Neal Asher Interview

One man will transcend death to seek vengeance. One woman will transform herself to gain power. And no one will emerge unscathed… We have talked to Neal Asher about his new book Dark Intelligence.

You’ve just released Dark Intelligence, can you tell us a bit about it?

Here’s the blurb: Thorvald Spear wakes in hospital, where he finds he’s been brought back from the dead. What’s more, he died in a human vs. alien war which ended a whole century ago. But when he relives his traumatic final moments, he finds the spark to keep on living. That spark is vengeance. Trapped and desperate on a world surrounded by alien Prador forces, Spear had seen a rescue ship arriving. But instead of providing backup, Penny Royal, the AI within the destroyer turned rogue. It annihilated friendly forces in a frenzy of destruction, and, years later, it’s still free. Spear vows to track it across worlds and do whatever it takes to bring it down.

Somebody asked me to sum it all up in five words, and they about cover what people can expect: Transformations, vengeance and super-science.

What made you decide to return to the Polity Universe?

I never really went away from it, but just took a little break from it by writing the Owner trilogy. Those who write in the same setting (usually a narrower one than my Polity) often end up growing stale. The problem is that when they step out of that setting they get pilloried by their fans. I stepped away from the Polity and did something a bit different, had my share of pillorying but also acquired new readers, then went back to it refreshed.

Thorvald Spear, Isobel Satomi and Penny Royal. Your characters are both disturbing and complex in many dimensions. Where do you come up with your ideas and how do you deal with writing such diverse characters?

With me everything grows in the telling. I’m not one of these writers who plans everything out – it all happens at the keyboard. Penny Royal was a character who basically played the mad scientist, who the main characters employ to get something complex done, in a story called Alien Archaeology (published in Asimov’s, The Year’s Best Science Fiction 25 and my collection The Gabble). Then I brought him back in The Technician where he grew and both I and my readers loved him. His genesis was similar to that of Mr Crane, the massive brass Golem android that appeared in Gridlinked. Because so many liked him, including me, I ended up doing a whole book telling his story alongside the continuing main story of the sequence. The Transformation books do something similar with Penny Royal.

Spear and Satomi again grew in the telling and the interweaving of plot threads. No fiction writer wants to tell a story about someone boring and, if you have characters taking part in some major action then motivation and history is a requirement.

This is the first book in the Transformation trilogy, can you give us a sneak peak into what we have coming?

Further transformations will ensue, including the major one that all three books encompass. Some nasty and seriously odd characters will be introduced, like the physically immortal crime lord Mr Pace and the swarm robot AI and Polity interrogator the Brockle (appeared in my short story The Rhine’s World Incident in The Mammoth Book of SF Wars). The action will not let up and I like to think no one will be disappointed by it’s culmination.

You’ve said on social media that you wrote the Transformation trilogy as a whole – how did you find this compared to writing on a book-by-book basis? Were there any major changes along the way?

There were major changes along the way which is what made doing it this way much better. In my previous trilogies and sequences each book would be a done deal so the next one down the line had to incorporate, to some extent, everything that appeared in it. Writing the whole lot at once I was able to go back and alter things in book one that applied in book three, tweak the emphasis on certain events, start introducing characters early on as part of the backdrop so that when they appear later the reader will get a little moment of epiphany. As such this trilogy is much more complete, integrated.

“As if I now stood at the gates of Mordor”. I’m reading along and suddenly this pops out of the page, why Tolkien? It also makes me wonder if there are other gems I missed?

My previous reading of SFF often makes itself felt. I think way back in the Cormac books I did something with a character talking to a robot and saying, ‘You’re not supposed to harm humans or allow them to come to harm,’ and the robot replying, ‘Whatever gave you that strange idea?’ The gates of Mordor is a handy metaphor for irreligious writers like me who don’t fancy using the gates of Hell.

With some of your Polity novels taking place further in the future than Dark Intelligence, did you find any issues fitting this story in without disrupting what you’ve previously written?

Yes, I did. In fact that has been an issue throughout my books. Take for example the complex life-like war drones of The Skinner who were made in a war that happened centuries in the past before the events in the Cormac series, where the only drones that appear are quite simple and are not life-like. I had to write my way out of that corner by explaining it as a change in the zeitgeist – that after the Prador/human war AIs decided on building less independent drones and that the ones made in the war were life-like because of their utility as a terror weapon. In the transformation books there is also technology – mainly deployed by Penny Royal – that does not appear in later books. This I waffle around by saying it is interdicted, kept secret, because the AIs don’t yet want to open that can of worms.

As a big fan of your Polity novels there is one question I must ask: will we ever see (or hear more about) the Csorians?!

Funny you should ask that. Though I haven’t been writing much lately I have been thinking on some ideas. One of these concerned a lengthy feud between two people that is really based on the alien technology that had imbedded itself in their bodies. Those who have read my books will know that the Spatterjay virus of The Skinner is based on Jain technology, that actually incorporated into it is the blueprint for Jain soldiers. My idea was that one of the characters would be a hooper human from Spatterjay – an Old Captain packed with the virus – while the other character would be someone who had somehow ended up with Csorian technology inside him while on an archaeological dig. So yes, I may well do something with that.

Your last trilogy focused on the Owner, and was one fans have been eager to see for years and, other than Cowl, they were your first novels outside of the Polity universe. Was this a refreshing change? How did you find building another universe from the bottom up?

As I mentioned before the Owner books was a refreshing change and the same applies to Cowl. Yes I enjoyed building new universes in each case though I would have to say that I enjoyed doing it with Cowl more. The Owner universe was much more solidly rooted in the technology we have now and stuff that has been speculated on my the scientific community. It was much more of an extrapolation from the now. With Cowl I could play with some new tech and a whole different universe.

Any plans for further novels in the Ownerverse?

I plan to write about the Owner’s first encounter with alien life. These will be the grazen who appear in my short story Owner Space (Galactic Empires – Gardner Dozois). I’ve written about 10,000 words of that and will get back into it when I can.

What is it with Science Fiction you find so fascinating?

It can be summed up with one word: sensawunda. No other fiction has that wow factor.

Have you ever struggled between what you would like to happen to a character and what you considered more sensible to occur? Can you tell us when and what did you do at last?

Since I never really plan the route of a story this has never been a problem for me. I am not manipulating my characters to follow some predetermined course. What happens arises out of who they are and the events in which they are involved. Just like life, really, but with more exploding spaceships involved.

What sort of challenges, as a writer, might you have faced over the years? Any insights you would be able to share for those aspiring writers seeking advice?

My initial challenge was getting published in the first place. Then came improving as a writer and keeping up the production. But the main insight I would give to aspiring writers is one I read long ago in a book about writing novels by John Brain: writers write. There is no secret handshake you can learn and you are not more liable to succeed if you roll up one trouser leg before visiting a publisher. There are no short cuts. Get your nose to the grindstone and write, and write. Don’t get all anxious about something you’ve sent off, get on with the next thing. Keep doing it. Yeah, check stuff in books but, in the end, the best way to learn any job is by doing it.

What kind of books do you read, any favourite authors?

I read all sorts and have a large list of writers I enjoy but, as mentioned before, that sensawunda can only be found in SFF. As always when asked this question I can come up with a list of names but it is always liable to change, even the next day when I remember this writer or forget that one. Here are some of the SFF ones I like: Roger Zelazny, Tanith Lee, Richard Morgan, Banks, Reynolds, Peter Watts, C J Cherryh, Pratchett, Vance, Van Vogt, Moorcock … I could go on and on.

What do you do when you’re not writing, any hobbies?

At present my hobbies include walking, swimming, kayaking, gardening and spending far too much time fooling about on social media. I was a smoker but am now heavily into e-cigarettes and that’s a hobby in itself. I like the TV, but generally only SFF box sets I buy, most of the current stuff including the news and the like has no interest to me. I did read a lot, but life events of a year ago seem to have killed that. I’m hoping it’ll come back to me.

What’s next, what are you working on now?

I keep trying to get back into doing something but those life events I mention – the death of my wife from bowel cancer – have rather screwed up my creative urge. Again I am hoping this will come back. When it does I’ll maybe get on with the new Owner books, or maybe do a run of short stories. We’ll see…

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