 |
Neal Asher | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 4 February 1961 Billericay, Essex, England |
| Occupation | Novelist |
| Nationality | British |
| Period | 2000–present |
| Genre | Science fiction |
| Website | |
| www | |
Neal Asher (born 4 February 1961) is an English science fiction writer. He lives near Chelmsford. [1]
Both of Asher's parents are educators and science fiction fans. [2] 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. [3]
Asher published his first short story in 1989. In 2000 he was offered a three-book contract by Pan Macmillan, [2] 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. [4]
The majority of Asher's work is set in one future history, the "Polity" universe. It encompasses many classic science fiction tropes including world-ruling artificial intelligences, androids, hive minds and aliens. His novels are characterized by fast-paced action and violent encounters. While his work is frequently epic in scope and thus nominally space opera, its graphic and aggressive tone is more akin to cyberpunk. When combined with the way that Asher's main characters are usually acting to preserve social order or improve their society (rather than disrupt a society they are estranged from), these influences could place his work in the subgenre known as post-cyberpunk. [5]
 |
In order of publication Agent Cormac series
Spatterjay series
Transformation series
Rise of the Jain
Standalone novels
| In internal chronological order [8]
|
| Title | Year | First published | Reprinted/collected | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| "Adaptogenic" | 1992 | Threads 2 | The Gabble and Other Stories (Tor, 2008) | |
| Mindgames: Fool's Mate | 1992 | Novella | ||
| The Parasite | 1996 | Novella | ||
| Mason's Rats | 1999 | Novella | ||
| Africa Zero | 2001 | Originally published as two novellas, Africa Zero and Africa Plus One | ||
| "Snow in the Desert" | 2002 | Spectrum SF 8 | Year's Best SF 8 (2003) The Gabble and Other Stories (Tor, 2008) | |
| "Watch Crab" | 2003 | Rick Kleffel's The Agony Column | ||
| The Other Gun | 2013 | Asher, Neal (April–May 2013). "The other gun". Asimov's Science Fiction. 37 (4&5): 14–45. | Novella | |
| "Memories of Earth" | 2013 | Asher, Neal (October–November 2013). "Memories of Earth". Asimov's Science Fiction. 37 (10–11): 36–41. | An Owner story |
Patricia Oren Kearney Cadigan is a British-American science fiction author, whose work is most often identified with the cyberpunk movement. Her novels and short stories often explore the relationship between the human mind and technology. Her debut novel, Mindplayers, was nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award in 1988.
Science fiction is a genre of speculative fiction, which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel universes, and extraterrestrial life. It is related to fantasy, horror, and superhero fiction and contains many subgenres. Its exact definition has long been disputed among authors, critics, scholars, and readers.
Charles Sheffield, was an English-born mathematician, physicist and science-fiction writer who served as a President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America and of the American Astronautical Society.
John Milo "Mike" Ford was an American science fiction and fantasy writer, game designer, and poet.
Kage Baker was an American science fiction and fantasy writer.
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 with a more contemporary political plotline. The novel follows the exploits of Earth Central Security agent Ian Cormac, as he attempts to discover who or what is behind the destruction of the Runcible on a remote colony. Cormac drops an investigation into Polity separatists on Cheyne III, and takes the starship Hubris to the ruined world of Samarkand to directly oversee the investigation there. Having been directly "gridlinked" to the Polity A.I. network for too long, Cormac has been slowly losing his humanity, and takes the opportunity of this particular mission to disconnect and solve the mystery the old-fashioned way.
James Patrick Kelly is an American science fiction author who has won both the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award.
Sarah Bear Elizabeth Wishnevsky is an American author who works primarily in speculative fiction genres, writing under the name Elizabeth Bear. She won the 2005 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, the 2008 Hugo Award for Best Short Story for "Tideline", and the 2009 Hugo Award for Best Novelette for "Shoggoths in Bloom". She is one of a small number of writers who have gone on to win multiple Hugo Awards for fiction after winning the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer.
Polity Agent is a 2006 science fiction novel by English writer Neal Asher. It is the fourth novel in the Gridlinked sequence.
Carrie Vaughn is an American writer, the author of the urban fantasy Kitty Norville series. She has published more than 60 short stories in science fiction and fantasy magazines as well as short story anthologies and internet magazines. She is one of the authors for the Wild Cards books. Vaughn won the 2018 Philip K. Dick Award for Bannerless, and has been nominated for the Hugo Award.
Paul Melko is an American science fiction writer whose work has appeared in Realms of Fantasy, Asimov's Science Fiction, Strange Horizons, and Live Without a Net.
Cat Rambo is an American science fiction and fantasy writer and editor. Rambo uses they/them pronouns. Rambo was co-editor of Fantasy Magazine from 2007 to 2011, which earned them a 2012 World Fantasy Special Award: Non-Professional nomination. They collaborated with Jeff VanderMeer on The Surgeon's Tale and Other Stories, published in 2007.
Mary Robinette Kowal is an American author and puppeteer. Originally a puppeteer by primary trade after receiving a bachelor's degree in art education, she became art director for science fiction magazines and by 2010 was also authoring her first full-length published novels. The majority of her work is characterized by science fiction themes, such as interplanetary travel; a common element present in many of her novels is historical or alternate history fantasy, such as in her Glamourist Histories and Lady Astronaut books.
Michael Joseph Cassutt is an American television producer, screenwriter, and author. His notable TV work includes producing or writing, or both, for The Outer Limits, Eerie, Indiana, Beverly Hills, 90210, and The Twilight Zone. In addition to his work in television, Cassutt has written over thirty short stories, predominately in the genres of science fiction and fantasy. He has also published novels, including the 1986 The Star Country, the 1991 Dragon Season, the 2001 Red Moon and the 2011 Heaven's Shadow, in collaboration with David S. Goyer. In addition, Cassutt contributes non-fiction articles to magazines and is the author of the non-fiction book, The Astronaut Maker, a biography of NASA legend George W. S. Abbey (2018).
Reactor, formerly Tor.com, is an online science fiction and fantasy magazine published by Tor Books, a division of Macmillan Publishers. The magazine publishes articles, reviews, original short fiction, re-reads and commentary on speculative fiction. Unlike traditional print magazines like Asimov's or Analog, it releases online fiction that can be read free of charge.
Daniel Andrew Wells is an American horror and science fiction author. Wells's first published novel, I Am Not a Serial Killer, was adapted into a movie in 2016.
Will McIntosh is a science fiction and young adult author, a Hugo-Award-winner, and a winner or finalist for many other awards. Along with ten novels, including Defenders,Love Minus Eighty, and Burning Midnight, he has published dozens of short stories in magazines such as Asimov's Science Fiction, Strange Horizons, Lightspeed Magazine, Clarkesworld, and Interzone. His stories are frequently reprinted in different "Year's Best" anthologies.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to science fiction:
Marissa Kristine Lingen is an American science fiction and fantasy author who writes short stories.
Suzanne Palmer is an American science fiction writer known for her novelette "The Secret Life of Bots", which won a Hugo Award in 2018. The story also won a WSFA Small Press Award and was a finalist for the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Other | |
