Now, I’m always interested in other people’s book shelves. If I’m around someone’s house I like to check out what they read and, more importantly, what they keep on their shelves. This interest extends to when I pick up one of the crap lifestyle/celebrity/woman’s magazines (usually in a dentist’s) and flick through it. I’m not looking at the people, or most of their furnishings, I’m looking for books. This is usually a disappointment because, if you pick up one of the celebrity lifestyle magazines like Hello, on the rare occasions you see a room with a book shelf in it, the books arrayed there are usually for appearance sake. Often you’ll see the beautifully-bound collected works of Shakespeare which you know for damned certain have never been opened. Sometimes I wonder if the book spines might be some decorative plastic moulding that came with the set of shelves. A sad reflection on those ‘celebs’ that demonstrates the victory of appearance over substance. Anyway, getting to the point, all this is why I like to see pictures like this one of Pekka Jonsson’s book case in Italy, tagged for me on Facebook. Pay special attention to the bottom righthand corner.
Tag: Books
Shadow Review.
A very nice review here of The Shadow of the Scorpion by John Markley. Obviously this is of the Night Shade version since the Macmillan one isn’t out yet. Here’s a sample:
I really liked this book. It provides plenty of the intense action Asher is known for, and continues to explore the setting of Asher’s future history. On a purely action/adventure level, the book definitely delivers, with Asher’s usual talent for excitement, description, and visceral power brought to the forefront. It also gave me what were probably the two things I most wanted from Asher: more information about the character Ian Cormac, and a closer look at the society of the Polity itself.
Orbus Edit.
Okay, I’m now about halfway through the Peter Lavery edited typescript of Orbus. Though this is a thoroughly necessary part of the process, it is also a chore. Yeah, you guys haven’t read it yet so will hopefully enjoy the process. I, however, have read this in part and total and even backwards more times than I care to count. It’s engraved on the inside of my skull and actually trying to detect errors now requires an effort of will – I must read what’s written in front of me rather than the engraving.
Another problem – something to do with posture – is that after a few hours of this editing I end up with my neck stiff and burning. It was worse when I used to refer to sheets stacked beside me, improved when I affixed them to a piece of card positioned below my screen, but is still a pain.
But I can of course understand how many reading this will wonder, “What the hell has he got to complain about?” Yeah, I don’t have to get up to drive to work, clock in, avoid colleagues with BO or have to put up with a boss with the brains of a worm and personality to match. The dirtiest I get is when refilling printer cartridges and, as yet I am in no danger of losing my job … or my house. Really, I’m just trying to give readers a look at some of what’s involved in putting that book in front of them.
Once I’ve finished this particular batch of editing and return it to Macmillan, I later get it back from the copy editor, and must check through it again. It then comes back a third time for me to check the finished product. Still, doubtless, there will be mistakes for which I can only apologise, and put down to having been pushed beyond my boredom threshold. The glamorous life a writer, eh?
Frederick Pohl Blog.
You might like to know that at 89 years old one of the greats of SF has now got a blog. Just read his post about his collaboration with Arthur C Clarke. Good on yer Mr Pohl!
Here’s a little snippet from Wikipedia:
Frederik George Pohl, Jr. (born November 26, 1919) is an American science fiction writer, editor and fan, with a career spanning over seventy years. From about 1959 until 1969, Pohl edited Galaxy magazine and its sister magazine if, winning the Hugo for if three years in a row. His writing also won him three Hugos and multiple Nebula Awards. He became a Nebula Grand Master in 1993.
Across Realtime – Vernor Vinge.
Ah, it’s Mr Singularity himself with tales of pre then post singularity worlds ‘bobbles’ can isolate and freeze in time their contents. It’s dated a bit now what with these two written in 1984 and 1986 and a world war in 1997 but enjoyable none-the-less. There’s also something very believable about the abilities of the future humans and, frankly, all the characters are engaging and you regret knowing no more about them when the story ends.
Note, don’t make the mistake of buying this if you already have either Peace War or Marooned in Realtime because those are the two tales here. I’d also recommend, if you haven’t read them yet A Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky.
DeathRay
Okay, Julie Crisp gave me a copy of the Feb/March 2009 issue of DeathRay to cast my eye over. There’s an excellent review of The Gabble in there by Guy Haley (who can claim to have done the SFX review of The Engineer, which I copied and put on top of the synopsis and sample chapters of Gridlinked I sent into Macmillan back in 1999). Here’s a highlight:
WE SEEM TO HAVE BEEN saying “Neal Asher is awesome!” a lot recently. Here it is again: We love you, Neal, you and your futuristic hardmen, weird monsters and chillingly pragmatic AI.
So, after allowing me to dribble over that for a while, Julie turned to page 168 … through to page 175 and I nearly wet myself. There you’ll find a full page redition of the gabbleduck, the story Softly Spoke the Gabbleduck entire, topped off with an inteview with me. That’s a bloody lot of coverage. Thanks DeathRay!
More SF Music
Thanks to ‘msf’ for reminding me. There’s a band out there called Gridlink which takes its name from Gridlinked. I’m fairly certain that Jon Chang, the guy on vocals, told me about this at some point in the past. As I recollect he’s also got the near full set of signed editions of my books too.
On the Big Screen.
Caroline and I went to Macmillan yesterday, then on to lunch with the new senior commissioning editor for PanMac, Julie Crisp, and Peter Lavery, now retired from everything bar the part he loves, the actual editing, so he can still set writers quivering in their boots whenever he reaches for a pencil. Some interesting stuff, like the huge spread I have in DeathRay Magazine (more about that later), like changing my cover picture and, when the IT guys arrived, setting up a Macmillan-based website for me. But all that’s not the point of this post.
As usual on these visits, we were let into the lobby, signed in, then waited to be collected. Whilst there I gazed at the big flat screen they have up on the wall which has a constant slide show of books, their blurbs and taglines. I’ve sat there many times before hoping to see something of mine come up, but never seen it until now. It’s there, at last! Damn I’m sad.
Orbus Blurb (cover copy).
I’ve written up three blurbs for the book for the editor at Macmillan to mix and match so what appears below might not be what appears on the book. Here you go:
Now in charge of a cargo spaceship, the Old Captain Orbus, flees a violent and sadistic past, but he doesn’t know that the lethal war drone, Sniper, is a stowaway, and that past is rapidly catching up with him. His old enemy the Prador Vrell, mutated by the Spatterjay virus into something powerful and dangerous, has seized control of a Prador dreadnought, killing its entire crew, and now seeks to exact vengeance on those who tried to have him killed.
Their courses inexorably converge in the Graveyard, the border realm lying between the Polity and the Prador Kingdom, a place filled with the ruins left by past genocides and interplanetary war. Secure in that same place the Golgoloth, a monster to a race of monsters, is recruited by the terrifying King of the Prador into the long cold war between his kind and the humans. It is imperative that Vrell be hunted down and killed, for what he knows and what he might do.
Meanwhile, something that has annihilated civilizations is stirring from a slumber of five million years, and the cold war is heating up, fast.
Theodore Dalrymple
Good if old article here from this guy. I must buy some of his books.
A Gallop Down the Road to Serfdom.
If the citizen should drive, he soon discovers that his vehicle confers anxiety rather than freedom. Slight infringements of the driving rules are photographed and he is fined. When he parks he soon discovers that wheel-clamping is the one public service that works with clockwork efficiency. Squeezing money from him is likewise the one task that the State takes seriously, for he cannot rely on the police to protect him, or the schools to educate his children, or the hospitals to succour him when he is ill, or public transport to take him anywhere without hitch. A bloated payroll does not translate into efficient services: on the contrary, it is incompatible with them.