Hi Neal

I read your books!

I am a 39yr old nurse, working in a prison in the North of England. I did my nurse training some 20 years ago and have worked in loads of places all over the country and also in the oilfields of Saudi Arabia and I did some aid work in Lebanon in the 1990s. I even managed health insurance for BUPA in one of their call centres and that really was as bad as it sounds.

I enjoy amateur astronomy and I belong to the York Astronomical Society. Indeed I write Sci-Fi reviews for our quarterly magazine Algol and always stick in a review of the latest Asher. (I think I was a bit hard on Peter F Hamilton once, moaning that it takes him 3 pages to describe a kitchen tap or something)

I also like the Steampunk aesthetic and I make jewellery in that style which I like to flog at craft fairs and to friends.

There is some good Steampunk fiction around, particularly Jay Lake’s books Mainspring and Escapement.

I first started reading Sci Fi at about 12 years old with Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica ‘TV tie-ins’ as they were called back then, and when I ran out of them, I started on the better stuff, mostly Roger Zelazny, Philip K Dick, E.E ‘Doc’ Smith and Robert Heinlein (dead misogynist and pseudo spouter of new-age claptrap that he was). Never could get into Asimov.

I prefer modern, hard science fiction, the more sweeping in its scope, the better. You of course are my favourite, followed by Alistair Reynolds, Iain Banks, Adam Roberts and I was a fan of Richard Morgan until he started messing around with that medieval stuff. The pace of Orbus was frenetic and every battle fought like it was the last, I loved it, passed it on to my brother who is also a massive fan.

I particularly enjoy the evolution of British Sci-fi over the last 10 years. In my view, American authors have a tendency to stick with the ‘Middle America’ view of Science Fiction, earth against the aliens with very clear black and white good guys and bad guys. Scalzi’s Old Mans War was a case in point. It was OK as a book, but I think British sci-fi is further on that that and you are leading the way.

We love the way that you just get on with writing with at least one or two books a year so keep it up, and thanks.

Paul Mackay

 

 

Michael Stone

I was born in 1966 in Stoke on Trent, England, and still live there with my wife and daughter. As a result of retinitis pigmentosa, I’ve struggled with diminishing eyesight since my teens, and in 2006 I was registered blind. So, gone are the motorbikes that were my pride and joy, and there’s to be no more tennis or golf. I can still use a computer though, and read books, so things aren’t too bad. When asked what I do for a living, I either tell people I’m a full time writer or unemployed, it depends on who’s asking. I feel a bit of a fraud telling people I’m a writer when I don’t earn anywhere enough to pay the weekly bills.

I am progressing though. I’ve sold over fifty stories to date, most of them written in the sf/fantasy/horror genre. My influences include Graham Joyce, Larry Niven, Adrian McKinty, Terry Pratchett, Garry Kilworth, Jasper Fforde, Iain (M) Banks, Colin Bateman, Desmond Morris, Carl Hiaasen, David Gemmell, George R R Martin…the list goes on and on and isn’t all genre stuff, as you can see. Everything I’ve read and watched is grist to my mill when it comes to putting words on paper.

The most recent addition to that list is Neal Asher. I read The Gabble collection last year and was so blown away I promptly went to Amazon and ordered all I could get my hands on. I’m currently reading (slowly, it must be said) The Voyage of the Sable Keech.

What else can I tell you? Well, 2007 saw a collection of my novellas published as Fourtold, which garnered positive reviews from readers and fellow writers alike, including praise from Graham Joyce and Garry Kilworth…and you can imagine how chuffed I was about that. In 2009 I signed to the Sobel Weber Associates literary agency who are now shopping two of my novels to various publishers. I have just finished co-editing an anthology of Irish crime stories for Morrigan Books, which should be out mid-2010. Also this year I have two novellas coming out as chapbooks. One of them is called The Skinner! It is, I hasten to add, nothing like Neal’s wonderful novel of the same name. My skinner is a werebear preying on other werebeasts in a near-future Britain. No spatterjay viruses in sight.

If anyone is interested, I have a website at www.mylefteye.net.

Dear Neal,

I’ve been enjoying meeting some of your other readers and decided to chime in myself.
Amazon recommended The Skinner to me about 6 or 7 years ago, and I checked it out of my school’s library (Oberlin College in Ohio), read it way too fast, bought my own copy, and read it again. I never read books twice.

And I’ve subsequently read fifteen more of your books (all of them?)

You may be happy to know that you’re now one of my four favorite Neals! (Neal Asher, Neil Gaiman, Neal Stepheson. And my friend — Neil — who is not an author.) I’m also a big fan of China Mieville, Stanislaw Lem, and Jonathan Carroll, among others, in case you’re interested.

I am a 25-year old composer living in San Francisco, not yet making a living with music. Soon enough, I hope, though! (I’ve put a ton of my original music on my website — www.sethgsamuel.com ). I worked at two bookstores in Atlanta while in high school and summers during my college years — Chapter Eleven and Wordsmiths — and now both are gone, which is sad. I got a Masters in Film Scoring at NYU after getting my Bachelor’s in Composition at Oberlin, and while in New York I interned at the literary agency Black, Inc — the agency of, among others, Mitch Albom. Yep. I got Mitch Albom coffee! He said “thanks.” To me!

And now I live biking distance from a great, great store in San Francisco called Borderlands that carries all your books. I got my last two Ashers there, and they were pleased. Maybe I’ll work there.

Anyway, 99.9% of my books are back in Atlanta, in my parents’ house, but I’ve catalogued just about every book I’ve read to date on librarything.com. I’ve attached a screenshot of page one from it to this message.
Right between Woody Allen and Isaac Asimov — that’s you!

Best,

Seth