Tag: Books

M is for May and Morgan

Posted on by Neal Asher

BARRY N MALZBERG
GUERNICA NIGHT
THE FALLING ASTRONAUTS
THE MEN INSIDE
HEROVIT’S WORLD
GEORGE R. R. MARTIN
A SONG FOR LYA
JULIAN MAY
THE GOLDEN TORC
THE NON-BORN KING
THE ADVERSARY
INTERVENTION
JACK THE BODILESS
MAGNIFICAT
JOHN MEANEY
TO HOLD INFINITY
R. M. MELUCH
JERUSALEM FIRE
CHINA MIEVILLE
KING RAT
PERDIDO STREET STATION
THE SCAR
THE IRON COUNCIL
RICHARD MORGAN
ALTERED CARBON
BROKEN ANGELS
WOKEN FURIES
BLACK MAN
PETER MOORWOOD
THE HORSE LORD
THE DEMON LORD
THE DRAGON LORD
THE WARLORD’S DOMAIN

Blood Music — Greg Bear

Posted on by Neal Asher

As expected I did very much enjoy this. I love the idea of transformations like the ones in this (telegraphed right from the start) and wasn’t disappointed with them. The book went from a bit of genetic manipulation to quantum mechanics and rewriting the laws of physics, with an interesting spin on how those laws are formed. It also dealt with immortality, and I’m a sucker for that. One teensy little problem, however. This book suffers from what I’ll call ‘the slide rule effect’. Some of the older readers here will know exactly what I’m talking about: those old SF books with grand-scale sensawunda in which the astrogator works out the course of the superluminal starship using a slide rule – some anachronism that takes that vital ‘suspension of disbelief’ a step further away. All the way-out (or not particularly way-out) science in this is fine, but that a large part of the story takes place in the Twin Towers does bugger it up a bit.

Wikipedia

Posted on by Neal Asher

It seems I don’t need to write an encyclopedia of the Polity. Here’s the start of a piece on the Prador over at Wikipedia:

Physical description

Prador are amphibious crustaceans with flattened pear-shaped shells with scalloped rims and a raised visual turret at the broad end that houses several pairs of red spider-like eyes, some of which are on movable stalks. Prador move about on six long legs, each terminating in a wicked spike. The rear pair of legs fall off when adolescent Prador make the transition to adults, exposing their sexual organs in the process. Along their underside Prador have four manipulatory arms, each ending in a hand described as “a complex arrangement of hooks and fingers”. These hands are highly dexterous and capable of fine manipulation, just like a human hand. It appears Prador can use all four hands to perform different tasks simultaneously, such as drawing and firing four different weapons at separate targets. Above these are the two heavy “working claws”; large crab-claw limbs that can easily cut through tough materials and crush human bones. Prador feed with a set of dangerous mandibles, capable of grasping, cutting and chewing flesh. Prador are carnivorous, and mostly feed on decaying flesh, primarily harvested from giant mudskippers farmed on their homeworld. Adult Prador are very fond of human flesh, however, and many humans are bred just for this purpose, although by the end of the book The Skinner, this practice has begun to decline. Prador shells are particularly tough, able to withstand impacts and small arms fire, but they seem quite vulnerable to energy weapons and heat, which can cause the shells to burst open.And here’s their entry about me.

What Now?

Posted on by Neal Asher

So, last year I finished The Departure, second book of my last three-book contract with Macmillan and at the time due to be published this year. I immediately got on with the last book of the contract, which then had the provisional title Gabbleducks, and polished off quite a lot of it. Once I was back here in Britain, Julie Crisp (senior commissioning editor for Tor UK) told me she really liked The Departure and, since it was the first book of a new series (The Owner series), she would like to publish that series consecutively. This was a break from my usual  habit of books from a series alternated with something else i.e. the order of publication from the start with Macmillan has been: Gridlinked, The Skinner, The Line of Polity, Cowl, Brass Man, The Voyage of the Sable Keech, Polity Agent, Hilldiggers, Line War, with Prador Moon, Shadow of the Scorpion and The Gabble coming in through a route separate to my main contracts. I said okay, let’s give it a try.

This now meant that I had to get Gabbleducks ready for publication this year, which I’ve done. It transformed somewhat in the telling and has now turned into The Technician. Julie now has that book and I’m chewing my fingernails waiting for a response on it. But this also means I’ve hit a bit of a hiatus. I am, effectively, a year ahead of schedule, so what do I do now?

Here are the choices I’ve considered: I could begin the next book in The Owner series, I could produce some short stories, I could pull that fantasy trilogy out of my files and start work on that, or I could set to work on writing a book about mine and Caroline’s adventures in Crete – based on my journal entries – for which I already have the title: Cicada Scream.

I recently got an email from Jeremy Lassen at Night Shade Books in which he wondered if I might consider having a crack at something else for them: a new series, maybe a fantasy – something different to help me penetrate the American market. The fantasy, which I’ve always wanted to rework but have never got round to, falls into that category. So, if I set to work on that I’ve got a target market, though frankly I wouldn’t expect difficulties selling it elsewhere.

So, right now I’m typing into my computer all my Crete journal entries in preparation for writing Cicada Scream. This will be a project I’ll work on with no finish date in mind. This evening I’ll print up the first book of the fantasy, The Staff of Sorrows, read it through and begin working on it with a pencil. More needs to be done than tidying up the English. The whole thing needs to lose its hackneyed fantasy clothing and there’s some big structural changes that need to be made too.

 These I’ll work on until the time comes for me to edit The Technician. After that I’m not sure how I’ll proceed, just a case of wait and see.

You see, I can make plans.

Who Reads My Books? Kirby Ubben.

Posted on by Neal Asher
Recently you posted on your blog prior to 1999 you were shoveling shit. well, as fate would have it, same here.
I grew up on a farm in the central US, in the state of Iowa. Shoveling shit was considered one of the ‘good jobs.’ That’s not true, it’s not considered good, just available. I did however spend my formative years shoveling the proverbial and quite literal shit.
I didn’t fancy sports much, and living in the country, socializing wasn’t readily available, so it was books, and largely, those were fantasy and sci/fi. At 18 years of age, in the year of 1993, I moved to Seattle, and happened on a contract job working at Microsoft’s Redmond Campus, and my tastes in leisure time literature turned more strongly science/fiction: William Gibson, Bruce Stirling, Isaac Asimov, Kurt Vonnegut.
Over the years, as I moved about, as I went to university and continued the IT career, I always came back to sci/fi. I’d jaunt off on Japanese history, Japanese historical fiction, a good mystery series, but sci/fi has remained my baseline.
Currently (speaking of Dirty Jobs) I work as the in-house systems engineer, defacto IT director, for a small company back here in Iowa, which has been featured on Dirty Jobs. Remember the chicken sexing episode? Squeezing poop from chickens to determine gender? Yup, that’s us: McMurray Hatchery.
It’s all about poop here in Iowa.
I would guess about 2004, I picked up a copy of a book by a fellow I hadn’t read before, one Mr. Neal Asher, on recommendation from a friend in Seattle: Gridlinked.
blown
away
I absolutely fell in love with it; the world it portrayed, the characters, both protagonist and villain equally compelling… I registered gridlinked.net and have been using it for vanity email since.
Next came the epic hunt for all things Asher; minor collector nerd OCD happily at work. The pinnacle of my Asher collection, in my mind, is the copy of Mason’s Rats, the paper pamphlet original, closely followed by the US hardcover first edition of Gridlinked, amusingly signed by Mr. Asher himself.
Just another farm boy turned deep Linux nerd obsessed with British sci/fi and the epitome of said genre, Neal Asher.
Increase fanboy count by one, please.
k.
 
 

Dexter Ominbus — Jeff Lindsay

Posted on by Neal Asher

The language of the first page of this hauled me up, but I persevered and was soon in territory I recognized from the excellent TV series. I was a bit dubious about the somewhat camp depiction of Dexter and the emphasis on his ‘Dark Passenger’ which only kicked in in the TV series when he was pretending to have a drugs habit, both as an alibi with Rita and a way to put Doakes off the scent. I really enjoyed the first two books of this, noting the differences and being quite happy with them – there were quite simply things that happened in this only suitable an X classification and would have cut down on the success of the TV series. The last book I hated. Lindsay took Dexter’s ‘Dark Passenger’ into supernatural territory, Dexter himself became a soppy ineffectual mess, and I felt it was wrong wrong wrong.

Thing is, whilst there were a couple of really enjoyable books here, and the idea of Dexter is all down to Lindsay, I find the TV series a lot better. I think that the TV version nailed the essence of it, of Dexter, which was in the first two books, and definitely not in the last one. You may think it odd me feeling that straying into fantastical territory was the wrong thing to do here, if you do, then go read my post about UFOs again.

Book Haul

Posted on by Neal Asher

Real highstreet book shops still have their appeal, especially when you know you want something, but are not sure what. The stack of books beside my bed was sadly lacking in decent SF so I wandered into Waterstones in Chelmsford to see what I could find. After signing their stock of my books, I started browsing, and was glad I did. Remembering authors I have enjoyed, picking up and handling books and reading the cover blurbs certainly works. I discovered quite a few that were in the ‘I must get that’ category, but then forgot to get. Here’s my haul:

Alastair Reynolds produces few duds, which means I’ll always buy his next book, and I’ve heard good things about this one.

Always loved Greg Egan’s stuff, but it’s sadly lacking in my collection. Reading the first bit of the blurb ‘A million years from now…’ was quite enough.

Greg Bear is another writer I’ve always liked, and I looked up this one when I found it on the Salamander Award shortlist with The Skinner, and thought then that I really should buy it.

I very much enjoyed Eric Brown’s stories in Interzone, many years ago, and it’s quite daft that I’ve never read one of his books. And reading the blurb of this it looks like this is an oversight I’m going to enjoy correcting.

Who Reads My Books? Barry Arrowsmith

Posted on by Neal Asher

Since Barry hasn’t been able to supply a picture of himself, I’ve found one for him.

Wotcher, Neal.

My name is Barry Arrowsmith and I’m a Science Fiction addict.
How did I sink to this degraded state?
It all started so innocently….

Imagine…. it’s the late 1940s and a small boy has his ear glued to to a hissing, crackly radio. For what? For Dan Dare on Radio Luxembourg of course.

That was me, and it was the start of a life-long love, bordering on obsession, with SF. The obsession got fed too, what with beeb radio pulling in massive audiences with ‘Day of the Triffids’ and ‘Journey into Space’, and when TV started becoming the broadcast medium of choice, with ‘Quatermass’. All quality stuff, but then there was a bit of a gap until 1963 and ‘Dr Who’. How to satisfy the cravings?

Well, there were the Saturday morning matinees at the local flea-pit, the ‘tanner rush’ as it was known, for the weekly dose of Buster Crabbe as Flash Gordon. You could see the wires holding the model space-ships up, and the smoke from the rocket-ship engines always rose vertically, even in the depths of space, but who the hell cared?
Next Monday in the playground you too could be a Clayman.

Next step, comics. The Eagle (more Dan Dare) and then there were those oh so rare and coveted imports from the US. Then books. Those started with a Christmas present – ‘Death of Metal’ by Donald Suddaby (wish I still had it, but it fell apart decades ago). With strictly limited pocket-money real hardbacked books were beyond my means, but at the local market there was a stall that sold the trashiest second- hand SF paperbacks you ever did see. I loved it. Covers plastered with panicking girls in brass brassieres and everybody wearing goldfish bowls. The local library also helped fill the gaps with (among others) those wonderful old Bleiler & Dickty short story collections. Grabbed every one I could as soon as it appeared on the shelves, ‘cos with a bit of luck there might be an Eric Frank Russell story in there.

Of course as you age and cash isn’t so tight, discrimination kicks in. (It’s either that or the fact that brass brassieres on covers went out of fashion, though the reaction to Carrie Fisher as a chained Princess Leia showed that there’s an eager market for this stuff out there. Yummy!) So, it was time to switch to Penguin SF, the Gollancz SF yellow-jackets and the more sophisticated stuff.

Then in 1981 I inadvertently went sort-of cold turkey on SF. Working out in Saudi for 9 years, and back then there was no SF available out there. That’s not why I went of course, but it was one of the consequences. Worse, I’d cleared my bookcases of all fiction prior to storage for the rest before I went. Wish I hadn’t. Impossible to replace some of those books, at least for a price I can afford.

Back home in 1990, the cravings still persist, and 20 minutes away is a place of pilgrimage – Rog Peyton’s Andromeda bookshop. Oh, bliss. All those lovely imports – Vernor Vinge, David Weber, Greg Bear, Gibson, plus the new generation of UK authors when they came along – Reynolds, Stross, Morgan, Stephenson and that Asher feller. Shelves looking healthy again now, about 1500 SF titles, half of them hardback. So I’m main-lining again.

One thing, when you accumulate a lot of books you need to add them onto your contents insurance. Replacement would be bloody expensive, just work it out. But – and this is the good bit – you’ll probably be asked to value them (they like titles worth over about £50 to be listed) and that’s when you find that a volume you bought for the cover price 20 years ago is now worth a bomb. How nice. Gives you a really fine glow. Signed, dated 1st/1st ‘Revelation Space’? signed 1st/1st ‘Altered Carbon’? 1st/1st Touchstone ed. of ‘The Prestige’? Add a few more and your bookshelves are more valuable than your furnishings. Not just the new books you bought, either. Try pricing a VG+/VG+ Compton Russell hardback of Niven’s ‘Protector’, it’s slightly more than the 69p I paid in Oxfam. Rarer than hen’s teeth; rarer even than ‘Mason’s Rats’. Do I have a copy of ‘Rats’? Erm… yes, got one from an Amazon re-seller last month. Cost me a tenner – but what the hell, it’s only money.

No photos, I’m afraid. As a tech fan I’m a disgrace. No camera, no mobile phone, not even a TV. I spend so much time lost in books, you see.

The Technician.

Posted on by Neal Asher

Okay, I’ve gone and done it now – I’ve emailed The Technician to Macmillan. There is a point I often reach when checking through and editing where I wonder if I’m beginning to make changes simply because I’m bored with reading it for the nth time. I know that there will be mistakes in the book that I’ve missed, but finding them becomes an increasingly difficult chore as I read the words that are in my head, rather than the ones on the screen.

Time to sit back now, take a breath, and start looking at the the next one.

Incidentally, more questions for the next video clip please, but no more: “When are we going to see so and so again?” or “What’s next?” I’ve already covered that The Technician comes out next August, The Departure comes out the year after and meanwhile I’ll be writing the series of books that come after the latter.