Tag: Science Fiction

The Departure Review

Posted on by Neal Asher
Nice review of The Departure here on David Agranoff’s site.
I was particularly struck by how reasonable these paragraphs are:
The majority of Science Fiction novels with a political message are written by left leanings writers (like John Shirley, John Brunner or Kim Stanley Robinson) or straight-up radicals (like Ursala K.Leguin and Norman Spinrad). I would be lying if I didn’t admit that I like to agree with my favorite novels. However as a political writer myself I don’t want or expect all my readers to agree with me. So in return it is only fair that I read enjoy authors I don’t agree with.
That is the thing, this novel feels very Ayn Rand influenced and seems to call for little or no government. Probably the opposite of John Shirley’s recent anti-libertarian novel “Everything is Broken.” I don’t really agree with a lot of the message but I enjoyed the story throughout.

Now why is it that a minority of reviewers are so obviously vitriolic about my stuff because they disagree with me politically? The prevailing meme among them seems to be: his political outlook is wrong wrong wrong, therefore he is a bad writer. Perhaps they can’t stomach the fact that I keep selling books? And why is it, I wonder, that the reverse doesn’t apply? I don’t often see reviewers objecting to a writer’s work because that writer is left-wing. And, frankly, if I objected to novels on the basis of the writer’s politics I would have missed out on a vast number of excellent books. It is sad.

Criticism is prejudice made plausible.
H. L. Mencken 

Books, Update, Stuff…

Posted on by Neal Asher

Well the book sale went well. I’ve been packaging up books for the last couple of days and clearing a bit of space in my loft. The problem of course is that few people want the older cover Macmillan paperbacks that come later in the Cormac series. I’ve got plenty of copies of Brass Man, Polity Agent and Line War. I also have paperback editions of the Tor US releases. But then I guess the problem here is no one knows what is available. I guess I’ll have to go up into my loft again *sigh*.
Another thing I always forget to do is mention the translations. I’ve got a bookcase up there full of them. So, if you read German (plenty of those), Czech, Romanian, Russian, French, Japanese (just a few copies of Cowl) or Portuguese (and I’m sure there are others) and fancy buying a copy in those languages, then get in touch.
I was thinking back today about my first few books for Macmillan and how I was forever checking my Amazon ratings (well, that hasn’t changed) to check on my ‘success’. But of course a little thought about how people actually buy books and you realise that these things cannot be judged by those initial sales; that initial adrenalin rush when you are the new bright young writer (ho ho). People very infrequently walk into a book shop and pick up a hardback from a new writer; they tend to wander in a year later, perhaps five or ten years later and try a paperback. Hell, I’m only just starting to read Eric Brown and he’s done about 30 books since I read his short story Time Lapsed Man in Interzone back in 1988. It’s a long haul. Still, now, I get contact from people who have just discovered me, who have picked up a discounted paperback (or Kindle edition) and are going on to buy the rest.  
Moving on to other things: I was aiming to have done 80,000 words of Penny Royal III before we headed back to Crete. Since I’ve now done 77,000 it seems I’ll be hitting that target. Now I’m wondering if I can get it completed to first draft by then, which gives me plenty of time to iron out the kinks, and ensure all the plot threads are nicely woven together. However, another thought is now occurring … am I going to be able to complete this story in this third book? Could it be that this will be a trilogy (as per Douglas Adams) of four or five books?  

Books Sale

Posted on by Neal Asher
Having just carted a box containing 20 copies of Zero Pointmass-market paperback up into the loft it occurred to me that it really is time for another sale of signed copies. I’ve got paperbacks of most of my books and hardbacks of a few of them. I was thinking of sticking another list here but since that would entail clambering up into the loft, pulling open boxes and counting for half the morning I’ll just say: get in contact and tell me what you want and I’ll see if it’s available. But let me get this out of the way first: copies of the paper version of Mindgames: Fool’s Mate, Mason’s Rats, Africa Zero, The Parasite & The Engineer (ReConditioned) are not available.

My email is on the right below my biography and you can find a list of all my books here. It’ll be full cover price plus postage and packing. However, since so many people are attracted to the Jon Sullivan covers, I’ll knock out the remaining paperbacks with the old covers for £4 each (that’s including the various Tor USA versions).

Xenopath – Eric Brown

Posted on by Neal Asher

Xenopath is the second in the Bengal Station series and another excellent novel. These books aren’t numbered and I had to go on the Internet to find out which one to read after Necropath (I have Cosmopath too) and now I’ve been trying to decide whether the order matters. If you were to pick up this one without having read the previous one there’s not much you’d fail to understand. In essence these are your hard-boiled detective book with an SF twist and reading them out of order would be like randomly picking up a Sue Grafton or Peter James. Reading in order enhances your enjoyment because you’re familiar with the main characters and their story, but each ‘investigation’ is self-contained. I can see how this could become formulaic with a whole series of ’paths after Cosmopath, but if it’s a formula you enjoy then there’s nothing wrong with that.

Samizdata Review of The Departure

Posted on by Neal Asher
Here’s a review of The Departure from Rob Fisher over on Samizdata. Nice to read a review from someone who actually gets it!

Note on Samizdata from Wikipedia: In 2005, the Guardian claimed that it was ‘by some measures the nation’s most successful independent blog’, with over 15,000 unique visitors a day, and ‘arguably the grandfather of British political blogs’. In 2008, The Observer labelled it as one of the fifty most powerful blogs in the world.

The novel I chose was The Departure, the first of the Owner trilogy. If anything it had too much action for my taste. If Alastair Reynolds writes film noir, Neal Asher writes Bruce Willis and explosions. The science is sensible enough: there are no exotic physics and the technologies discussed are robots, giant space stations and brain-computer interfaces. The politics is very interesting. Asher seems to have perceived a slippery slope and extrapolated in the extreme. Something like the EU has, thanks to a complacent populace, taken over the whole planet. This is the Committee and it has long since stopped pretending to be democratic and gone outwardly Orwellian. Cigarettes are illegal; armed robots are used to control rioting crowds; selfish, individualistic dissidents are taken away for readjustment by pain inducer; and clever scientists are allowed to do research useful to the state but are considered a risk and kept under scrutiny or even lock and key. The protagonist is one such scientist who sets out to get revenge.