Tag: Science Fiction

Mind Meld

Posted on by Neal Asher
On the website SF Signal they often have this thing called ‘Mind Meld’ whereby a question is asked and various characters from the SF world answer it. I’ve been asked for my take in a recent one in which the questions are: What is the appeal of the planet Mars in SF and fantasy? What is its appeal to you? I’ll let you know when that appears.
I knew I’d done this a few times but couldn’t remember how many so I went trawling through the SF Signal site in search of them. Here are three of my rambles: 
The Best Aliens in Science Fiction
For me the best has to be H R Giger’s creation…no I refuse to misuse the word eponymous…from the film of that name. In my time I’ve ranted about what I consider to be art and generally have seen very little I could call both art and truly original (Maybe that’s because I hadn’t see enough art, and certainly my view is changing now with what I’m seeing produced by the CGI crowd.), but way back in years of yore when I opened up a copy of Omni, turned over a page and saw my first H R Giger picture, I felt I was seeing something truly original and bloody good. I’m not sure if I even knew, when I went to see Alien, that Giger was the designer of both alien and weird sets, but I certainly knew afterwards. At that point I felt that the curse of the rubber head had died. The alien in that film and its sequels was not something you could laugh at – aliens had just grown up.
As for aliens in SF books, in them there seems to be a general failure of imagination, perhaps because the roles the aliens fill are so often too human: aliens as oppressed natives, the subject of bigotry, dominant overlords, invaders etc. Whilst they are often described in loving detail, that which is alien about them only goes as deep as the bone (or structural biology of choice) and very often doesn’t extend to the mind. There’s still some damned good ones out there – Niven’s puppeteers spring to mind, as do the manta in Piers Anthony’s Of Man and Manta – but generally that which is alien falls foul of story, which can be hampered when, to retain the essentially alien, the writer must not allow the reader to understand it.

Taboo Topics in SF/F Literature
Well, every writer has had trouble getting stuff published, but probably because they breached the publishing world taboo of writing crap. For me, beyond 2000 when I was taken on by Macmillan, I’ve been censored all the time in that respect – it’s called editing. But no, I don’t really have much trouble getting stuff published and I don’t self-censor … except all the time in regard to that first publishing taboo. Doubtless, in years to come some minority group lobby will run out of larger targets and focus its attention on SF books, and then violence, drinking, smoking and excessive consumption of beef burgers will be a no-no. I just hope I’m in a position to give them the finger by then.

Is the Short Fiction Market in Trouble?
I know that when I was throwing out my short stories in the 80s and 90s there were numerous small press magazines about, but to see any of them survive longer than ten or twenty issues was unusual. As for those publishing anthologies, there seem to be more now, but that just might be a matter of accessibility. In the 80s I only found out about other short story markets in the advertising sections of each magazine. I think I started with Interzone (I don’t know how I got hold of a copy of that), found out about the likes of Back Brain Recluse and others in its pages, and proceeded from there. Now most short story writers can google ‘short story markets’ and find them all across the world. Also we have the rise of online magazines, which maybe means that those would-be publishers who couldn’t sustain a paper magazine can now survive for longer. To sum up, I don’t think the market is in any more trouble than it has been over the last quarter century but, for writers, finding magazines or anthologies to target is much much easier. Also, if the publishers concerned are prepared to accept email submissions, easier still – my first short story publication involved real cutting-and-pasting, photocopying and then postage. I still have international reply coupons sitting in my draw. Must try to get my money back on them.

Five Desert Island Reads – Mike Dalke

Posted on by Neal Asher
Assuming that I’m stranded alone, if I were to choose five books for a desert island, I would want books with humanistic reflection and characters which feel life-like, where they are set in a detailed, almost corporeal setting beyond that of a beautiful, yet monotonous sand and surf.

1) The Fall of Tartarus by Eric Brown
Eric Brown writes amazingly humanistic science fiction and this novel was my first exposure to his work. The setting is on a planet soon to become engulfed by an expanding sun, so perhaps the constant heat depicted here may be a tad of a turn off, but the eight stories ooze a deep understanding of how humans confront loss and dying. So, for the sheer sake of experiencing empathy through a novel, The Fall of Tartarus is a must.

2) Warday by Whitley Strieber and James Kunetka
Again, maybe this type of trope is little depressing for a hermetic long-stay on a desert island, but it’s so very easy to lose yourself in the details of Warday. The journalistic details are captivating and the journey across the states in search of additional facts and how fellow Americans are dealing with the effects of nuclear disaster is, again, humanistic in nature.

3) Three Californias: Pacific Edge by Kim Stanley Robinson
The Three Californias series isn’t a well-known KSR work, but they each exhibit a clear projection for the possible future of the state of California. Pacific Edge is a notable book in my 450 book library because it contains the one character I ever fell in love with–Ramona. For the sake of experiencing Ramona through the eyes of her young love Kev, this book must be by my side.

4) Permutation City by Greg Egan
Not humanistic whatsoever, but it’s one of those books which really blow your mind. The depth of complexity and extra-corporeality sets my mind tingling. I think this kind of distraction would trump the mundaneness of coconuts and crabs.

5) Wulfsyarn by Phillip Mann
This just may be the crème de la crème of humanistic science fiction, watching through the eye of an “autoscribe” as it reconstructs the story of how a captain lost his entire crew on its maiden voyage. The grassroots feel to the novel tugs as the heart strings as the reader vicariously experiences the rise and fall of the great Captain Wilberfoss.

Pirates

Posted on by Neal Asher

Interesting. There’s been lots of discussion here and elsewhere about E-books, pirates and DRM. Whenever I go ego searching I’m often coming across sites where my books can be downloaded, but often no sign of how they are to be paid for. Thus far I’ve had three people contact me to tell me how much they’ve enjoyed the books but, ahem, they didn’t pay for them. A recent email was from someone in Japan who finds it difficult to get hold of my E-books legally but wanted to contribute. He sent me $50 by Paypal and, at his suggestion, I’ve now put up a donate button on the right here for those who have downloaded my books illegally but feel the need to salve their consciences.

Jawing

Posted on by Neal Asher
I had a bit of a day off yesterday, going off to meet a guy  in a pub on the other side of Maldon – he buys my books every year and every year I sign them. In the morning I spent far too much time reading science articles and generally pissing about on the internet and, in the afternoon, the two beers I had completely wiped out any inclination to work. I won’t bother to try catching up with my weekly word count since being 75,000 words into a book I don’t have to deliver for about one and a half years I can be confident I’m ahead of the game.
Anyway, the writing is going extremely well even with the distractions of the internet, so when we go to Crete at the end of March I expect it will pick up even more. Sickness, death and tragedy aside I can see myself finishing off three books by September 2013.
Despite the beer turning my brain to mush I did read through plenty of science articles yesterday and this one, pointed out to me by Droxxo on the message board, really caught my attention. Here’s a Golem component first manufactured as a human prosthetic:


An 83-year-old woman suffering from a lower jaw infection became the first person to receive a jaw implant manufactured with a 3D printer. Infections such as hers are normally remedied with reconstructive surgery, but doctor’s deemed the procedure too risky because of her age and health. Instead they turned to LayerWise, a company that specializes in 3D printing of metallic structures.
Just, wow.        

Counting Words

Posted on by Neal Asher
So, last week was a good one during which I beat my target of 10,000 words of fiction by 1231, on top of which I did 917 words for the blog and more in replies here, and on Twitter, Facebook and Google+ and in my journal. I love the ease with which words can be counted in Word because I used to have to do it by averaging out the number of words in a line, the number of lines to a page and so forth, which was averagely accurate if it was typed sheets but went all to pot with the hand written stuff. But why do I count words?
Like many writers, I have read, over the years, just about anything I could find on the subject. I picked up on this counting words thing from John Braine’s book Writing a Novel. I guess it appealed to the OCD in me because words are not all I count. Last week, for example, I read 104 science articles (some admittedly only a paragraph long), I did 140 press-ups and 140 sit-ups, 3.5 hours of dancing to the Wii, an 8-mile cycle ride, drank alcohol on two evenings … you get the picture. But I would contend that much of this is all about what I do: I write stuff down.
For me a lot of this counting also stems from being self-employed for about 25 years. Prior to 2001 when I put away the mowers, hedge cutter, chainsaw and scrapped my truck (no one would buy it) I had to keep count. I had to tick off the weekly jobs, note down the new ones, count up the limited number of jobs I had to spread out over the season (that would be council grass cutting and the like), add up the money, fill out accounts, note down receipts. With this there was a direct connection, reinforced daily, between work and money.
But how do I fill the disconnection between work and money when writing a book? People in other professions have a much more direct connection between their work and their wage, highlighted every day when they go to work, when they clock in, are given their orders or give orders, and when they go home again afterwards. I get paid per book and then by royalties on book sales. My book payments are stepped: starting a new book, delivery and acceptance, publication in hardback and publication in paperback, so there is some connection there. However, I don’t clock in in the morning, nobody checks my work until it’s delivered, I don’t have a foreman or manager bollocking me for bad work or complimenting me for good. I don’t have someone telling me I’m not working hard enough or fast enough, just the knowledge, stretched tenuous over a year, that if I don’t do it or don’t get it right I won’t get paid.
So I count words.

Just recently another writer said how he just can’t write like that – he has to wait for inspiration. I have heard this from other writers too and have no time for it. During the week my inspiration clocks in at 8.00 in the morning and is allowed to go at 5.00 in the evening, unless there’s overtime. It helps me with 2,000 words in that time unless there’s editing to do. It gets quite a lot of time off and holidays, but when it’s time to work it is not allowed to whine, mope about or skive off. Inspiration, I have to say, is a lazy and fickle thing often in need of a good kick up the arse.

Soldier – Kurt Russell

Posted on by Neal Asher
Having an HDD/DVD recorder, numerous free view channels and ease of recording through a contents list is a wonderful thing. I’ve been picking up on some excellent documentaries repeated on BBC4 and elsewhere (particularly like Versailles recently, and some repeats of Horizon) and a few films I missed out on or wouldn’t have bothered recording if I’d needed to go through the whole set-up rigmarole. Also enjoyable on free view are repeats of QI on Dave, and the historical stuff on Yesterday.
I recently watched Hell Rider, which was dreck, but I also recorded one called Soldier – an SF film I’d never heard of and recorded only on the strength of it having Kurt Russell in it. I’m glad I did.
The film started out with scenes of children being raised as soldiers, much of their training, followed by battle scenes that caused a sinking sensation in my gut. I thought I was going to be watching another load of dreck like Hell Rider. As the film progressed I realized that this could have been a really crappy film. However, the acting carried it. Kurt Russell as the brain-washed dehumanized soldier, rediscovering his humanity, was superb. It was interesting too to discover that a co-writer of Blade Runner – David Peoples – wrote this as a ‘spiritual successor’ to that film. It was, and not just because one of the battles happened to be called Tanhauser Gate.

This is well worth watching, in my opinion. Screw the negative reviews. 

Workshop

Posted on by Neal Asher
It was interesting doing a little bit of criticism on the writer’s workshop on my forum today. I was very much reminded of my time in a postal workshop or ‘folio’, but there are constraints with working onscreen. I kept on wanting to print out what was there so I could take a red pen to it, even though this was something I never did in the folio, and when it came to picking things apart I still had to do that with pen and paper before typing it in.
I also really have to recognize that ‘not the way I would have written it’ is not the same as ‘plain wrong’. Reading someone else’s work, with a critical eye, brings home to you just how many different ways there are of saying the same thing, but in those different ways there can be a thousand different nuances and elucidating them can be a bastard.
So, if you fancy yourself as a writer, or want to learn, why don’t you join in?

Continuity

Posted on by Neal Asher
Interesting, someone twittered a reply to me (Hi Nick), about a twitter I put up concerning Penny Royal, and referred to that AI as a ‘she’. So, being paranoid since my dropped bollock concerning the sex of Vulture (a ship AI from Brass Man) was pointed out to me, I had to check. It turns out that I always referred to Penny Royal as an ‘it’ in The Technician. Then learning it was a lasting impression brought over from my short story Alien Archaeology I had to check that too. I think the impression might be imparted because the main person dealing with Penny Royal was female, though there it was still referred to as an ‘it’. However, glancing through that text I noticed some things about Penny Royal I have been neglecting in the latest work. I suspect, for continuity, I need to read both the short story and the book again. If I screw up there’s always someone who will notice!
Oh, and the sea urchin picture is here because, with silver tentacles and other appendages retracted, that’s Penny Royal in its resting state.

Writing Update.

Posted on by Neal Asher
Righto, I’ve just cleared 60,000 words on a book that now has only a remote chance of being called Penny Royal. As I implied before, there’s just too much going on and too much yet to happen for this whole story to fit into one book. Characters and plot threads are sprouting like jungle saplings in much the same way as they did with The Voyage of the Sable Keech. I now have to take care to prune carefully and not allow them to turn into said jungle.
For those of you that don’t know a modern day writer’s contract often specifies a minimum number of words and mine specifies 120,000. The only time I’ve ever come close to that is with Cowl, which weighed in at 126,000. Everything else has been above that – the biggest one being The Line of Polity at 172,000 and others generally loitering around the 140,000 word mark, so 60,000 words is nearing halfway for me. Every week day I’ve sat down at my computer I’ve done my 2,000 words and, over the last few weeks, I’ve been hitting my target of 10,000 per week. At this rate, then, I could have a first draft done by April … except I’m not going to do that.
The next book I deliver, after Jupiter War (which Caroline is reading through now), doesn’t really have to be delivered until around about September 2013 so I have about one year and seven months in hand. What I intend to do (once I’ve gone through Jupiter War for the last time and sent it in) is just carry on writing. I’m not going to aim to complete a book, but to complete the story, which may be three books long. This will also help with the continuity since all the stopping and editing between books should be cut out. When I’m done, I’ll then think about how it should be divided up.
Then again, there’s always the possibility that this will just end up as one large book, which will have to be called Penny Royal… 

The Great Stagnation

Posted on by Neal Asher
Starting from here on The Next Big Future I read a few articles and looked at some videos. The book The Great Stagnation which seems to be at the root of all this makes the claim that technological advance is slowing because we’ve already grabbed the ‘low-hanging fruit’. Take for example the car. It is a huge step to go from not having a car to having one. The car was the big invention and everything since has just been innovation – no flying cars have arrived. In a speech he gives the author of the book cites many examples, like the average kitchen and how little it has changed since the 50s, but he then reluctantly admits that there have been some big advances in communication (Internet, mobile phones etc.).
Apparently, the low hanging fruit having been grabbed means that the average American is half as wealthy as he would have been had the advances been continuing at their previous rate.
Firstly, I don’t buy the distinction between invention and innovation since the car is just an innovation of the horse and cart and can be traced back to Shanks’ pony and the simple need to get from A to B. I sort of buy the ‘low hanging fruit’ argument but in the end that is really a value judgement. Is the invention of the car more important than the invention of the mobile phone? Is it more important than the accumulation of medical inventions/innovations that have extended our lives by decades? Is it more important than sequencing genomes at an increasing rate, biotech that makes it possible to make yeast that produces diesel or our growing nanotechnology? You see what I mean: a value judgement.
And, like many who have been discussing this book, I don’t agree that a slowing of technological advance is why people aren’t as wealthy as they could be. Firstly I don’t agree that technological advances are slowing. I would say that their effects are taking longer to reach us because of an increasingly hysterical anti-science meme that has spread in the West, with its resultant increase in restrictive legislation. Secondly I would say that the decrease in wealth relative to those advances is all due to increasingly parasitic governments and financial institutions sucking up that wealth – wealth that would have been used to develop those technological advances. Invent something astounding and you need big bucks to get it to market from under the leaden hand of government legislation. You don’t have big bucks of your own to spare because government and the financial institutions have stolen them. It’s an increasingly vicious circle.

This is why you see no technological singularity in The Departure – the parasitic state has killed innovation and invention. My only hope, in the real world, is that the financial collapse we are entering now will kill off some portion of the parasite infestation before the host dies. But even if that does happen, the host will still need time to recover its health, and the problem is that parasites grow faster than their hosts.