Occupation Novelist Name Neal Asher Genre Science fiction | Period 2000 – present Nationality British Role Fiction writer | |
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Born 4 February 1961 (age 63)
Essex, England ( 1961-02-04 ) Nominations Philip K. Dick Award, Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel, Locus Award for Best Short Story Books The Skinner, Gridlinked, The Line of Polity, Brass Man, Prador Moon Similar People Alastair Reynolds, Peter F Hamilton, Gregory Benford, Charles Stross, Sean McMullen | ||
Neal asher video clip
Neal Asher (born 4 February 1961 in Billericay, Essex, England) is an English science fiction writer. He lives near Chelmsford.
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Ep 2 47 live with neal asher
Career
Both of Asher's parents are educators and science fiction fans. Although he began writing speculative fiction in secondary school, Asher 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.
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.
In 2017, Asher is set to write the "Rise of the Jain" trilogy, three novels based in the Polity universe.