So, throwing a spacecraft at the Asteroid Belt, with the asteroids on average being a million kilometres apart, your chances of hitting one are not exactly high, which is why the spacecraft we have sent out that way got through unscathed. However, what is an asteroid? From what I can gather they are the objects we can see through our telescopes and have counted. Beyond that the number is estimated and estimations vary widely. I also have to wonder what we can see. I’m guessing that objects the size of a football or a pea aren’t picked up. The chances of something the size of the Pioneer or Voyager craft hitting one of these was probably negligible, but they’d certainly have to be taken into account if you’re presenting a profile 5 kilometres across and travelling at 20,000 kilometres per hour.
Tag: Science Fiction
Good Reads
While surfing the Internet I just came across this at goodreads. All very gratifying with a star rating about the same as Amazon but divided over more reviews. I seem to weigh in at about four stars generally.
The Departure
Remember my previous post about the Asteroid Belt? Well I’ve just finished going through the copy edited typescript and my perceived error required and addition of five words, and they weren’t really needed.
Really, my screw-up was in the book Zero Point, which I haven’t even finished. In The Departure I mention the Asteroid Belt a total of about three times. Now time to get back to some research on a vaguely remembered figure of eight route between Earth and Mars…
Note to self: do not turn into a histrionic writer!
Top 10 SFF on Amazon UK for 2010
Obviously I rather like this particular top ten especially when you consider that The Technician didn’t come out until August and was a hardback. I am however a little puzzled. Did I sleep through Christmas and the New Year?
Prador Moon.
Tuesday 19th
After writing a blog yesterday and doing some further work on Zero Point, which has now passed my before-we-go-back-to-Britain target of 80,000 words, we headed down the mountain for our Internet session. It was spitting with rain up here but that got a little heavier on the way down. It’s quite odd being out on a grey and rainy day wearing only a T-shirt, jeans and plastic crocs. My British experience tells me I should be wearing thick socks, a jumper and a leather jacket, maybe a woolly hat and gloves too, but the temperature was about 25 degrees.
Having been kakos pethia over the weekend, we confined ourselves to orange juice in Revans (Internet bar). By email I got the initial Jon Sullivan cover for Prador Moon, then shortly after that the new improved version, which I will show here once I get a jpg of it. The air was already full of sea spray dripping off the tamarisk trees along what remained of the beach, the sea very rough (though some were still swimming in it), then the rain ramped up as this next picture shows.
We hung around a little longer, drinking a very nice filter coffee, then headed back. I did some more work on Zero Point, then turned my attention to my tobacco leaves. Here, in order, are the pictures of my second attempt at making cigars, some of which will hopefully be dry enough to smoke during the next kazani next weekend.
8 Crappy Questions
Galaxy Book Shop
Another guest blog over here: http://galaxybooks.blogspot.com/2010/10/guest-blog-post-by-neal-asher.html
Thursday 14th
You won’t see top ten book lists from me scattered with worthy titles by German philosophers, nor will you see lists of favourite films including those that are noir, French and subtitled. Generally, such lists are more about a writer trying to demonstrate his intellectual credentials, whilst shameful favourites like Lord of the Rings, which is of course no longer de rigueur, or Terminator, which is far too much fun, are carefully edged to one side.
I won’t write deeply intellectual essays on futurology. I haven’t got a clue what’s going to happen, though I suspect it might be boring and dismal. I’m more concerned with honesty than appearances, which may sound strange coming from a writer of quite bizarre science fiction. Truth is important to me, even when it hurts me or others.
This is why I’m going to ’fess up that I had an extreme ‘oh shit’ moment yesterday when I realised how close I’d come to making a huge mistake with the book The Departure and the ensuing book Zero Point. It was one of those that would have resulted in me being beaten with anoraks until blood started oozing out of my ears. I actually felt quite sick when I finally saw the mistake, but luckily The Departure has yet to be published and just a little further editorial work will sort it out:
So, on its way back from Mars, the Traveller VI spacecraft stopped at the Asteroid Belt where its fusion engine, a thing the size of a cathedral, was removed. This engine was then attached to an asteroid loaded with metals, which was then blasted back into Earth orbit.
Okay, I now leave it to all of you reading this to point out my extreme fuck up here…
Saturday 9th
When I look at the stats on this blog it’s clear to me that when I post something about writing, my books, science fiction, I get more interest, more hits and more in the comments section. Quite obviously the majority of the people visiting this site are here looking for Neal Asher the science fiction writer, not the Cretan home owner, gardener, tobacco grower, chilli grower and chilli sauce manufacturer. They’re not here to see how I renovate chairs, repoint walls or really to learn anything about Crete, or what happens to me particular interest at any one time. However, I do hope that the posts I do here about things other than SF at least entertain.
You see, I have a bit of a problem with blogging solely about my writing. I can’t tell you precisely what I’ve written about, how I sorted out this plot or that, what I’ve done with any of the characters because I would be giving too much away. This blog would be full of spoilers. I can tease you, but that’s about it. I can tell you something about the process, within limitations, but really, it’s boring. Let me give you an example: this last week I sat down at my computer each morning over five days and wrote a total of 12806 words, of which 10950 were for Zero Point, the rest being blogs. That’s it really. Would you want every one of my blog posts to be similar?
Such comments are the kind of thing I save for my journal, that kind of anal stuff I outline in ink at the bottom of each half page: number of fiction words written, number of blog words written, alcohol units drunk, cigarettes smoked, other jobs completed, amount of exercise, number of spots popped, total of toenails trimmed…