Ryan Britt Interview

This one was done in 2015 and I think for Barnes & Noble:

Interview question Neal Asher

(Interview by Ryan Britt)

*You’ve been described as a military science fiction writer, even though your various novels seem to be so much more. Are you comfortable with this label? What makes good military science fiction?

No it’s not a label I am comfortable with because it feels too narrow. I do like my battles but I also like building ecologies, creating monsters of every stripe including the human kind, exploring the consequences of technology like mind recording, taking a close look at what immortality might mean and much other stuff besides. I’ve read fiction that does fall squarely under that label and always felt there to be large elements missing from its depiction of the future. Often aspects of what the future might hold are neglected: how humans and their society might have changed, the new weapons and their effect on tactics (often I’ve read fiction where the battles are just the past supplanted into the future and upgraded with lasers) – the thinking needs to be wider. Good military fiction would logically be the kind that does not neglect these.

*Funnily, you’re also claimed by the cyberpunk subgenre. Your Wikipedia page even calls you “post-cyberpunk.” Other than your books, what’s your favorite cyberpunk thing ever?

I’m not even sure what the label means – in fact I’ll have to go look it up – and don’t pseuds just love using sticking that word ‘post’ on things? Well … judging by ‘high tech and low life, post-industrial cultures, megacorporations etc’ I’d say that my fiction has elements of these. But it’s just another narrow label used by those who like to discuss SF and makes me tired just thinking about it. I guess, if we want to go there, my favourite cyberpunk thing would be Blade Runner.  

*Your Polity universe is interesting for a lot of reasons, but partly because it spans the majority of your various works. This reminds me a little of C.J. Cherryh’s Foreigner books, or the sprawling “future history” of Asimov. What are the challenges in this kind of vast mutli-book world building? Or in other words, do you sometimes fantasize about ditching all this and writing a new novel set in a totally different continuity?

The biggest challenge I guess is continuity errors. The more I write set in the Polity the more I have to check in previous books. There are the simple things like what is the colour of prador blood, then there’s the more difficult stuff like what technologies are extant, especially when my Polity stories span a thousand years. Actually I haven’t fantasized about writing novels set in a new continuity but done so. The Owner trilogy is not set in the Polity. The reason I wrote that is because if you write in one setting, no matter how wide, you can become stale. The danger of course is that when you step out of that setting the fans can pillory you for it. But I’ll never ditch the Polity because there’s still a lot of fun to be had there. I stepped out of it for a while with the Owner then came back to it refreshed with the Transformation books. 

*You concluded the “Owner” series not too long ago and now the “Transformation” series has started. For fans of your books, what’s tonally different for this series versus the previous? Are we dealing with a Revolver/Rubber Soul situation, or is this more like Magical Mystery Tour?

The Owner trilogy was my shot at thinking hard about the future and writing a dystopia, though one based on some short stories I did long ago (they appear in The Engineer ReConditioned and elsewhere). The Polity, though it can be quite rough, is a lot more optimistic and being set further into the future enters Clarke’s realm of science bordering on magic. Despite the constrictions of those continuity errors mentioned above, I can let rip in the Polity – the Owner was more constrained by being closer to the present.

*You’ve got an AI ship in Dark Intelligence—“Penny Royal”—can you talk a little about the inspiration for that?

Penny Royal first turned up as a throw-away character in a story (published in Asimov’s) called Alien Archaeology. The AI was the go-to mad scientist to get something high tech done. I brought him back in The Technician and there he grew in the telling as something enigmatic and dangerous. In a way my readers are a little bit responsible for what happened next – similar to what happened in my 5 book Cormac series. In the first book, Gridlinked, I wrote about a character called Mr Crane – a rather large android made of brass – and the readers came back at me about that saying just how much they enjoyed him. The third book of the series I wrapped around Mr Crane. It was called Brass Man. But it was also my choice because I’m a fan at heart and really enjoyed writing about Mr Crane too. In Dark Intelligence I revisited Penny Royal. My readers rather liked that creation, and I like it too. Other elements have now been incorporated, like my reading on swarm robots and ideas about distributed intelligence, and in Dark Intelligence and the ensuing books Penny Royal has grown in the telling. Hugely.

*Speaking of intelligent spaceships and connected hiveminds, what are your thoughts on Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice and Ancillary Sword?

No thoughts. I haven’t read them.

*I’ve read somewhere that your patronus (from Harry Potter) would be a lobster, but what’s your favorite dinosaur?

I was going to say velociraptor because I like the name and the idea of something so vicious and fast. But the one that has stuck with me is the troodon. This is the dinosaur Dale Russell based his dinosauroid on – dinosaur man. It is also the basis of the dracomen – creatures in my Polity books created by the interstellar entity Dragon as a taunt to humankind. The troodon also turns up in a story I did for Asimov’s called The Other Gun. There it was an enjoyably lethal sidekick for the main character.

*In your books you’ve got a lot of crazy science fiction conflicts occurring to people. Of all the things you’ve put your characters through, which one of those ideas scares you the most, personally?

None of them really scares me because most are unlikely in my lifetime. I guess the idea of immortality combined with endless torture is pretty grim, which is why it’s the big stick wielded by religion. Closer to home is stuff in the Owner books: the technology to utterly control the populace in the hands of authoritarian government.

*You’ve got a bit of a Rip Van Winkle story at the start of Dark Intelligence; someone waking up after a century of being dead. This seems like both classic Buck Rogers mixed with Alien: Resurrection. From Twain to Sleeper, why is this notion so compelling for writers?

For me the appeal had more to do with ideas about immortality, mind recording and past sins coming back to haunt us. I also like the aspect of the timespan involved. But I guess the appeal in most cases is perspective – bringing back someone from the past to see the changes.

*Your parents both loved science fiction. What would you say to a young writer who’s parents hate science fiction?

Pity them.

*What can readers expect from the next book in the “Transformation” series?

They can expect numerous twists and turns, growing insight into what Penny Royal is up to, the introduction of a few more seriously odd characters and, I hope, another wild ride.

Sandy Auden Interview

This interview is from way back in 2003. It was with Sandy Auden but for what magazine or website I have no idea.

What’s your secret for successfully writing multiple plot threads without confusing the reader?

I just take the view that my reader’s ability to comprehend is about the same as my own, and so long as I don’t get confused writing those multiple plot threads, my reader won’t get confused reading them. It is a bit of a balancing act and I’ve learnt you can’t please everyone. If you check out the reviews of GRIDLINKED on Amazon (UK) and you’ll see that some just did not get the ending. The ending to THE LINE OF POLITY for some was too much telegraphed and obvious, yet for others was annoyingly left of field – like with GRIDLINKED, the reader’s reaction depended on how much they took in earlier on. I just hope that for most readers the porridge was just right!

Why do your stories always include so many concurrent threads?

Boredom. Writing a straight forward ABC story can become grindingly boring, and doing so you very quickly know the ending, which I don’t like to know until I’m at least three quarters of the way through. I just let my stories run, take a look at them from different character’s POVs and, whenever I feel the urge, I throw in twists and turns from which other threads might develop. My problem is honing down the plot-threads I lace through a book and knuckling down to the grind of completing what I’ve started – tying off all those threads neatly. I had some problems with this in my latest book, where it was becoming too confusing and I necessarily had to strip out two entire plot threads and completely remove some characters.

We're getting to know Cormac a little better in BRASS MAN (or at least we think we are) but he's still enigmatic. Why write him that way?

To be frank, that’s just how he comes out. This is probably because he’s too busy dodging explosions or working out the motivations of enigmatic aliens, for there to be much about him. But then he’s a cypher for all those male lead/action heros throughout all fiction. You don’t learn much about them because the story in which they are engaged is the real focus. The only time you do learn something about them is where it effects that story, which is true of all a story’s characters i.e. Maybe a computer fell of Arian Pelter when he was a child and this accounts for his hatred of AIs?

Did you work out Mr Crane's mysterious background for BRASS MAN or did it evolve earlier than that?

Mr Crane’s background was written for BRASS MAN which, even when I was writing Cowl (fourth book) was only a title, and an idea about how Mr Crane would return and what his toys were really for. As I say in the acknowledgements, the book found its inception in all those who, having read GRIDLINKED, said, “I really liked Mr Crane, why did you have to kill him off?”

Why do you think Mr Crane has proved to be so popular?

I think that’s down to his sartorial concerns and his toys. It’s the appeal of that juxtaposition of the powerful and deadly with the humorous and humanising. Think of the Terminator needing to get hold of wrap-around sun glasses, the leather gear and the large motorbike, or in a Pratchett book the four horsemen of the apocalypse getting drunk and playing cards, or Death’s love of curries. 

What are you working on now?

I’m finishing some editorial work on THE VOYAGE OF THE SABLE KEECH, which completes my second three book contract for Macmillan. Here’s the blurb:

The reification Sable Keech, a walking dead man, is the only one to have been resurrected by nanochanger. Did he succeed because he was infected by the Spatterjay virus, or because he came late to resurrection in a tank of seawater? Tracing the man’s journey in a ship also named after him, Taylor Bloc wants to know. He also wants so much else – adulation, power, control – and will go to any lengths to get it. And he has brought the means.
An ancient hive mind, almost incomprehensible to the human race, has sent an agent to the world. Does it want to obtain the poison sprine – effective against those made virtually indestructible by the Spatterjay virus? Janer must find it and stop it.
Erlin, still faced with the ennui of immortality, has her solitude rudely interrupted by a very angry whelkus titanicus, and begins the strangest of journey’s. Captain Ambel’s own journey, from Olian’s – where the currency of death his kept in a vault – is equally as strange. But he must reap the harvest of Erlin’s mistake, and survive.
Deep in the ocean the virus has wrought a terrible change that will affect them all. Something dormant for ten years is breaking free, and once again the aftershocks of an ancient war will focus on this watery world. And Sniper, for ten years the Warden of Spatterjay, finally takes delivery of his new drone shell. It’s much better than his old one: powerful engines, more lethal weapons, thicker armour.
He’s going to need it.

This book is a sequel to The Skinner. Prior to this editorial work, however, I was over a 100,000 words into a new Cormac book provisionally titled POLITY AGENT. In this I answer some questions: who and what is Horace Blegg, why was Dragon really sent to the Polity, what is Dragon and the Maker's relation to Jain technology, and why, when throughout the Polity's expansion no Jain nodes were discovered, did one end up in the hands of Skellor when it did? This would be the first book of a third three book contract (Peter Lavery at Macmillan has already asked me if I have any ideas).Other possible books are ORBUS -- following the adventures of a character from Sable -- HILLDIGGERS -- a standalone (the hilldiggers are spaceships named after what their weapons can do) – no shortage of ideas, really, and if Macmillan keep supplying the contracts I’ll keep supplying the books.

Keystroke Medium with Neal Asher

Here I am rambling on...