Crowsnest Interview

Interview from way back in 2004.

 Hello Neal. What made you want to be a writer?

When I was a school kid, I would one day be taking apart an old television and finding out how thermionic valves work, the next day painting a picture or making a model out of Tetrion wall-filler, and the day after that peering through my microscope at something scraped off the window ledge, or discovering that a particular mixture of table salt and copper sulphate in solution violently dissolves aluminium. My interests were all over the place and unfocused. So it wasn’t surprising that, after a school teacher praised a story I'd written in a creative writing class, writing was added to the list. My varied interests continued after I left school, with the addition of beer drinking, smoking, and women. At some point in my late teens or early twenties I decided to focus on one thing and not be a Jack of all trades and master of none. I chose writing, SF & Fantasy because that was what I read. A good choice because it incorporated all my other interests.

When and with what did you make your first pro sale?

Pro sale? My first sale was a short story called 'Another England' to BBR (Back Brain Recluse) in 1989. I'd been writing for a long time before that, producing the inevitable 'fantasy trilogy' and revising it endlessly. I then discovered the small presses and started trying to write short stories for that market. The BBR story can't really be called a professional sale because then it was an A5 mag and the payment one free copy. My first real professional sale was the novella (written doing the rounds of a postal workshop) Mindgames: Fool's Mate. For that I received a one-off payment of £1000. It was published in 1992 by Club 199. Then more short story sales followed along with sales to the publisher Tanjen.

Before exploding onto the scene with 'Gridlinked' in 2001, you spent a
couple of decades working through the small presses. Do you think your work
is better for the long run-up?

I think so. I've been writing for a long time and that experience tells (I hope), and I did that without much expectation of reward, absorbed the disappointments, and just got on with it. I think many writers who are taken on younger, when they've produced only a little work, find it difficult to knuckle down to the next book. I don't. By the time Macmillan published me I'd written seven novels (unpublished). Gridlinked and The Skinner were sort of done at 70 and 80 thousand words respectively. I'd was about 30,000 words into The Line of Polity (though I abandoned them when I came to write it out properly) and I'd written a novella called 'Cowl at the Beginning' which became Cowl. Those years climbing up the ladder also brought home to me how lucky and privileged I was to be taken on by a large publisher. If it seems easy, then you've less inclination to work hard at making a success of it. Twenty plus years of rejections sit behind my attitude to the business of writing.

You've recently become a full-time writer. Is it strange having no other
work to think about?

It's surprising how quickly I got used to it. What may have helped was that prior to Macmillan I was self-employed, grafting for wages in the Summer and writing in the Winter. The greatest difficulty has been keeping the weight off having gone from a physical job to sitting in front of a pc all the time, and a tendency to sometimes go a little stir crazy.

How much planning do you do before you sit down to write a story?

Very little. With The Line of Polity I actually went after a bursary (didn't get it). To do that I needed to send in sample chapters and a synopsis. When I came to write the book for Macmillan I abandoned the synopsis and most of those first chapters (the 30,000 words mentioned before). I did this because I felt constrained and bored by knowing where the story went. For me writing is just as much a process of discovery as reading.

Roughly how long does it take for you to write a novel?

That's a difficult one to answer. I aim for 10,000 words a week. Some weeks I manage that. Others I don't. I'd guess at about six months to the first draft, then I spend a month editing (at one point I actually read it backwards a paragraph at a time -- you don't get involved in the story that way and pick up mistakes easier). Then I get people to read it, correct the mistakes they pick up, make additions, subtractions ... Maybe eight or nine months. Roughly. Very roughly. Cowl was 125,000 words and The Line of Polity 175,000, so you can see there's some variation.

Your books have a great deal of new technology and sciences in them, but you
have no formal scientific training. Does this lack of background help or
hinder your research?

My background was in engineering so I've that body of knowledge to call on: mathematics, metallurgy, manufacturing, toolmaking, programming computerised machine tools etc -- the nuts & bolts end of our technical civilization. I read a lot of science books and magazines and like to think some of it takes root between my ears. I've also the background of both my parents being teachers -- my mother a school teacher and my father a lecturer in applied mathematics -- and the greatest knowledge any teacher can impart is how to think. Formal training may well have hindered me by narrowing my focus. It could negate that eclecticism that writing is all about. But I don't really know. I do know that receiving such training I probably would not have become a writer. I would now be peering down that microscope, or delving into the guts of computers, or mixing exotic chemicals in a laboratory...

 If we're to believe George W. Bush, man could be treading on Martian soil in
the not too distant future. Is space exploration important, in your opinion?

Yes it is important. It would hugely advance our technology and as a consequence the quality of our lives. It would give us new places to live, grander vistas for the human imagination, a greater understanding of the universe, the possibility of the human race surviving to the end of the universe (and maybe beyond that). But what's the alternative? Do we just sit on this planet gazing into our navels until the sun goes out? If our only reason for being, is just being, then we’ve no right to set ourselves any higher than any other animals on this planet. 

Your fourth novel, 'Cowl', is out now. What attracted you about writing a
time travel book?

I'm awed by the sheer scale of Earth's history. To pick up a fossil on a beach and think that this was alive two hundred million years ago. To try and grasp the epic timescales involved: 170 million years of dinosaurs, 65 million years of mammals, and all that time is what? About an eighteenth of the time life has existed on Earth? What does a million years mean? It's like trying to grasp what a light year means. So try four and half billion years. I wanted to bring some essence of that into a book. It's the sensawunda that drew me to SF in the first place. I've found it before (concerning time travel) in the like of Silverberg's Hawksbill Station, but not in many other books. Most time travel stories seem to be set within recent human history, the last piddling few thousands of years. 

Time travel is one of SF's more tricky sub-genres. How did you come up with
your time travel technology?

The first step was to try and get round the 'if I shoot my father before I'm born' paradox. I tried to put together a theory relating time travel to energy usage, just like space travel (Simply put, you can't travel faster than light because that would require infinite energy -- kind of cosmic brake). Somewhere I'd read the idea that creating a paradox will shove you into a parallel timeline. But if time travel is possible, travellers can travel from all timelines, create paradoxes and shove themselves into other timelines. You'd end up with infinite timelines and travellers -- we'd be up to our necks in the buggers. My way around that was the probability slope. Along the main timeline at the top of the slope time travel is possible. Creating paradoxes shoves you down the slope into parallels where it becomes less probable. To get back up to the main line requires an increasing amount of energy. The greater the paradox you create, the further down the slope you get pushed. At the bottom of the slope infinite energy is required to time travel. I then incorporated the idea that time travel is only possible throughout those ages when life was on Earth, that certain kinds of energy are created by the complex molecular interchanges involved. Gasp! I then disappeared in a puff of my own logic. 

If you had one of Cowl's 'tors' attached to your arm and could travel
through time, what would you do? Would you advise your former self?

I’m quite satisfied with my life as it stands. I might nip back a few weeks and advise my earlier self of the lottery numbers. But then, would I have sufficient energy to labour up the probability slope to return and enjoy the money? Perhaps I’d go further back and tell my young self to put out that fag. It’s the ‘if only I knew then what I know now’ syndrome. But regarding the smoking: if I hadn’t smoked, rather than lighting up a fag I might have stepped off the kerb earlier in front of a bus.

Your most popular novels are those of future action hero, Ian Cormac, who
you introduced us to in 'Gridlinked' and continued with more recently in
'Line Of Polity'. Is there a limit to what you can write about him and the
Polity?

The simple answer has to be no. But I may get fed up with writing the Polity books and want to do something else (publisher permitting). Maybe more about the Umbrathane and Heliothane, maybe some stand alone works set in some entirely different future (or past) world. My original intention was four books concerning Cormac, one for each Dragon sphere, but now there’s Jain technology to contend with…

'Line of Polity' saw Cormac move from the small numbers conflict of
'Gridlinked' to a much larger, planet-wide civil war. Did this change in
scope have anything to do with current events?

Not current events, no. Events as they have always been. ‘Those who fail to learn the lesson of history are damned to repeat it.’ How often should that be repeated? Shock and awe, Mr Rumsfeld? Ever heard of the Blitz? Aaargh, don’t get me started!

Both in 'Cowl', where Polly and Tack are re-educated as they go back in
time, and the physicist Skellor's nanotechnology mutations in 'Line Of
Polity', characters end up as totally different people at the end of the
book. Do you think it's possible to reach a stage where personality is as
designable as everything else?

Definitely. We do it with drugs, education and indoctrination now. We’re just not very good at it yet. Factor in technologies to alter the brain, reprogram the mind, make additions. I think it the case that anything that has been created it will be possible for us to create, and change. The sky is not the limit – far too close.

Artificial Intelligences play a major role in your Polity novels, taking a
lot of the responsibility for running governments and systems from
politicians. Do you think we will ever see a machine pass the Turing test
and perform the same function in our world?

We’re not far off creating machines that can beat the Turing test now, and there are human being about now who could not. But what does that mean? As in my books, the test of intelligence/sentience will change as we learn more. The goalposts will keep changing. As to machines running governments, what would the requirements be? I don’t suppose the ability to lie and talk bollocks would be all that difficult to program in.

Do you think people are right to be wary of machines replacing us?

I guess so, in view of the fact that we would be creating the machines in the first place and they might take on our nasty traits. I do, however, buy into the Banksian credo that the machines are quite likely to be better than us. No glands.

I take it you're already writing your next book. Can you tell us anything
about it?

Well, I’ve completed Brass Man, which follows on from The Line of Polity. That’s due to come out next April. I’m now in the process of editing The Voyage of the Sable Keech which follows The Skinner. The title Brass Man, for those who have read Gridlinked, is probably a bit of a giveaway. As a far as Sable is concerned I can say that Sniper’s back, the Prador are going for a bit of ‘shock and awe’, and a schizoid hive mind is on the scene.

What books & authors have had the most influence on your writing?

My stock reply to that, which you’ll find in the acknowledgements of The Skinner, is that list of names stretching from Aldiss to Zelazny. I’ve also stuck some top tens up here and there: one on the Guardian website and one on Zone SF.  The trouble is that as soon as I start to list them I find there are many I’ve missed.  Best to just say many many writers and many many books – not all fantasy and SF.

You mention in your biography that you began writing fantasy. Do you ever
plan returning to the genre?

My plan is to some time return to that fantasy I’ve written and rewrite it. When I’ve got the time … Other things get in the way though. I know I’ve got to write more stories, novellas and the next novel for Macmillan. Only in the last couple of days someone has been after me to produce some Polity novellas to publish in a collection. Maybe I’ll return to the fantasy when all the other wells run dry, which I hope never happens.

With yourself, Alastair Reynolds, Richard Morgan and Ken Macloed, among
others, hitting their stride in the hard-SF genre, British science fiction
is looking good at the moment. Is this a trend you see continuing?

All I can say is that I hope so. Possibly it will, simply because SF is coming more and more into the mainstream via film and television. I know I certainly want to see more books from the above mentioned writers.

Is there any advice you can give to upcoming writers?

A writer writes. He doesn’t agonise about being a writer. Learn your craft and don’t stop reading. Don’t spend all your time on the great novel – try other markets. Never think you have nothing more to learn. Concentrate on telling a story, not on demonstrating how intellectually superior you are. The best writers are invisible. I feel a ‘How to’ book coming on…

Thanks for your time.

Regards, Tomas L. Martin

Galaxy Blog

This one was a guest blog done in 2011, regarding The Technician.


So, Emily Wu, the Product Manager for Macmillan books in Australia, told me that they supply books to a good specialist science fiction/fantasy bookshop in Sydney called Galaxy Books, who asked whether I might be interested in providing a guest blog for their website. I’ve never done a guest blog before but, being an SF writer and avid SF reader, how could I possibly refuse a request from someone with a name like that?

Y’know, I loved Ringworld, and Ringworld Engineers by Larry Niven and maybe she’s related to Louis Wu? Maybe she’ll send a Pak Protector after me if I don’t do this blog. Maybe she is a Pak Protector!

I emailed the store manager Mark Timmony about this and he replied with ‘Basically I have been letting author's run wild talking about the world(s) their latest title is set in and the themes they wanted to/were exploring that are not immediately obvious from the blurb’. Well, a chance for me to waffle on about one of my books… It’s a no-brainer really.

Okay, here’s one of the selection of blurbs I wrote up for The Technician:

Twenty years after the fall of the Theocracy, a religious policeman, Jeremiah Tombs, the only living survivor of a hooder attack, has escaped his sanatorium. The scorpion drone Amistad lets him run, for though Polity technology could cure him, the AIs are reluctant to meddle since it was the near mythical Technician that attacked him, and it did something to his mind that even they don’t understand.

The amphidapt Chanter pursues the Technician in his mudmarine, trying to understand the grotesque sculptures of bones the creature makes with its victim’s remains, trying to understand its art. He is recruited by Amistad, along with ex-rebel Commander Lief Grant, and a lethal black AI everyone thought was dead.

Tombs could possess information about the racial suicide of the Atheter, but his self-destructive madness needs to be cured by confrontation with the reality about him, a reality in which the religion-hating Tidy Squad wants him dead. And meanwhile, in deep space, the mechanism the Atheter used to reduce themselves to animals, stirs from slumber and begins to power-up its weapons.

Right, time to heat up the waffle iron.

The planet Masada, the planet where this is set, first puts in an appearance in the second book in the five-book Cormac series: 1. Gridlinked, 2. The Line of Polity, 3. Brass Man, 4. Polity Agent, 5. Line War. There was, quite simply, one reason I wanted to return there –gabbleducks – and, initially, that was the title of the book I was writing. These creatures are the deliberately devolved descendants of the Atheter mentioned above, and they have grown in the telling, sparking off three short stories Softly Spoke the Gabbleduck, The Gabble & Alien Archaeology, which appeared in Asimov’s Magazine, some ‘Year’s Best’ collections and now finally reside in a collection with the overall title The Gabble. I wanted to write more about them, expand on them, but it didn’t quite work out that way.

First let’s take a look at Neal Asher’s desk and the preparations he’s making for his next book. Post-it notes on the pin board? No, just some Jon Sullivan covers, the Greek alphabet and last week’s shopping list. Rough synopsis on the screen. No, just a ranty blog about smoking bans or political correctness. Some ideas jotted down on that pad? No, they’re from the last book. Research notes? Get out of here, haven’t you heard of Google?

Actually, I did do a little preparation for The Technician by reading The Line of Polity and Alien Archaeology to remind myself of some cogent points. However, when I write a book I embark on the same voyage of discovery as you guys when you pick up a book and open it, except my voyage starts at a blank page.

With this book I started by writing about a toadman called Chanter and his interest in the grotesque art of a hooder called the Technician and, when on my voyage I found out that the Technician was a two-million-year-old biomech war machine, and that kinda hooked my interest.

Next I wrote about Jeremiah Tombs, ensconced in a sanatorium for over twenty years, mad as a box of frogs after having had a very nasty encounter with the Technician, and it having done something quite odd to his mind. I wanted to know exactly what that hooder did to him, and the only way to find out was to write my way there. Along the way it seemed the right thing to do to drop in the war drone Amistad (The Shadow of the Scorpion), a black AI called Penny Royal (Alien Archaeology) and some inevitable interference from that alien entity called Dragon, who suicided on Masada, and rose again as an entire race. But even with all these, the threat levels weren’t quite high enough and the chances of planetary extinction remained low, so it was necessary to spice the mix with a billion ton ancient genocidal mechanism.

 Keep it simple, I say.

Of course there are gabbleducks here, but they don’t feature so much as the Technician itself, hence the change of title. I guess that leaves things open for me to do a book called Gabbleducks sometime in the future.

Now, to conclude, because I’m running out of steam and don’t know how to waffle on without giving too much away, I have to wonder if you are any the wiser for reading this? Probably not, but I hope you’re intrigued…

Interview with Irena (Croatia)

From 2007:

Just a couple of hours before I had to "meet" Neal Asher in a chat room for an interview we had arranged, I had the misfortune to read an interview he did recently, in which he had answered all the questions I wanted to ask him. So I had to come up with an entirely new set of questions and found myself probing Neal's mind about the craft of writing …

Ire: I like what you said in the other interview that a writer should - above all - be writing, writing, writing and reading, reading, reading. It seems so many people nowadays perceive writing not as a job or as hard work, but as something anyone can do. You may have the talent, the will, the whatever, but most of all you have to work and learn the skill.

Neal: It's a learning process that never ends. I would say that if I ever think that I know it all, that'll be time for me to quit.

Ire: Have you ever attended a writing workshop?

Neal: I was involved in a postal workshop and once I went to a writers circle - I didn't bother going back because they spent too much time slagging off Jeffrey Archer and complaining about not getting published. I guess it goes back to that comment I made in that other interview: a writer writes.

Ire: And how do you get your ideas? I mean, it's nothing new when you look at it: aliens, AIs, monsters, etc. But your writing has that je ne sais qui, something of yours that can't be found in other authors. Is it pure talent and imagination or do you have your little factory of ideas?

Neal: Like a lot of SF writers I'm building on what went before and putting my own spin on it. Damn, I can't really say. I'm a seat-of-the-pants sort of writer. I don't plan much. I just sit down and get on with it. I'm writing the kind of stuff I like to read.

Ire: Do you have any favorite themes you like to write about? And do you sometimes "use the SF" (as some mainstream writer would put it) to tackle our everyday lives and problems that we may face in the near future?

Neal: Our everyday lives and the problems we face do come into the equation, but tackling them isn't my main aim. I'm out to write sensawunda SF and entertain. Favorite themes would be technology, biology (usually alien, but then, if you want to find the alien just go and lift the nearest rock), war, murder ... hang on ... in retrospect it would seem my main themes are mind control, hive minds, how a far future technology impacts on the human mind and the relationship between human minds and artificial intelligence. However, if there are no big-fuck spaceships, gun-fights or large explosions, my interest wanes.

Ire: I've found on the net your list of 10 SF novels you'd recommend (http://www.zone-sf.com/nealasher.html) and the first two are written by Iain M. Banks. Is he your favorite author? Many critics compare your work to his, being you both have novels that take place in the same universes respectively, in highly developed cultures (you Polity, him Culture), that they are action packed and usually have very charming AIs, amongst other characters.

Neal: Ian M Banks is certainly one of my favorite authors. In "Polity Agent" he's in the acknowledgements where I thank him for his drones, though admittedly the idea of quirky robots/drones has been around for a while (R2D2 anyone?).

Ire: What other authors have had the most influence on your writing?

Neal: Well, if you list just about every SF writer for the last fifty or more years, that'll about cover it. In "The Skinner" acknowledgements I thank 'all those writers from Aldiss to Zelazny' A to Z. Greats like Clarke, Silverberg, Asimov are on the list. The likes of Van Vogt, Harrison ... damn. My SF collection is up in my loft so I can't refer to it to remind me. Let's just say there are a lot of influences there.

Ire: I'd like to ask you to give some advice to young and aspiring authors, but I know what you'd say: stop overthinking it and start writing it, right?

Neal: Yes. I'd also like to add that I'm not a great believer in natural talent. I think we all possess the capability of being good at something; it's just that not all of us possess the will and the capacity for hard work.

Ire: How long have you been writing?

Neal: I think I wrote my first bit of SF when I was about 15 or 16. After leaving school I dabbled a bit more but didn't take it seriously until I was about 20. I then spent a lot of time writing a fantasy. Later I started having a go at short stories, the first one of which was published in a magazine called Back Brain Recluse in 1989. Okay, I'm 46 now so, on and off, about 30 years. Shit ... is it that long?

Ire: Your books have been translated into French, Spanish, Romanian, Portuguese, German, Russian … did I miss any?

Neal: There're Czech copies. I won their Salamander Award for "The Skinner" and was short-listed with "Gridlinked". Other countries now conquered are America and Japan.

Ire: Once I commented your book on your old website and you said something along the lines of it mattering more to you to be translated into a "small" language, like Croatian for example, then into a "big" one.

Neal: Did I? There you go: I write so much on the Internet that I cannot remember it all. Financially it's better if say America or Germany takes a book of mine, but in terms of kudos and getting my books out there I take as much pleasure in sales to smaller countries. Hey, know any good Croatian publishers? LOL

Ire: How about China then? It's the biggest SF market on the planet. Have you any plans for Chinese translations of your books?

Neal: I'd love to see it. What is it? Close to a billion of them. Another one might be India with its billion citizens too. "Gridlinked" in Hindi?

Ire: So you've written a lot and you've conquered most of the world translation-wise (or you're planning to), but do you have any idea how well your books are selling?

Neal: I know my books are selling pretty well in Britain, but I don't have figures for the other countries.

Ire: How much do you work on promoting your books?

Neal: I've done plenty of interviews, a few signings and attended one or two SF conventions. I guess I do most of my promotion like this, over the Internet, talking to those who read my books.

Ire: You keep a relationship with your readers mostly through your blog and forums. Do you ever get any ideas from the people you talk online? Do they ever make suggestions?

Neal: Yes and no. When I wrote "Gridlinked", the book included a character called Mr. Crane - a two-and-a-half meter tall brass Golem android. I really liked the character and was thinking about doing more about him. Quite possibly it was the feedback from fans - saying they really liked him - that  ... informed my decision to write "Brass Man". The feedback from fans saying they like my stuff is what helps keep my nose to the grindstone.

Ire: So, it could be said that you're listening to the pulse of your readers regarding your books?

Neal: Yeah, I'm listening. I'm not going to go off and do something all arty just to satisfy my ego - I'll keep giving them what they want.

Ire: You said you've written a couple of fantasy novels that haven't been published yet. So the question of the hour is: which do you prefer - fantasy or science fiction?

Neal: I definitely prefer the SF. Even the fantasy I was writing had to have a logical basis - the powers employed were super-science rather than magic - and there were few of the usual standard fantasy tropes like elves, dwarves or magic swords. Thought admittedly there was a 'staff of power'. Anyway, SF was where I was successful and now having written lots of it, it's my preferred form.

Ire: Why do you think there's so much interest in fantasy these days and less and less in SF? I've had the pleasure of meeting Brian Aldiss last year and he said it's because people are feeling that there's nothing much left to discover. That we've gone too fast and too far with technology and people are kind of regressing, looking for spirituality in myth and legend.

Neal: I think it is because fantasy is easier and most people know the language. The SF 'language' is a difficult one to acquire. I think you've got it about right there: a close analogy is between science and religion - the latter is easier and requires a lot less thought.

Ire: And do you hang out with other writers? Do you exchange ideas with them, discuss the current trends?

Neal: I have to admit that I don't hang out much with other authors. I've met a few. It was nice when getting taken up by a big publisher to actually meet one of my heroines - Tanith Lee - and others like Harry Harrison and Michael Moorcock. I've chatted in passing with China Mieville, Liz Williams, Alastair Reynolds and others, but never really had lengthy conversations with any of them. I guess I'm just doing my own thing and going my own way. I'm no necessarily aiming to do anything new ... I'm aiming to do what is mine, and what's entertaining.

Ire: And finally, how do you see your future as a SF author? Are there some rewards you are aiming to get? Some stories you are eager to write?

Neal: I'll keep on writing while publishers keep taking my stuff. I'm on my ninth book for Macmillan right now, am lined up for doing another book for Night Shade Books and hope to see more contracts. What rewards? The rewards are on the shelf behind me. Not many people get to earn a living doing something they love. I appreciate that and want it to carry on.

Forbidden Planet Blog

A short blog post written for the Forbidden Planet blog all of 14 years ago.

The Voyage of the Sable Keech and Polity Agent are respectively my sixth and seventh books for Macmillan. When asked what inspired me to write them I have to regretfully inform those with stars in their eyes that inspiration is what part-time writers can afford to wait for, I’ve got a job to do. When I first approached Macmillan I had Gridlinked and The Skinner written (though at about half their present length), the former concerned the travails of agent Cormac and latter, set some 600 years later, was a mad romp set on a world crammed with lethal fauna. Rather liking agent Cormac I expanded and continued his story in the next book, The Line of Polity, then followed that with the time-travel novel, Cowl, and thus set the way I produce my books: Cormac novel, something else, Cormac novel, something else and so on. This was accidental to begin with then reinforced later so I’m not tied down to, and only known for, the one series. This can be limiting for a writer. It has been evident that writers of many other such serialized stories get penalized by their fans when attempting to write anything else.

Still following this course I then wrote the next Cormac book: Brass Man. This sparked from numerous comments from readers about their love of a character in Gridlinked called Mr Crane – an eight foot tall brass Golem with a penchant for ripping off people’s heads when not adding to the collection of little toys in his pocket. Voyage, which follows The Skinner, came next. I wanted to return to the world of Spatterjay not because I intended to explore this or examine that, but because it’s fun, I liked the ecology there, enjoyed the characters I’d created, and could see the perfect place to start with the character Vrell, a huge crablike alien who submerged in Spatterjay’s seas at the end of The Skinner. In this book I incorporated some elements from my others like the the hooders from The Line of Polity and used the authorial technique of letting rip and enjoying myself, then gradually trying to get things under control by tying off and interlinking the numerous plot threads.

Polity Agent, which comes next in the Cormac sequence (September 6th this year) has been a part-culmination of some sort of process going on in my back brain. Throughout the previous books I introduced various plot elements and threads that have remained unresolved: is Horace Blegg really an immortal superhuman who survived Hiroshima; what happened to the ‘Maker’ alien that was returned to its home civilization at the end of Gridlinked; where did the lethal organic ‘Jain’ technology come from and what is Dragon, the huge alien biomechanism sent to the Polity by the Makers, really up to? Some of those questions will be resolved, some will have to wait for Line War (next Cormac book), though there will of course be another book inbetween called Hilldiggers.   

Five Questions

Again I'm not sure who I did this for. 2017 and regarding Infinity Engine.

1. What is your short 'elevator pitch' for Infinity Engine?

It is the beginning of the universe, and the end.

2. We are at Book 3 of the Transformation series, how are the stakes raised in Infinity Engine?

It has been a wild ride but in has to come to an end. When I set out to write a book or a series of books I don’t plan, there are no post-it notes above my desk, in fact I’m as eager to know what comes next as I hope the reader is. All my creations have a purpose (well, if it turns out they don’t they end up deleted either by editing or laser carbine) and Penny Royal – that ‘dark intelligence’ – revealed its purpose as the series progressed. Here you have a rogue AI who is a potential paradigm changer in a massive human and AI Polity. It should therefore not be surprising that its purpose and its aims are tremendous. Penny Royal has the power to transform just about anything, including people, and ultimately it can use that power on itself.  

3. Did you have a favourite character to write in the Transformation series, and if so, why?

Opinions on my characters vary from cardboard and flat to wonderful – it’s all a matter of perspective and really I think more to do with how the reader enjoyed, or not, the story. I enjoy writing my human characters and getting into the intricacies of the workings of their minds, but I don’t want to do too much of that simply because it slows down the story. But the characters that interest me the most are the non-human ones. I like my drones – machines made for the apparently cold, ruthless and efficient destruction of an enemy who are irascible, sometimes comedic and often cock a snoop at authority. I like my aliens because I can imagine the completely different societies they arise from, the ways that they will think that in some cases will be similar to that of human beings (they are evolved creatures after all) and sometimes wildly different. And my AIs: godlike patience with the slow development of humanity contrasted with super-fast thought and instant access to masses of information. Sverl, my favourite character in the books, is a combination of them all. He was an alien prador who had a cultural problem. Believing in the superiority of the prador he could not understand why the Polity, with its weak humans and detestable AIs, came close to defeating his kind. He went to Penny Royal for answers and as ever, in deals with that devil, got more than he bargained for. His transformation turned him into a tri-part being: prador, human and AI. In him I could illustrate what people think it means to be each of these, and how that might not be right. I relished that, just as I relished his grotesque physical transformation and the final truth of his existence. 

4. Which book, film or TV programme do you always recommend to people and why?

I do make recommendations but with no expectation that what I recommend will be enjoyed. It is all subjective. Because of its insight, even though written quite a few years ago, I often recommend the book Half-Past Human by T J Bass. For me it perfectly depicts a future Earth if we don’t get up and leave. Trillions live in cylinder cities underground while the Earth’s surface is all for agriculture. All animals are extinct. The humans don’t use large resources – they are four-toed nebbishes with rosewater blood. There’s a Sharps Committee that goes around taking away anything a person might harm himself with – the ultimate extension of today’s Health and Safety. The humans are programmable and are the drones in a vast human hive with no purpose beyond continuing to exist. It’s a dystopia but an enjoyable one with the introduction of the Buckeyes – original high-resource humans. But it is also a good lesson in where homogenizing humanity to fit some ideas of what society is will take us.

5. What's your top writing tip?

My top writing tip remains the same: write. You learn to run a marathon by running. And there is no rolled-up trouser leg and special handshake that will expedite you to success. You just have to write well.

Concept SciFi Interview

Here's an interview from 2008:

1. Everyone seems to ask authors to describe at length how they got ‘into’ writing. Instead, can you sum it up in a single sentence?

I have numerous interests and, when I was in my early twenties, I decided I could be a jack of all trades but master of none or I must choose one interest to concentrate on, so I chose writing.

2. How do you approach the art of writing a novel? Are you a ‘planner’ or an improviser’?

Definitely an improviser. I know some people plan out their novels even so far as writing chapter by chapter breakdowns of the things beforehand. I can’t do this. I tried it once in pursuit of a bursary and then, when the novel concerned was taken by Macmillan (The Line of Polity), I dumped ninety per cent of it all and started again, because I was bored by knowing where it was going. You know, to a certain extent I don’t like having to write up proposals and give titles (even if provisional) for my next three-book contract, but I guess the publisher has to have something to show the accountants.

3. Some of the scenes in your novels are quite aggressive and many people have likened this to the kind of prose you’d find in a cyberpunk or post-cyberpunk novel. What are your thoughts on this?

Well, I don’t much like all these daft labels people keep coming up with. Is it post-cyberpunk, new British space opera, new weird, mundane, post-Poe new concept pre-singularity fiction? Bollocks. It’s science fiction which is essentially a sub-genre of fantasy. Everything else sounds just too damned self-important and too much like seeking critical approval of the ‘Ugh, sci-fi, that trekky squids in space nonsense!’ crowd. Screw this bowing and scraping to those whose imaginations cannot manage to extend beyond the mundane, and who found (real) science too difficult at school so went into the arts.   

4. What are you currently working on?

I’m working on a couple of things at the moment. The first is a story based on something called Rockfish, produced by Blur Studios (you can find it on You Tube), which still needs some serious hacking about and may, or may not, be turned into a movie script. The other thing is a novel for Macmillan that steps out of my usual Polity universe. The working title is The Owner of Worlds. Here’s one of those proposals I was talking about:

 In my collection The Engineer ReConditioned, I introduced an immortal who is refered to by those resident on worlds usually with regressed civilizations, as the Owner, for he owns those worlds. The stories concerned were called Proctors, The Owner and Tiger Tiger, and I’ve also recently had a 20,000 word story called Owner Space accepted by Gardner Dozois for his Book Club anthology Galactic Empires. In the aforementioned stories that character is ten thousand years old, controls a spaceship the size of a moon and owns numerous worlds from which he keeps surrounding civilizations by dint of the fact that he controls a very advanced technology, is in fact melded with that technology. I would like to tell the story of how he got to that position.

5. Star Wars, Star Trek or neither?

I much enjoyed Star Wars when it first appeared because here at last were the images I saw in my mind when reading SFF, but of course that’s a very long time ago now. When the new Star Wars films appeared I enjoyed the first (especially the character Darth Maul, though that Ja Ja Binks needed strangling) then thought the second bloody silly, despite the special effects, and never bothered with the third. I think it is basically SFF for teenagers. Star Trek (original series) I enjoyed at the time, and later I did enjoy the Next Generation and might well still enjoy it. Certainly the films still grab me, in fact, I intend to watch Star Trek Nemesis some day soon and expect it’s still good.

6. You’ve written a number of short stories as well as some hugely successful novels. Which form do you prefer and why?

When I made that choice to ‘be a writer’ I started off with the inevitable fantasy trilogy. Numerous rejections later, including a short period with an agent trying to sell my stuff, I had a crack at something contemporary but, numerous rejections later…  Going via the route of various writer’s magazines I discovered the British small presses and, still with no intention of giving up, I tried my hand at short stories. In the end my first stuff was published in short story magazines (the first in Back Brain Recluse in 1986), but I continued with the novels too. I enjoy both for different reasons. Writing short stories is an excellent discipline for tightening up my writing and trying out new ideas. In a novel I can expand ideas, do some meticulous world-building and and explore intricacies of plot and character.

7. What can we expect to see from you in the future?

After Rockfish and the Owner novel I’ve will write the last book of my last three-book contract with Macmillan. The working title is ‘Gabbleducks’. Throughout all my books and short stories the gabbleducks (or the Atheter race) are often part of the scenery, but evidently a part that many find interesting. I’d like to tell a story, from the point of view of one character who has a fascination for these creatures, detailing everything known about them. It’s a story that’ll incorporate some of the events in The Line of Polity, but they’ll be background this time. After that I expect I’ll throw some more proposals at Macmillan, maybe I’ll rework the fantasy I wrote (a trilogy plus the first book of a second trilogy), maybe the contemporary novel. Certainly I’ll be producing some more short stories and there’s also the possibility of some script writing coming my way.

8. Can you tell us something of interest about yourself not related to science fiction?

Many years ago I reached green belt in Shotokan karate, which probably means no-one can build houses on me (maybe that’s a joke only understood by the British). I’m learning Greek (Cretan Greek to be specific) and expect, just like English, I’ll never stop learning it. I sang karaoke for the first time in my life last winter, and intend never to get so drunk again.

9. I you could have one piece of tech from any novel you’ve written, what would you like it to be and why?

That would be the downloading or uploading of the human mind to AI crystal either in a Golem chassis, war drone, static AI or to a new body. Either that, or I’d like to be infected with the Spatterjay virus (stretching things to call that tech), or just subject to the life-extending medical technology of the Polity. Quite simply I would like not to die, which, really, is not unreasonable. But I rather suspect the booze and cigarettes will take me off before someone works out how to plug a human mind into a computer, or how to regrow lungs and livers.

My Allowed Walk

How things change, eh? A month ago I’d paid for two further months at the gym to tide me over until I left the country. I’d bought a suitcase and was filling it with items to take off to Crete on the 19th April, three days after signing copies of The Human in Forbidden Planet in London. Then along comes COVID-19 and the shitstorm began. Shortly thereafter my gym closed and my flight was cancelled. I moved the latter to 2nd May but am not getting any hopes up. Now, rather than go to the gym I’m walking, and this post is mostly about including some text with a few photographs.

I did start writing here about the virus and the response to it, but too much has been written already and I’m a tad sick of it. Afterwards, when the dead are counted and the economic cost assessed, perhaps we’ll understand it all better, though not much better. Unfortunately, two arguments will arise in contention with each other. 1. The governments closed things down too much because the death rate didn’t warrant it. 2. If governments had not acted as they did the death rates would have been catastrophic (because my computer model says so).

Bollocks to all that. Let's go for a ramble. Here’s some pictures from my walk yesterday:

Views across the Essex countryside all around, but for a large part of this walk I'm watching where I'm stepping at the side of the roads. Usually I'm also keeping an eye out for mad white van driver and elbow-breaking wing mirrors, but this time, not so much.

You get the idea. . .

Another one of those places, and there are many of them around me, where you say, 'Used to be a pub'. The building on the immediate right was The Black Lion while those just beyond it used to be the car park.

Maybe a quarter of the way here and I'm still walking down beside roads, though here at least there are pavements.

At last on the track down to the River Crouch. Here I find dog walkers social distancing by about twenty feet. Perhaps they're risk averse in Althorne.

Bleak Essex fields again. This is not Basildon Essex but rural Essex not far from the sound of banjos playing.

Passing over the railway line that to the right leads to London and to the left to Southminster. Woodpecker in the trees behind me. I wondered what the bloody noise was till I saw the holes up there in the trunks.

Blackthorn in flower. In some places the blossom lying in cracks in the roads make it look like we'd had a sprinkling of snow.

Down by the River Crouch now. I've picked samphire and wild spinach (or rather 'sea beet') down here at other times of the year. The sea wall is often decorated with hollowed out shellfish and crabs.

View towards the marina - the direction I'm heading. 

The other direction towards Burnham-on-Crouch. Nice cream teas, fish and chips and cockles thataway. I've done the walk there a few times. I just hope I don't get the opportunity to do it this year.

This in the boatyard of the marina. My cynical thought applicable to present times was: yeah, out of the water, up on blocks and behind a mesh fence

A crane, because I like it.

On the way back towards Althorne Station (from where I would have been departing to London in two weeks) and thence back to the roads.

View from the Lower Burnham Road towards the River Crouch. 

Water tower converted into a house on that road. Not to my taste but probably a good place to live with a great view from that balcony up there. I wonder what shape the rooms are inside?

Couple of views on the way back.

Rectory Lane. Because the fields are higher on either side and there are no ditches at this point it spends a great deal of time flooded. Knowing that many streams trace the route of footpaths I reckon this will become a stream if our civilisation collapses. Happy thoughts.

American diner just around the corner from where I live. I've enjoyed nice breakfast in there. I wonder if it will still be in existence next year?

So there you go. I know that for most people who live in the UK the pictures above are pretty boring standard stuff. But plenty of people visit this blog from elsewhere so there's something of interest here for some of them.

Have a good day!  

      

Film Scenes

This from 2017. Not sure who for. . .

I guess I can be described as a ‘visual’ writer. When I think of things as I’m writing I’m not hearing the sounds or smelling the smells – they are usually an afterthought – but picturing the scene, and perhaps I don’t focus enough on how the characters are feeling. I think I do, but that’s a debate for another time. Anyway, perhaps I should have been a script writer since it is always the scene first, and the actions – on occasion I can be caught sitting at my desk doing the karate arm blocks of a fight sequence.

Perhaps this is why many scenes in favourite films have so much impact on me. I can remember years ago playing again and again, on video tape, scenes from the movie Excalibur. My particular favourites are when Arthur collects the sword from Guinevere when she is in a nunnery, the knights riding out through an orchard and falling apple blossoms, and a final one where the sword is returned to the lake, perfectly vertical as the lady of the lake catches it and silhouetted against a bloated bloody sun. Yet now, in retrospect, as I picture these in my mind I realise that the sound was important: the sound of that door slamming as Arthur leaves Guinevere’s room, Carmina Burana playing as the knights ride out and the other music throughout. Perhaps I should concentrate more on sounds…

Others that got repeated replays were scenes from Blade Runner. Again on video tape so you’ll have an idea of how long ago. Perhaps I’m a sick puppy but often it is the violent ones that get to me. When Deckard shoots the first replicant and she crashes through numerous plate glass windows, when he shoots Pris and she dies thrashing inhumanly fast. When Roy Batty kills his creator, and his descent in the elevator afterwards. But most of that film was visually gorgeous (though when I look at it now I’m thoroughly aware of how dated is the 80s chic), which is perhaps a characteristic of its director Ridley Scott. Los Angeles of the future as seen then and which is only two years away now, an owl on its perch, an origami unicorn, Roy Batty dying on a roof in the rain and releasing a dove. Damn I’m going to see if this film is available 4K or Blueray and watch it again!

Alien was a film I loved but whose effect was marred by being in the cinema with people who had seen it before. ‘Ooh, this bit!’ rather spoils the shock effect. Again this was visually gorgeous (to me) again Ridley Scott’s vision but thoroughly enhanced by the biomechanoid art of HR Giger. Of the particular scenes I most like I don’t include the ‘chest-burster’. It’s famous, I know, but to me the grotesque violence of it simply has a road-accident fascination. I like dripping chains and a frightened cat, a xenophobe woman facing ultimate horror, the journey into the Gigeresque sculpture that was the alien ship, the pilot of that ship and as ever the dripping skull-like alien head opening its teeth in strobe-light. But preferable for me are scenes in the next film: the shuttle crash is a classic and rightly so, the alien mother rampaging after Ripley and their final confrontation is awesome – I ran that final fight frame by frame once and could see no joins, Bishop jerking and looking down to see the mother alien’s tail punched through his body, and then it lifting him up and slicing him in two, the fire-fight in the colony laboratory area, ‘Let’s rock!’ and Vasquez opening up with her M56 Smart Gun, Hudson being dragged into the floor by skeletal alien hands … here I could go on and on. This film is just about as packed with the good stuff as Blade Runner.

There you go – three to four films I’ve chosen to select scenes from. Hey, but there are plenty of others. The look on Sarah Connor’s face when the Arnold terminator starts to rise after being hit with multiple shotgun blasts. The T1000 of Terminator II breaking apart as it tries to walk through liquid nitrogen, then it blown into a grotesque sculpture over a tank of molten metal. Then there’s the Glaive in the film Krull attacking the monster – a scene those familiar with my work might recognise… 

Chronicle Book Box Interview

This one is from 2018 after publication of The Soldier.

What do you read for pleasure and what are you currently reading?

My preference is for science fiction and fantasy books, but I do read other stuff. Having gone through a bit of a hiatus in my reading I’m easing myself back in with some Terry Pratchett books. I’ve just finished The Hogfather and have Sourcery lined up next.

Where is your favourite place to read?

Sprawled on my sofa with my feet up on my table. Location is irrelevant, beyond it being comfortable, since I am in the book.

When and where do you do your best writing?

I have a small bedroom converted into an office where I work on a pc, in England, while in Crete I use a laptop – in both places at a desk. However, just like with reading, location is unimportant beyond it being comfortable and without distraction. That being said, I do work better in the latter location when it is without an internet connection.

This is the start of a new trilogy but not a new universe for you, what inspired these new novels?

With book upon book I’ve steadily been filling in the detail of my Polity universe. One item in this universe I wanted to expand on is something called Jain technology. In this future a hostile civilization-destroying alien technology has wiped out other alien races and threatens the Polity. I wanted to say something about this and the Jain themselves. To this end I picked up a loose thread at the end of my Cormac series concerning two characters – an enhanced human called Orlandine and an alien entity (like a small organic moon) called Dragon – and ran with it. But inspiration? There is a quote by Peter De Vries that covers this: ‘I write when I’m inspired, and I see to it that I’m inspired at nine o’clock every morning.’

Can you tell us a bit more about the Polity universe for anyone not familiar with it?

Humanity expanded out into the Solar System, and began expanding out into the galaxy using generation ships, when the Artificial Intelligences took power in an all but bloodless conflict called the Quiet War. Under their benevolent dictatorship, and with the development of a U-space drive for ships (faster-than-light travel) and runcible gates (instantaneous matter transmission between worlds), humanity has expanded massively into the galaxy. The Polity is a nominally utopian society in which all ills have been cured and all citizens can potentially live forever. It is packed with glittering futuristic technology that should pave the way to technological singularity, but does not. Giant ships roam between worlds and there are even those who have embarked on a million-year project to build a Dyson sphere. But the universe is a dangerous place. The Polity has survived a massive interstellar war against hostile crablike aliens called prador and is now in uneasy truce with them. AIs go rogue and can be incredibly dangerous. Separatist terrorists work against AI rule. And of course there is that Jain technology too . . .   

How far are you into writing the next two novels? Can you give us any hints as what we can look forward to?

I have the next book in the trilogy, called The Warship, and am now finishing off with the edited typescript. I have also written to first draft the final book, tentatively called The Human, and am leaving that alone for a while so I can cast a new eye over it later.

How would you describe your writing process?

Ideally, when I start out on a new book, I sit down at my desk at about 8AM, read through and edit what I wrote the day before, then write 2,000 words – I do this five days a week. In reality it is not as neat as that. I sit and read science articles, I get distracted by the social media, I procrastinate, sometimes I’m too tired to work, sometimes I get bored with what I’m doing etc. Still, I do manage to stay one or two books ahead of the publisher. 

How would you describe The Soldier in only 3 words?

Sensawunda and action.