HOME
*





Neal Asher
Neal Asher (born 4 February 1961) is an English science fiction writer. He lives near Chelmsford. Career Both of Asher's parents are educators and science fiction fans. Although he began writing speculative fiction in secondary school, he did not turn seriously to writing until he was 25. He worked as a machinist and machine programmer and as a gardener from 1979 to 1987. Asher identifies ''The Lord of the Rings'', ''The Hobbit'' and other fantasy work including Roger Zelazny's ''The Chronicles of Amber'' series as important early creative influences. Asher published his first short story in 1989. In 2000 he was offered a three-book contract by Pan Macmillan, and his first full-length novel ''Gridlinked'' was published in 2001. This was the first in a series of novels made up of ''Gridlinked'', '' The Line of Polity'', ''Brass Man'', ''Polity Agent'', and '' Line War''. Asher is published by Tor, an imprint of Pan Macmillan, in the UK, and by Tor Books in the United States. ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


:Template:Infobox Writer/doc
Infobox writer may be used to summarize information about a person who is a writer/author (includes screenwriters). If the writer-specific fields here are not needed, consider using the more general ; other infoboxes there can be found in :People and person infobox templates. This template may also be used as a module (or sub-template) of ; see WikiProject Infoboxes/embed for guidance on such usage. Syntax The infobox may be added by pasting the template as shown below into an article. All fields are optional. Any unused parameter names can be left blank or omitted. Parameters Please remove any parameters from an article's infobox that are unlikely to be used. All parameters are optional. Unless otherwise specified, if a parameter has multiple values, they should be comma-separated using the template: : which produces: : , language= If any of the individual values contain commas already, add to use semi-colons as separators: : which produces: : , ps ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Line War
''Line War'' is a 2008 science fiction novel by Neal Asher. It is the fifth and final novel in the Gridlinked ''Gridlinked'' is a science fiction novel by British writer Neal Asher. His first novel, it was published by the Macmillan Publishers imprint Pan Books in 2001. It contains elements of the technological inventiveness of hard science-fiction wi ... sequence, although other novels exist in the same universe outside this sequence. It received positive reviews by critics. References 2008 British novels 2008 science fiction novels British science fiction novels Tor Books books {{2000s-sf-novel-stub ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

War Factory
War is an intense armed conflict between states, governments, societies, or paramilitary groups such as mercenaries, insurgents, and militias. It is generally characterized by extreme violence, destruction, and mortality, using regular or irregular military forces. Warfare refers to the common activities and characteristics of types of war, or of wars in general. Total war is warfare that is not restricted to purely legitimate military targets, and can result in massive civilian or other non-combatant suffering and casualties. While some war studies scholars consider war a universal and ancestral aspect of human nature, others argue it is a result of specific socio-cultural, economic or ecological circumstances. Etymology The English word ''war'' derives from the 11th-century Old English words ''wyrre'' and ''werre'', from Old French ''werre'' (also ''guerre'' as in modern French), in turn from the Frankish *''werra'', ultimately deriving from the Proto-Germanic *''we ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Dark Intelligence
''Dark Intelligence'' is a 2015 science fiction novel by Neal Asher. The story is set in the Polity universe and focuses on the dark (corrupted) AI Penny Royal. The plot follows several characters, each searching for Penny Royal for different reasons and culminates in a clash around the world of Masada. The plot is closely linked to that of Asher's 2011 novel '' The Technician''. The main protagonist is Thorvald Spear, a new character to Asher's novels, who has been reanimated in a cloned body after his mind storage crystal was recovered over a century after his death. As the novel develops it becomes clear that Spear's memories have been adjusted allowing the character to serve as an unreliable narrator An unreliable narrator is a narrator whose credibility is compromised. They can be found in fiction and film, and range from children to mature characters. The term was coined in 1961 by Wayne C. Booth in ''The Rhetoric of Fiction''. While unr .... References 2015 Brit ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  




Orbus (novel)
''Orbus'' is a 2009 science fiction novel by Neal Asher Neal Asher (born 4 February 1961) is an English science fiction writer. He lives near Chelmsford. Career Both of Asher's parents are educators and science fiction fans. Although he began writing speculative fiction in secondary school, he did .... It is the third novel in the Spatterjay sequence. 2009 British novels British science fiction novels 2009 science fiction novels Tor Books books {{2000s-sf-novel-stub ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


The Voyage Of The Sable Keech
''The Voyage of the Sable Keech'' is a 2006 science fiction novel by Neal Asher Neal Asher (born 4 February 1961) is an English science fiction writer. He lives near Chelmsford. Career Both of Asher's parents are educators and science fiction fans. Although he began writing speculative fiction in secondary school, he did .... It is the second novel in the Spatterjay sequence. The story takes place on the planet of Spatterjay, a world where the oceans are teeming with dangerous creatures and the humans who live there are infected with a virus that grants them immortality. The protagonist, Taylor Bloc, is a walking dead man who wants to live again and will do anything to get adulation, power and control. An ancient hive mind has sent an agent to this uncertain world. 2006 British novels 2006 science fiction novels British science fiction novels Tor Books books {{2000s-sf-novel-stub ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


The Skinner
''The Skinner'' is a 2002 science fiction novel by Neal Asher Neal Asher (born 4 February 1961) is an English science fiction writer. He lives near Chelmsford. Career Both of Asher's parents are educators and science fiction fans. Although he began writing speculative fiction in secondary school, he did .... It is the first novel in the Spatterjay sequence. Plot ''The Skinner'' tells the story of three individuals who have journeyed to the 'line-world' (a world on the 'line', or border, of the Human Polity) of Spatterjay, a hostile mostly aquatic world with ferocious native lifeforms. The planet Spatterjay is host to a complex virus that permeates throughout all life forms (including humans), propagated by a kind of leech which uses the virus to keep its prey alive whilst it feeds upon them. The virus optimizes life forms it infects for survival changing them, often rapidly, in response to environmental pressures. Humans need to consume food that is untainted by the vir ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Cyberpunk Derivatives
Since the advent of the cyberpunk genre, a number of derivatives of cyberpunk have become recognized in their own right as distinct subgenres in speculative fiction, especially in science fiction. Rather than necessarily sharing the digitally and mechanically focused setting of cyberpunk, these derivatives can display other futuristic, or even retrofuturistic, qualities that are drawn from or analogous to cyberpunk: a world built on one particular technology that is extrapolated to a highly sophisticated level (this may even be a fantastical or anachronistic technology, akin to retrofuturism), a gritty transreal urban style, or a particular approach to social themes. Steampunk, one of the most well-known of these subgenres, has been defined as a "kind of technological fantasy;" others in this category sometimes also incorporate aspects of science fantasy and historical fantasy. Scholars have written of the stylistic place of these subgenres in postmodern literature, as well as t ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Cyberpunk
Cyberpunk is a subgenre of science fiction in a dystopian futuristic setting that tends to focus on a "combination of lowlife and high tech", featuring futuristic technological and scientific achievements, such as artificial intelligence and cybernetics, juxtaposed with societal collapse, dystopia or decay. Much of cyberpunk is rooted in the New Wave science fiction movement of the 1960s and 1970s, when writers like Philip K. Dick, Michael Moorcock, Roger Zelazny, John Brunner, J. G. Ballard, Philip José Farmer and Harlan Ellison examined the impact of drug culture, technology, and the sexual revolution while avoiding the utopian tendencies of earlier science fiction. Comics exploring cyberpunk themes began appearing as early as Judge Dredd, first published in 1977. Released in 1984, William Gibson's influential debut novel ''Neuromancer'' helped solidify cyberpunk as a genre, drawing influence from punk subculture and early hacker culture. Other influential cyberpunk ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Space Opera
Space opera is a subgenre of science fiction that emphasizes space warfare, with use of melodramatic, risk-taking space adventures, relationships, and chivalric romance. Set mainly or entirely in outer space, it features technological and social advancements (or lack thereof) in faster-than-light travel, futuristic weapons, and sophisticated technology, on a backdrop of galactic empires and interstellar wars with fictional aliens, often in fictional galaxies. The term has no relation to opera music, but is instead a play on the terms "soap opera", a melodramatic television series, and "horse opera", which was coined during the 1930s to indicate a clichéd and formulaic Western film. Space operas emerged in the 1930s and continue to be produced in literature, film, comics, television, video games and board games. An early film which was based on space-opera comic strips was ''Flash Gordon'' (1936), created by Alex Raymond. ''Perry Rhodan'' (1961–) is the most successful spa ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Extraterrestrial Life In Popular Culture
An extraterrestrial or alien is any extraterrestrial lifeform; a lifeform that did not originate on Earth. The word ''extraterrestrial'' means "outside Earth". The first published use of ''extraterrestrial'' as a noun occurred in 1956, during the Golden Age of Science Fiction. Extraterrestrials are a common theme in modern science-fiction, and also appeared in much earlier works such as the second-century parody ''True History'' by Lucian of Samosata. Gary Westfahl writes: History Pre-modern Cosmic pluralism, the assumption that there are many inhabited worlds beyond the human sphere predates modernity and the development of the heliocentric model and is common in mythologies worldwide. The 2nd century writer of satires, Lucian, in his ''True History'' claims to have visited the moon when his ship was sent up by a fountain, which was peopled and at war with the people of the Sun over colonisation of the Morning Star. Other worlds are depicted in such early works as the 10 ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Group Mind (science Fiction)
A group mind, group ego, mind coalescence, or gestalt intelligence in science fiction is a plot device in which multiple minds, or consciousnesses, are linked into a single, collective consciousness or intelligence. The first alien hive society was depicted in H. G. Wells's ''The First Men in the Moon'' (1901) while the use of human hive minds in literature goes back at least as far as David H. Keller's ''The Human Termites'' (published in Wonder Stories in 1929) and Olaf Stapledon's science fiction novel ''Last and First Men'' (1930), which is the first known use of the term "group mind" in science fiction. The use of the phrase "hive mind", however, was first recorded in 1943 in use in bee keeping and its first known use in sci-fi was James H. Schmitz's ''Second Night of Summer'' (1950). A group mind might be formed by any fictional plot device that facilitates brain to brain communication, such as telepathy. This term may be used interchangeably with hive mind. "Hive mind" ten ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]