Neal Asher is among the many famous faces and talented people this part of the world can claim in its alumni. Although, despite being born here Neal confesses to hardly remembering the place, “my parents left there when I was very young.
“All I have is a vague recollection of the house in Church Street with some huge elms in front of it, walking to school to first write my letters, ice on the inside of the windows and sleeping in nylon sheets”.
CommunityAd had the pleasure of speaking to the prolific writer Neal Asher who has churned out over 40 or so books in his writing career, of which over 30 are within his published armoury, all receivers of flattering reviews and all themed around sci-fi and fantasy. When in the UK Neal lives nearby in Maldon and still occasionally visits his hometown, when he’s not penning yet another story.
Neal, do you have a favourite among that buffet of books?
My opinion varies. Sometimes it has been Brass Man and sometimes a later book: Dark Intelligence. But in the end, I think it’s The Skinner. It’s the one that gets the most enthusiastic responses and the one I enjoyed writing the most.
If you were to recommend a singular title though as an example of what your writing is all about what would you pick?
The books cover the complex future of ‘the Polity’ so it’s difficult to nail down such an example. But pushed, I would say, for that and as a taster, the collection of short stories The Gabble. But then again, not all my books are set in the Polity. I have the Owner trilogy which is a near future dystopia and the time-travel book Cowl.
For those interested in diving into all this I have a blog post that answers the constant question ‘Where Do I Start?’ It can be found on my website, here.
I imagine you added a few to that tally during the lockdowns, how were the lockdowns for you? Productive?
For some time, I’ve been trying to get back into writing short stories. Getting these published in various magazines – like the US mags Analog and Asimov’s – is great advertising. I’m also involved with the Love, Death and Robots series on Netflix, which recently did a short story of mine called Snow in the Desert – so useful to have plenty of short stories to send in that direction. What has been happening, however, is that my short stories have been growing into novellas and on one occasion a book. I did a lot of this stuff during lockdown and subsequently published a collection of novellas called Lockdown Tales. So yeah, productive.
When did you first realise you wanted to be a writer?
My standard answer to that is I had interests in many things growing up but, in my twenties, decided to choose one to concentrate on so as not to be a Jack of all trades but master of none. I was writing stories from my teens onwards but only at about age 25 did I get serious about it.
Can the town claim any creative triggers for your writing? I don’t suppose any of the sci-fi worlds you created are based on Billericay, are they?
Who knows where creativity begins and how it arises?
The Polity Universe from my brief knowledge seems like it could work as a TV series, would that be of interest to you?
That would be great for me and, as noted above: one of my short stories (set in the Polity) has already been turned into a short film on Netflix. I often get queries about my books in this respect and, I think, one is being processed right now. But I don’t get my hopes up because I’ve seen many of these queries come to nothing. I also know of many books that have been bought and disappeared into development hell in the bowels of Hollywood or elsewhere.
What would you say to readers who need to get some new books for holiday/staycation reading, why should they consider yours?
If they are sci-fi readers they’ll find my books have everything they look for in their reading: that sensawunda. It’s a rich future.