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This interview with Neal Asher was conducted by Kevin Patrick
Mahoney in the summer of 1998.
KM: Neal,
how did you first get into writing?
Neal Asher: The first question is
perhaps the most difficult. As a teenager, I had loads of interests -
drawing, sculpture, electronics, biology etc. - and at some point I made a
choice. The saying "Jack of all trades; master of none" applies
here. I chose writing. I think I was also influenced by the fact
that writing was one of the first things I was any good at. Beyond
that, the influences are subtle and difficult to pin down.
KM: I first
came across your work in the pages of Story Cellar. Is the short story
your favourite form of writing?
Neal Asher:
I love writing short stories
just as I love writing books. I suppose you get the "I did
that!" hit sooner from a short story, but then the feeling of achievement
from having written a book is greater. That I'm known for short stories
is simply because they are what gets published. In quantity of words, I
have more books stored on my computer.
KM: Having
read your latest collection, I see that there are a number of common
elements. For instance, there are the Golem androids, runcibles, The
Owner and the Proctors. Is there a coherent Asher universe?
Neal Asher:
There
is a coherent Asher universe. Those items you mention - barring the last
two - are in just about all my SF stories. As to the one big story...
Anthony Barker hopes to publish
Gridlinked, a
full-length SF novel set in that universe. I've also written three
quarters of a follow up to this book (The Line of Polity) and a novel, called
The Skinner
set in
the 'Spatterjay/Snairls' worlds.
KM: I often
view the writing of Sci Fi to be quite easy. You don't have to do any
research as you can make it all up as you go along. But I did notice that
there does seem to be a large biological influence on your work. I'm
thinking here mainly of the giant leeches and the genetic technology of The Engineer. Is natural history a passion
of yours'?
Neal Asher: Is the writing of SF easy? If
you write a normal thriller or crime story, you are dealing with the familiar
and the easily described; a gun is a gun, and a car is a car, and
don't need much elaboration. If you're thinking of the future, you have
to think about where our technology has taken us. What of the car and the
gun in a thousand years or so... I could go on.
Yes, natural history is a passion of mine and the more I learn about it,
the more I realise that you don't need to look much further than the
nearest rock to find an alien. I wrote The Parasite after
reading a veterinary book on parasites and many others of my alien creatures
have a firm basis in our natural world.
Take the blade beetle in 'Proctors': just looking at the way our
creatures - their defensive mechanisms etc. - you could see how such a creature
could evolve. The leeches of 'Spatterjay' are another such; they
don't kill their prey, they harvest them, and cause in them apparent
immortality so as to have a reusable food source.
KM: Which
authors have influenced your writing and in what way?
Neal Asher:
Hard to say which SF writers
influenced me as I've read so many. I love the sensawunda of Iain M.
Banks' stuff, Zelazny's easy prose and style, Aldiss' early short stories
are a lesson in themselves, and Larry Niven creates a great future
history. My influences come from far and wide, but I like to think I put
my own spin on them in the end.
KM: What has
been your experience of dealing with professional publishing houses? Are
they prepared to take on and develop new Sci Fi writers?
Neal Asher:
Tanjen, as far as I'm
concerned, is a professional publishing house. As to the large publishing
houses... No, they are not prepared to take on and develop new SF
writers. The catch 22 is that you have to be known before they'll even
look at your stuff. Was it the case that Banks was well known for his
contemporary stuff before he got his SF into print? It is understandable,
I suppose. I read recently in Writers News that houses like Harper
Collins receive thousands of manuscripts every year, out of which they publish
two or three. Not good odds.
KM: How did
you first become involved with Tanjen?
Neal Asher:
I can't remember if I came
across Tanjen in the small presses or Writers News. I had
The Parasite
written
then for Club 199 in the hope of following up on my novella
Mind Games: Fool's Mate
- they
went skint - and it was just the right length for Tanjen. Anthony liked
it and published it.
KM: Many
short story magazine seems to be closing down nowadays. Why do you think
this is? Do you think independent publishing is still viable?
Neal Asher:
I've seen short story magazines
come and go with alarming regularity. I would say that, since I started
submitting to them, there are more now than then. This is probably
because with the development of computers, the publishing process is getting
easier for independents. The reason so many close down is that they
hit a ceiling circulation of a few hundred copies and get disillusioned.
I'm afraid that it is not enough just to advertise and take your readership
from the small presses. You get caught in a fairly introvert little world
and you won't get out of it without a lot of effort. Independent
publishing is viable if more effort is made, more imagination used, and a
slightly more worldly and ambitious approach brought to bear. This
is what Anthony Barker is doing with Tanjen.
KM: What has
been your biggest frustration in trying to promote your work?
Neal Asher:
My biggest frustration has been
the form rejection letters take from the large publishers. It's quite often
the case that you can see from these letters that not a word of the work has
been read: Roc rejected an SF novel of mine on the grounds that it was
derivative. This from the publishers of Shadowrun; elves and dwarves in a
William Gibson future world. Hah!
KM: Have you
ever been tempted to write in any other genre than Sci Fi?
Neal Asher:
I have been so tempted.
My first real effort was a huge fantasy which I still think is good. The
big publishers won't like it though as there are no elves, dwarves or small
furry cuddly creatures. I've also written a contemporary novel, based in
Essex, about farmers growing cannabis, mob involvement, and a homicidal tree
surgeon. The book's called
Frog
Wine
and can be best described as black comedy.
KM: What do
you consider to be the biggest achievement in your writing career?
Neal Asher: I don't know. I like all
my short stories for different reasons, and the same applies to my books.
Going by how I feel right now, it is
The Engineer. The year before, it was
The Parasite.
Next year it will be something else.
KM: What are
you working on now?
Neal Asher:
Unfortunately, I haven't been
able to give up my day job, and as most of my work is in the summer, I don't
have much time to write during that season. I plan, come this winter, to
rework
Frog Wine,
The Skinner, to
complete
The Line of Polity, to go
over my 200,000 word fantasy, and to produce a large wad of short stories with
which to bombard the small presses. All I need is a winter about two
years long.
|
Visit our Neal Asher page,
for a Neal Asher biography, Neal Asher bibliography, Neal Asher short
stories, and interviews |
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