find a number of ways you can contribute.

The bookmarks competition finishes on New Year’s Day. Design me some bookmarks that use the Jon Sullivan artwork and display the eddress of this blog and you could be the winner of some signed copies. The winner gets the Cormac series and the Spatterjay series (new covers), second place gets the Spatterjay series, whilst the top three additionally get copies of my books that they haven’t got in their collection … oh, and when I say that, I mean any of the Macmillan books – all signed of course.

I’ve been running a series of profiles and still want contributions. The title was ‘Who Reads My Books?’ For anyone who is interested, I’d like a short biography and some photographs of you. Tell me about yourself, advertise if you want, if you have a blog or a website of your own then let me know. Thus far (if my recollection is right) we have plenty of IT guys, a pilot, a geneticist, writers, a composer, jewellery maker and much more besides. But don’t be intimidated by these – I want to know about YOU and your interests. Remember, before I got where I am now I used to cut grass for a living.

It’s also interesting to see photos of people’s SFF collections. I enjoy having a look at them and so do many of those who come here. Let’s have a look!

Send your photographs etc here ndotasheratvirgindotnet

Finally, I’ll shortly be doing another video clip to post up here so I would like some more questions. I’ll answer as many of these as I can within the 10 minutes allowed (You Tube) then carry over what’s left to the next clip. Post your questions in the comments section here.