Cities in Flight

Written quite some while ago probably after an overdose of city fiction probably of the 'slipstream' variety. - Neal 2020

There seems a belief, ascribed to by many of those writing short science fiction today, that nothing of importance happens unless it is set in the ‘mean streets’ of some city. On the whole the works stemming from this will be based on some student or other urbanite living a squalid existence in a seedy flat, while experiencing either relationship problems, or angst about an inability to have a relationship at all. Often, the writers are displaying a lack of imagination by casting themselves in the lead role in the only setting they have experienced. From the other side, there are many writers of fantasy who cannot step away from the image of their characters questing through the wilderness or some agrarian idyll, though that usually stems only from the secondhand experience gained throught the books they have read. Getting back to the cities though: are the writers of much urban science fiction nowadays suffering from the same delusion as the fantasy writers?

Cities and the country bleed into each other. There are towns, villages, single houses and an infinite combination of everything inbetween; industrial sites in the country; city parks; wastelands being reclaimed by nature; connecting rivers and transport systems; and, fuckit, urban foxes. And of course in both directions there is a continuous exchange of people: wide varieties of commuters and ‘overspill’ and many so-called ‘country’ people moving into the cities to work. The dividing line, unfortunately, is near illusory, perceived mainly by resentful minds. Cities no longer have impenetrable walls around them with gates that are closed up at night and the countryside is no longer filled with Barny Hayseed clones chewing on straws and muttering about ‘tham thar towny buggers’. This perception displays the same blinkered vision as the present urban government, which legislates for cities and against the country – damaging those millions dwelling in between and polarising the attitude of many others – or of those dwellers in a time warp, the fox hunting lobby, who manage to piss off all camps.

Britons live in a huge and wonderful variety of environments. Along our coasts there are many people who have tried to opt out by living in their boats, others divide their lives between boats and often much neglected coastal houses, there are huge transitory populations on the sea on oil rigs and in container ships, many millions inhabit suburbs, large populations live in villages where their only real connection with the countryside is that they notice it from their car whilst caught behind a tractor on their weekly visit to Asda, there are inclusive island populations who don’t even think about any division between city and country, there are towns where the countryside is only a step away and in which the residents truly live their lives in both.

Of course, everything I’ve just written is also blinkered, for I’m describing Britain today. Maybe, an SF writer should be thinking of tomorrow’s Britain or an alternate one, or both. Also, Britain contains only a small fraction of the world’s population – there are actually other countries, and some very different ways of life. As for our urban environments? Even now the computer revolution is beginning to decentralise white collar professions, so what need to live in the city? Robotic manfacture is whittling down the required work force so what future need of industrialised towns? And the financial imperatives that originally made urban dwelling a necessity, will they last? Umph! Still today, still parochial!

What about undersea dwellings, orbital communities, nomadic populations, cave dwelling morlocks, people adapted to live under the sea, people loading their minds into VR, even nomadic minds leaping from artificial body to body? Ach, I could go on and on, but the point is made: urban SF writers, lift up your heads, take a look around and try to imagine yourself somewhere else. Oscar Wilde quipped about how he may be lying in the gutter, but he’s looking at the stars, some people, it would seem, are lying face-down in that same gutter.

My Chair Addiction

I’ve often commented how when I was in my teens my interests were very wide ranging. I dabbled in electronics, I had a microscope and a chemistry set. This last was supplied with all sorts of interesting extras from the chemistry department of a college where my father lectured applied mathematics. I painted, drew, made sculptures and carved. I loved biology and spent hours collecting and identifying wriggly items from a local stream and elsewhere. I dissected the poor unfortunates the family cat dropped on the patio, kept caterpillars and watched that transformation, started an abiding interest in mycology because that’s what my mother studied on her teacher-training course.

Writing was something I started when I was about 15 – aping the stuff in those lovely luridly covered books by the likes of E C Tubb, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Clarke, Asimov, Van Vogt, Blish and many besides. This continued while I entered the world of work (Engineering). By my mid-twenties I realised I wouldn’t be building a laser weapon or space drive and that I was a Jack-of-all-trades and master of none, so concentrated on writing because all my other interests were relevant.

However, despite concentrating on writing and necessarily having less time to ‘play’ because I was working for a living, all those interests never went away. They transformed. I made wine and beer, jarred preserves, restored old motorbikes, enjoyed growing stuff. I still want to know what things are in the environment, how they tick. I read a lot of science. And I repair stuff and make things.

In the latter years, with more time on my hands, the repairing stuff became a bit of a thing. If something is broken I simply cannot just throw it away – I have to take it apart to see how it works and if possible make it work again. Financially this makes no sense at all because my time would be better spent writing another book or short story, but I can’t leave it alone. Often I’m successful, more often I’m not – usually saving various parts of what I’ve disassembled because, well, they might be useful for repairing something else.

My chair addiction started on the island of Crete. The Greek kafenion chair is a pretty simple hand-made thing: carved and doweling struts , square-section legs and back etc. It’s not glued together but held together by the basket-weave seat and tautening wires running between the legs. My wife and I saw a couple of them, busted and lying in a dump while out walking. I picked them up and took them home. Out of the two I fashioned one good chair. Next was a kafenion table from the same dump, at which point Caroline walked a number of paces ahead of me laughing and pretending she didn’t know me. Like the chair I realised that the only way to do a good job was complete disassembly, removal of all the screws, nails and glue of botched previous repairs, and proper reassembly. Next came repairs for friends – usually disassembly followed by reassembly with glue and the application of sash clamps.

I found a broken bamboo chair – I spotted it at the side of the road while driving down to a beach. On the return journey it sat in the passenger seat of the car, safely held in place with the seatbelt. Caroline and my parents-in-law consigned to the back. Since I was on Crete I was able to find bamboo to replace the broken parts and I then used flattened broom twigs for the binding. Another chair I repaired and then, while talking to a friend discovered he was an upholsterer in a previous life, which was handy. The one after that was an ancient thing that had been shattered, but our wood glues are very good so I stuck it back together, carved new parts for it, then did some upholstering myself with ersatz white leather, a carefully carved surround of thin wood and fancy metal studs. A friend wanted this chair repaired as a gift for his girlfriend. Since things hadn’t gone so well in that relationship he then aimed to use it for fuel for his stove, at which point I rescued it.

After that was a wobbly Victorian chair for my old editor. That was a kind of time travel as I took it apart – the layers of upholstery, the years upon years of repairs, the hundreds of nails, studs and staples. Reassembly again involved sash clamps and reupholstering and, of course, as with all the previous items, filler, sanding, wood stain and varnish.

It’s strange how you fall into things. I now have a collection of broken chairs sitting on Crete waiting for my attention, and I will no-doubt much enjoy repairing them. But of course the ones I keep I continue enjoying because, in the end, those belongings you lavish love and attention upon, and which have their own quirky story, are the best ones to own.
     

Falcon Heavy

Watching Elon Musk’s Falcon Heavy launch into space, seeing two of its boosters land with the kind of precision that looked like CGI and seeing, FFS, a Tesla car swinging round Earth with a manikin in the driver’s seat, had me the most excited about space travel and exploration I’ve been for an age. Why is this important? The rockets are reusable, the cost is coming down at an astounding rate but, most importantly, Musk is showing that space exploration and travel can be carried out by private sector enterprise. In fact it can be carried out better. We no longer have to wait for moribund, government-controlled bureaucratic behemoths like NASA to get us into space.

https://youtu.be/u0-pfzKbh2k

This launch also had another effect on me illustrated by a tweet I saw last night. I paraphrase: ‘There’s a Tesla car heading to Mars and you’re still on about Trump?’ In one evening I completely lost interest in politics and still feel that way this morning (but it will inevitably return).

There was one negative in this and that was the third booster failure. One of its engines failed to ignite (some fuel problem?) and it missed the drone ship to plummet into the sea at hundreds of miles an hour. But even this is a relatively minor mishap in something of this scale. Firstly, other rockets aren’t even reusable and, consequently, are a damned sight more expensive (“The nearest peer competitor is the Delta 4 Heavy at roughly half the thrust and from four to as much as ten times the cost.”). Secondly, it turns out that these rockets won’t be used again anyway since Spacex has the next iteration ready (I think).

There have been naysayers. Some feel that Musk should have sent some scientific instrument rather than a car, and that this was a crass publicity stunt. They have obviously failed to understand the financial aspect of the publicity generated by this stunt. Doubtless their inclination is for science under the aegis of big government, and they find private enterprise distasteful. Another, apparently on TV this morning (I didn’t see this since I don’t have a TV licence and therefore don’t watch live TV) was bemoaning the ‘pollution’ of space and of Mars by sending a car up. Beside the fact that the car will not actually end up on Mars, this is quite ridiculous politically correct ‘environmentally conscious’ virtue signaling. It also shows a complete failure to understand the barren hostile immensity beyond Earth. Seriously, fuck off.

Elon Musk is a man with a dream and he is not buggering about in achieving it. He wants us up in space, constantly, on Mars, on the moon and elsewhere. I love too that he is obviously also a lover of science fiction. Culture ship names and that ‘Don’t Panic’ on the dash screen of the Tesla demonstrate this. And his dream, in the end, has revitalized the dream of space exploration for us all. 

Blade Runner 2049

Here's what I wrote the day after seeing this film:

"Okay, I watched Blade Runner 2049 last night. Well, you know when you go to a nightclub, and it's a bit crap, so they crank the volume up to try and make it exciting. That. The original Blade Runner was understated - the sounds meant something - here they were akin to the bangs and crashes in a cheap horror movie to make you jump out of your seat. Scenes dragged on for too long to try and impart atmosphere and meaning that wasn't there. I didn't care about anyone. Loose threads dangled. It was boring and it dragged. About an hour and a half in I felt I'd fallen into an episode of the Twilight Zone where I would be forced to watch a naff movie forever."

It is interesting to read reviews from others who feel that this is the best thing they have ever seen, or it is a great effort, or it is a suitable sequel. This is a salutary reminder that people's experience of art is mostly subjective. I then begin to wonder if my experience would have been different if the sound hadn't been so high that the crash bangs and music hurt my ears, but no, then I wouldn't have been able to hear what they were saying. Perhaps I wasn't in the right frame of mind? No - good films always grab me and in fact I use them to escape any bad state of mind. Perhaps I just didn't 'get' it? No. The last time I didn't 'get' an sfnal entertainment was when I was learning to walk.

In retrospect: The sound needed to be lower and unnecessary loud shit needed to go. Scenes needed to be much shorter because, hey, I get it now so move on. The attempts at arty mystery, seemingly tossed in at random, were a distraction. I mean, what were those bees about and who cares? What was the point of the 'unresolved' bad guy with the blank eyes? The next film? Why did I care nothing for any of the characters except, just a little bit, for Deckard? 

No, my opinion still hasn't changed.

PicRights.com

It’s not been a highly productive few weeks for me. Lots of life stuff getting in the way of writing including a cold that has just been clinging on, followed by a nice finger infection and constant tiredness. I am determined to do better tomorrow!

One nasty thing that came along out of the blue, and used up a lot of my time, was a couple of emails from an organization called PicRights.com informing me that I was in breach of copyright for three images I used on my blog some time ago. Two of these were Press Association Images and one was from Science Photo Library. My immediate response, seeing as this was a demand for money was, ‘Is this a scam?’ I took advice on it and meanwhile received the same from this organization through the post. I emailed the two image libraries concerned and received confirmation that PicRights represented them.

The time drain for me was then to go onto my blogs and delete every image that might be dodgy. Mea culpa here because I did use those images in a blog without crediting their source, though, I have to add that I almost certainly did not get them from the libraries concerned. Probably I got them from Facebook or Twitter. Also, me complaining about this would be a case of cognitive dissonance since I am the first to complain about the torrent sites where people steal my books. One particular post high-lighted this for me. This was from a photographer detailing his expenses and time in obtaining certain images. But I was also annoyed by the fact that I was being hit for long ago blog posts whose visits weren’t above twenty or so, and that this was likely a money spinner along the lines of those used by ambulance-chasing lawyers. I was in a situation where I could have gone to court but it could have cost me thousands, so I paid up.

Those three images cost me £383 for past usage, a deal of stress and many hours of time that would have been better spent writing. I guess this is a salutary lesson to us all. 

Macmillan Doing Stuff

So anyway, here's a thing: Macmillan are doing all sorts of good stuff. First there are my books appearing on Audible UK. Second, the one you don't know about till right now, is they're doing new covers for my backlist for another push on them. I've seen these covers and they are pretty damned cool. First up will be the Cormac books...

And here, for your listening pleasure, are soundcloud links to those books that are now up on Audible UK:

https://soundcloud.com/pan-macmillan/infinity-engine-by-neal-asher

https://soundcloud.com/pan-macmillan/the-departure-by-neal-asher

https://soundcloud.com/pan-macmillan/prador-moon-by-neal-asher

https://soundcloud.com/pan-macmillan/zero-point-by-neal-asher

https://soundcloud.com/pan-macmillan/shadow-of-the-scorpion-by-neal-asher

Thanks Macmillan!

Found Them!

Yippeee! Sometimes I swear about computers but today I'm a happy bunny. While trying to figure out how to convert a pdf into a jpeg for my blog I ventured onto my clipboard. There I saw something unexpected: the title of a TV script called The Executioner's Lie. It turned out to be just a cover page for this TV script on an old file related to my old website. This was disappointing because I thought I had found some missing files.

When I was intending to move house last year I threw out lots of stuff, including discs with copies of my old files on them. I didn't need them anymore, they were old technology, I could put back-ups on flash drives and back-up to Dropbox etc. A while later , for whatever reasons, I decided to have a look at various TV scripts I’d written and could not find them anywhere. The horrible realisation began to impinge that in transferring files from my main computer here to the laptop I use in Crete and back again I had somehow lost them. I had to grit my teeth, tell myself that’s life and just get on. 

Today, after seeing that cover page, I decided to do some file searches using various words. I found a file called ‘Sitcom’ and this turned out to be one of those TV scripts. Further searching revealed another, then another, and then I found them all in a file called ‘Publisher’ which I did not recognize. I copied them to a new file ‘TV Scripts’ before then finding this ‘Publisher’ file. Bloody Hell – I’ve got them all back.

I’ve got a sitcom I wrote about annoying neighbours. This was based on reality: someone who had moved in below us when Caroline and I lived in a maisonette. I’ve got The Executioner’s Lie which is an hour-long thing set in a future where prime-time TV executions have been introduced. I’ve got a play set on the Millennium Dome and another called Woodstock’s Rats that I can hardly remember. But best of all I found a thing called Trines. This is a three-episode series set in England and involving an alien, quite like one of the Jain, living under the woods near a local town. Along with that I’ve also found the first five chapters of the book version of that I was writing too.

Delighted!  

Runcible Tales

Okay, I've gone and done it. Runcible Tales is a chapbook collection of 5 short stories that was published ages ago by a small publisher called Piper's Ash. The only people who've read it picked it up before that publisher closed or found it secondhand. I've now put it up on Kindle at the lowest price I could and it should be appearing in 70 hours.

Update: Now available on Amazon in the UK, in the US and elsewhere.

Always with you - Webster engages on a mission to destroy a Prador planet breaker. It helps if you have HoraceBlegg on your side, and an internal medic, but are these enough to overcome overwhelming odds?

Blue Holes and Bloody Waters - marine biologist Karl finds that humans haven't quite adapted enough - or have they? Features the first mention of the retro Anti-Grav cars featured in “Gridlinked” that I have come across

Dragon in the Flower - Ian Cormac's first encounter with Dragon - this is printed word-for-word in “Gridlinked”, so this should be the Runcible Tale most familiar to Neal Asher readers

The Gire and the Bibrat - Telepath John Tennyson is given more than a helping hand by Agent Prime Cause in his search for the location of a scream...

Walking John and Bird - John Walker consults Horace Blegg and Dragon with questions concerning his link with Bird, a seemingly invincible entity. Trouble is, especially where Dragon is concerned, he may not like the answers.

This isn’t my earliest collection – The Engineer published by Tanjen has that distinction (now republished as The Engineer Reconditioned by Wildside Press) – but it does contain some of my earliest stories. Here you see the Polity of my books slowly beginning to germinate. The immortal Horace Blegg puts in his enigmatic appearances while Dragon, that giant extra-galactic alien, is being equally as enigmatic, people travel by runcible, the prador are out and about in a massive and almost indestructible warship and there other hints of what is to come. I haven’t made many changes from the original – just tidied up some of the grammar and spelling. For example the dropshaft of my books is here called a gravity chute and apparently then I assumed ‘chute’ was ‘shoot’, so I guess I’ve learned something.

Revisiting these stories has been interesting. They were written (I think) before I wrote the stories Spatterjay and Snairls from which the book The Skinner had its genesis. In that book humans are enslaved to the alien prador by dint of being infected by a virus that makes them physically indestructible and then being ‘cored and thralled’ – their brains and part of their spinal column removed to be replaced by a control unit. Here they are PU (Personal Unit) slaves – enslaved by a chunk of technology similar to the augmentations in my books and programmed to think the prador where allies while Polity forces were the rebels. There are other wrinkles here that I’ve lost in the books, like the weapons proscription via runcibles whereby armaments could not be transported from world to world. And the cyborgs … but they’ll be reappearing sometime soon…

I hope you enjoy this little venture into the past of an imagined future!

                                                -- Neal Asher 3^rd August 2017  

Who Reads My Books?

I posted the below on Facebook a day or so ago. The first suspects will be up shortly...

Some years ago I ran a thread on my blog called 'Who Reads my Books:', which I was reminded about recently upon seeing (on Twitter) one of those who had taken part. It consisted of a picture of the guilty party, maybe one or two other pictures of interest - job, hobby, whatever - a short biography and maybe something about how they got into the Polity etc., and any links of interest to websites or whatever. Just testing the water now to see if anyone would be interested in contributing. Here's a sample, coincidentally the guy I saw on Twitter.

Get Over It

There is a perception, amongst some, that the world is going to hell in a handcart. A terrorist bomb goes off, the US dumps excess stock of cruise missiles in the Middle East, Putin does some sabre rattling and oh my God World War III is going to start! A tornado picks up a tractor in the US, a small town is flooded in the UK, climate activists issue another ‘it’s worse than we thought’ report and oh my God Earth is going to become Venus and we are all going to die! Corbyn got more votes than expected and Britain is going to turn into Venezuela! Students and opportunist thieves burn cars and break into shops in Hamburg and fascism is on the rise! Brexit will cause the economic collapse of the UK! We only have (select preference) days to save the NHS! The ice caps will all melt by 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 etc. and we’re all going to drown! While Trump is a fascist dictator!

It’s bullshit, mostly.

We like to join the dots and recognize patterns, even if they are not there. We like to tell stories. And the internet is perfect for these because more news is available and it is immediate. But you need to be selective if you want to put together a story. We are all addicted to confirmation bias. (I’m as guilty of it as anyone, and I’m guilty of it in this post.) You fear Islam? Well it’s easy to find numerous stories of Islamic atrocities all around the world and put those together as the fall of Western civilization. You dislike Brexit? Plenty of stories of how bad it is sure to be from partisan news media. You dislike socialism or capitalism? Easy to cite their catalogues of failures. You’re into the modern version of original sin? Plenty of stuff out there from the Church of Environmentalism to confirm for you how you are destroying the planet.

No, we are not descending into chaos. Shit happens. Shit has been happening forever. Natural and human-caused disasters have not, I would suggest, increased, while the political madness of the past with its putsches, exterminations and stomping of jackboots is not on the rise, in fact has been steadily declining since the World Wars. A hundred years ago religious fanatics were killing people, there was always a war somewhere (in fact WW1), natural disasters and diseases were wiping people out … only what you heard about these things was limited to newspapers, usually sometime after the fact. For example, if a tsunami had washed up on Sri Lanka back then would we have even known about it? Probably – a few column inches on page three of the Times a month after it happened.

And there’s another aspect to all this: bad news sells and is propagated while good news gets lost in the noise. People like bad news, probably because it’s life-affirming for them: hey, this terrible shit is happening … elsewhere and to someone else.

The reality: we are living longer more comfortable lives – compared to people a 100 years ago we in the Western world live like kings. Global poverty and starvation are steadily declining. Medical advances are steadily ridding us of diseases. Mind-blowing technologies are rampant and radically changing the way we live.

Life is good. Get over it. 

Space Battles

So, if you wanted to see a picture of space battle scenes from the Cormac books, which ones would they be? Maybe Dragon hammering into Hubris in Gridlinked? The Occam Razor destroying cylinder worlds over Masada in The Line of Polity? Jack Ketch 'shitting laser beams' in Brass Man? Battle Wagon charging Erebus's formation in Polity Agent? Orlandine directing a black hole matter fountain in Line War? What do you think?

Facebook Catch up

Few bits from FB over the last couple of months...

June 6^th

How many here have tried this online dating lark? I've just about given up now. No dear, clinically obese is not 'a bit curvy' and 20 or 30 is not 'a few extra pounds'. And seriously. In this age when just about any bit of hardware takes a picture, claiming you don't have a recent one is a bit of a joke!

June 8^th

Right, election day is here and now I breathe a sigh of relief. I will not be posting anymore party political stuff - too divisive, polarising. I can't be doing with seeing the responses of 'friends', or some of their posts, and thinking 'wanker'. Back to science, books, writing and occasional embarrassing details about my personal life. 

13^th June

I had a stinking cold starting the week before last and extending into last week. During that time my focus was mainly on trying not to feel like crap. I had some other work to deal with too and didn't get much of the latest novel done. Looking on the bright side, one of my escapes from feeling like crap (beside stuffing my face with comfort food) was really getting into reading again, which is great. But now I'm back on it: 2,000 words done yesterday and 2,000 done today.

29^th June

Ooh, snippy. 'I don't like your opinions therefore I won't read your books anymore'. *sigh* Hell, if I took that attitude I would have missed out on a lot of great books, films too. I guess I'm as guilty, but people really need to look outside their sociopolitical bubbles sometimes.

3rd July

Aaargh! Bloody computers ... or in this case printers ... I think. Y'know, I've got a job of making up stuff, writing it down and keeping readers entertained. I really REALLY don't want to spend hours pissing about, searching the internet, trying and failing to load firmware etc ad nauseum. I really don't want my printer unilaterally deciding that, for one file, paper must be fed in manually, and then telling me about a non-existent paper jam! Aaaargh!

5^th July

2,000 words yesterday but the word counts are dropping now. At 116,000 words I've reached the stage in the middle-of-a-trilogy book where I have to deliver a satisfying ending but also maintain the overall story arc of the trilogy. This has made me realise that something I have been signalling, even from the end of the first book, needs to be toned down. This ... event ... is the ending of the second book but it needs to be more of a surprise. Today I'll copy the document and start tearing it apart, excising stuff and sticking it back together again to see how that works out...

Keystroke Medium with Neal Asher

Here I am rambling on...

Took a Walk

Last weekend I decided, rather than sit in the house and arse around on Facebook, that I should head off and walk somewhere pleasant, maybe have some lunch out too. I got in my car and drove to the village of Althorne, abandoned my car and headed down to the River Crouch estuary.

A stroll along the edge of here has been part of my walking routine but, from my house, that involves a lot of walking along the sides of the roads, which ain’t that great. Though I have to admit to some enjoyment since this is the first English Spring I’ve seen in 10 years.

So I headed down and along the edge of the estuary to Burnham-on-Crouch. It’s pleasant down there and I was reminded of the time when, at about age 20, I was training myself for a walking holiday in the Lake District. I had someone drive me out and dump me by Bradwell power station and walked back in, following the sea wall to where my parent’s house was located. This was about 20 miles.

I was of course writing stuff at the time and I made plenty of notes while tramping along and afterwards turned this into an article, which I sent to a walking magazine. I was young and naive then and unfamiliar with the ways of the writing world, so made the common mistake of becoming impatient and sending off a snotty letter when I hadn’t heard something for a while. The editor sent my article back telling me to shove it. Apparently he had been about to go and take pictures of the area to complement the article, which he was going to publish.

That would have been my first publication success had I not been a dick. I wonder now what course I would have taken if it had been published. Maybe now I would be a jobbing writer turning out articles for various magazines and newspapers while yearning to be a novelist.

Anyway, back to the walk… I arrived in Burnham after an hour and a half. My plan had been to have lunch there, but most of the pubs were still closed and, really, it takes a little while to cool down after a good walk and actually feel hungry. Instead I found a café and had a cream tea. All very English and, I admit, the first time in my life I had ever eaten a scone with clotted cream and jam.

After whiling away a pleasant time I then headed back. A search on the internet told me this walk was 5 miles so, with the return journey, 10 miles. Others told me it was 3 miles but I thought no. Average walking speed is 3.1 miles (though dependent on a lot of factors) and I was walking fast. I plumped for 8 or 9 miles. Now having traced the route on Google Earth I find it was a total of 11 miles.

Yesterday I decided to head the other direction along the Crouch to a place called Fambridge. Again the internet told me this was about 5 miles. It took me 2 hours to reach a pub called the Ferryboat where I intended to guzzle a pint of something, but when I got there it was closed for refurbishment. Following directions I headed to a nearby marina bar and there drank a pint of Thatcher’s cider before heading back. My estimate of 10 miles was again upgraded by Google Earth, this time to 14.8 miles. I thought I felt a bit knackered.

And here I am writing an article in a different way. No waxing lyrical about crab shells stuck to the sea grass, dry and papery and rising about me like confetti as I walked through them. Nothing about sun and salt bleached driftwood taking on the appearance of alien creatures that had hauled themselves from the depths. Aliens and things of a crabby nature are elsewhere now.   

Forbidden Planet Signing

Okay, book signing in Forbidden Planet…

I headed up to London aiming to arrive at the bookshop at around 4.30 where I was to meet the Macmillan publicist, Jamie-Lee Nardone, outside. The trip was fast so I ended up wandering down towards the shop at about 3.45. Not wanting to hang about there I stepped into a nearby pub and whiled away the time with a few whiskies.

I then met Jamie outside the shop and we crossed the road to eat burgers and drink a couple of beers before going into said shop. First order of business was to sign maybe 30 or so copies of Infinity Engine people had ordered. I managed to put a pen through the page of one copy, then spilled coffee on someone’s computer mouse. Maybe those whiskies hadn’t been such a good idea.

Out in the shop I signed plenty of books. I’m told there were about 30 people there but everyone had more than their copies of Infinity Engine. This I guess is my fault since I don’t do signings very often. Of particular note was the stack brought by Sharon Sasaki from Canada – it stood about four feet tall. And thanks for the pen Sharon!

Jamie took lots of pictures with people’s mobile phones and all was good. Thanks too to Adam? Gerard? ( Sorry, but while I can remember most details of 140,000 word book, I forget people’s names) and his wife who brought me a gift of a bottle of gin. Checking the label I see that it’s 57% proof so that’ll be an interesting experience when I start imbibing (not yet, I like a big space between my hangovers).

After signing the books people had bought and brought I then signed the bookshop stock. That was a nice quantity so if you want a signed copy get down to Forbidden Planet now. Next was a venture around the corner to The Angel where various fans plied me with beer. I don't think I was too disgraceful ... then again there are pictures yet to appear. I did my circulating but sorry if I missed chatting to any of you.

At about 10 I buggered off to catch a train. I got aboard determined not to fall asleep and end up in Southend like the last time. A guy sitting opposite me was having a similar problem – talking on his mobile phone with earphones then slumping sideways in his seat and snoring. 

I was fine and got out at Wickford. I then asked a woman sitting in the station about the train to Althorne. Apparently there wasn’t one but her brother was picking her up and that’s where she was going. Amy and Lawrence gave me a lift and dropped me off near my home. The kindness of strangers eh?

This morning I’m not particularly hungover. Maybe that was due to the ‘organic’ beer in The Angel. I just went for a 3-mile walk to collect my car and shall now slide back into the day job. Y’know, space ships to blow up. Ho-hum.

Cheers to those who took these pictures, which I swiped off Facebook. And my thanks to the staff of Forbidden Planet.

Signing Event

Okay, there you have it. Thursday the 23rd of March between 6.00 and 7.00pm. Be there or be square, or some such. At Forbidden Planet in London.

Fast Words

Well that’s good. I tried out this fasting and did four, then two then three days, with the days in between eating my usual amount. I’ve lost 10lb+ in that time, but hard to judge precisely since when you eat again that’s a pound of so of food plus the fluid you retain while digesting it. Doesn’t take a lot – a cup of tea weighs half a pound. If I were to measure it from a month ago, when my weight hit 192.8, then I’ve lost 20lbs. I do feel a lot lighter! Anyway, fasting is a damned sight easier than trying to diet. Near analogy would be the difference between feathering the clutch while in traffic on a hill or putting on the handbrake. But I’ve gone on enough about this already so … writing.

I finished up the first book of the Jain trilogy a week ago then turned to a file marked Jain2. Here I’d dumped sections I’d excised from the first book. I had a few little hiccups when starting the new book – lot of checking and reiterating – but soon things were running strong. This week I’ve been clearing my 2,000 words a day. Today I looked at one of those previously dumped sections where I introduced a new character. I then realised it would be better to make this new character an old character, this being a (sort of) renegade prador from the previous book. It made it more interesting and allowed for better continuity. However, I then had to go back to the first book and make some alteration there. Glad I didn’t prematurely hand it in to Macmillan.

So what else can I tell you without giving too much away? There’s a Polity assassin drone nailed to an anti-gravity disc. There’s a very dangerous alien with its … manipulators on some serious weaponry. Orlandine is having an existential crisis, and a lethal war drone called Knobbler has a crucial mission. And then there’s the Clade, ooh let me tell you all about the Clade. Maybe I should start with how it –   

What was I saying?

Kill Your Darlings

So, anyway, I think I’ve promised to post here more regularly about four or five times over the last couple of years, so I won’t be doing that again. The reasons behind my lack of posting are various: private, professional and finally due to a degree of boredom and irritation with the social media.

A little while ago I decided that in the mornings (rather than sit in my living room with a cup of tea, with my Ipad open while farting about of Facebook, Twitter and elsewhere) I would go straight into my office and get to work. I also decided that in the evenings I would again avoid social media and read and watch more TV. In these the only one I haven’t stuck to is the reading – must make more of an effort there.

My working day now usually runs like this: I am at my computer by about 8.00 AM, I warm up my brain by reading about 10 science articles from various sites across the internet, then I get to work. At midday I stop to cook and eat (a stir fry is usual now), then at about 4.00 – 4.30 I head to a local gym for about an hour or so. There I do 20 minutes on a cross-trainer, 30 – 40 minutes on free weights etc., finishing off with 2,000 metres on a rowing machine (I have four routines I do and intend to add more, because I’m getting bored with them now).

My aim has been to do my 2,000 words each day. I had a week or so when I was doing more than that – continuing to work after I got back from the gym and not stopping till 8.00 in the evening – but generally it has been less. The results? I’ve done a couple of short stories titled Grawl and Logan. The first is an elves and orcs siege while the second is a Polity story loosely based on High Plains Drifter. I intend to write some more short stories soon since doing so is something I have wanted to get back to for some time. Then there’s the book…

As I have noted here before, the latest book for Macmillan was a bit all over the place, having been written in spurts over a couple of years between periods of anxiety and depression. I’d ripped it apart and stuck it back together again many times. When I finally figured out where I was going with it, a few months back, that was after I whittled it down from 110,000 words to 90,000 words, while it sat in a file named ‘Jain’. Further work brought it back up to 110,000 words, then I hacked it down again moving sections from it into a file named ‘Jain2’ for a second book. More work, which involved further deletions and the diversion of a black ops attack ship called Obsidian Blade, resulted in the file name ‘Jain1’. Next I decided I had too many character POVs. I removed the POV of one character along with about a chapter of work on the same and this resulted in the file name ‘Jain1a’. I then decided this character was superfluous, so I killed her, and this resulted in ‘Jain1ab’…

‘In writing, you must kill your darlings.’ – William Faulkner

The quote is quite apposite in this case. I found myself writing more and more about the character I mention above, and drifting away from the main thrust of the story. She had to go, so I whacked her. Maybe it was doing this that led on to what happened next. The end of the story in this book was in sight. I had three plot threads I needed to tie off in a satisfying way, while also keeping them open for the next book. I worked with two of them, thinking to myself that maybe I needed to do more. I then moved onto the third yesterday, wrote another section and then finished it with three words. I realised that this was enough – that because of those three words I didn’t need to do anything more with the other threads. There is more to do – tidying up, some sections to be expanded, additions to be made – but I looked at those three words for about 30 seconds then after them wrote:

THE END.

Moving On.

Okay, that’s the final page proofs of Infinity Engine gone through and sent back to Macmillan. I’ll just say that I haven’t copped out on this – Penny Royal does have an aim…

Now it’s time to get back to the present book. I am past 100,000 words into this (the previous books were 140 -160,000 words) and things are going well. I do have one plot thread and one short section (a prador of the King’s Guard paying a visit to the king) that I may excise, but only to transfer to the next book. ‘The shape of things to come’ is nicely solidifying in my mind and I can promise exploding spaceships, hostile alien life forms, highly advanced technology and ultra-violence. Of course it wouldn’t be a Neal Asher book without them.

On the personal front things are looking good. My numerous visits to the gym are paying off. I don’t feel quite so knackered each day and I’ve now got back to walking too – going off for a 7-miler (thank you Google Earth) four or five times a week. I did get a bit pissed off at one point when my weight started to climb, but then I noticed how my T-shirts are getting a bit tighter and my arms seem to have exploded. Psychologically I seem to have won, with no more depression, anxiety or panic attacks.

Also, because I’m single, not inclined to visit pubs or clubs and because my profession is a lonely introverted one without much in the way of a social aspect, I’m having a crack at this online dating. I guess, because of my profile, this is something I shouldn’t mention. But I’m not inclined to give much of a toss about that.

Anyway, it has been interesting to say the least. 

Turn Around

I’ve finally turned it around. The latest book, written intermittently over the last couple of years, was a mess. I’ve said before how I just let myself go with the writing following plot threads that led off into the wilderness and then, on numerous occasions, tore the whole thing apart and put it back together again. This time I’ve again torn it apart, rewritten it and stuck it back together again. And it’s working.

I am now 9 chapters in and can get back to writing new stuff. I did my 2,000 words yesterday but am not yet contemplating going back to doing that five days a week. I don’t want to push too hard and find myself bouncing out again, which has happened before. Anyway, I have some other writing-related work to get on with and I have a life to rebuild beyond slaving at a word processor for you lot!

But on the subject of the new book, I can’t leave this post without a few obligatory teases. I decided to make the character who delivered something nasty to a weapons platform – one of many around a particular accretion disc – an expendable character who does not appear in the rest of the book. An entity I have dubbed ‘the wheel’ might be a Jain AI. I don’t know – I just write this stuff as it comes to me. Anyway, it certainly shows a great deal of interest in a Jain super-soldier. And Orlandine … why is she building two war runcibles?

Heh.