All About A.I., Sprawling Future Histories, and Dino-Men: An Interview With Neal Asher

We recently got a chance to chat with the author about his new book, transcending genre labels, and creating coherent fictional universes.
You’ve been described as a military science fiction writer, though your  novels seem to be so much more. Are you comfortable with this label? What makes good military science fiction?
It’s not a label I am comfortable with because it feels too narrow. I do like my battles, but I also like building ecologies, creating monsters of every stripe (including the human kind), exploring the consequences of technology like mind recording, taking a close look at what immortality might mean, and much other stuff besides.
I’ve read fiction that does fall squarely under that label and always felt there to be large elements missing from its depiction of the future. Often aspects of what the future might hold are neglected: how human society might have changed, the new weapons and their effect on tactics (often I’ve read fiction where the battles are just the past supplanted into the future and upgraded with lasers)—the thinking needs to be wider. Good military fiction would logically be the kind that does not neglect these.
Funnily, you’re also often slotted into the cyberpunk subgenre. Your Wikipedia page even calls you “post-cyberpunk.” Other than your books, what’s your favorite cyberpunk thing ever?
I’m not even sure what the label means—in fact I’ll have to go look it up—and don’t pseuds just love using sticking that word ‘post’ on things? Judging by [a definition including] “high tech and low life, post-industrial cultures, megacorporations, etc.” I’d say that my fiction has elements of these. But it’s just another narrow label used by those who like to discuss SF, and makes me tired just thinking about it. If we want to go there, my favourite cyberpunk thing would be Blade Runner.
Your Polity universe is interesting for the way it spans the majority of your works. It reminds me a little of C.J. Cherryh’s Foreigner books, or the sprawling “future history” of Asimov. What are the challenges in this kind of vast multi-book world building? Do you sometimes fantasize about ditching it all and writing in a totally different continuity?

The biggest challenge is [avoiding] continuity errors. The more I write in the Polity, the more I have to check in previous books, [from] simple things like the colour of prador blood, to the more difficult stuff like what technologies are extant, especially when my Polity stories span a thousand years. I haven’t fantasized about writing novels set in a new continuity, but done so. The Owner trilogy is not set in the Polity. I wrote that because if you write in one setting, no matter how wide, you can become stale. The danger, of course, is that when you step out of that setting, the fans can pillory you for it. But I’ll never ditch the Polity because there’s still a lot of fun to be had there.
You concluded the Owner series not too long ago and have now launched the Transformation series. What’s tonally different for this one versus the previous? Are we dealing with a Revolver/Rubber Soul situation, or is this more like Magical Mystery Tour?
The Owner trilogy was my shot at thinking hard about the future and writing a dystopia, one based on some short stories I did long ago (they appear in The Engineer ReConditioned and elsewhere). The Polity, though it can be quite rough, is a lot more optimistic and, being set further into the future, enters Clarke’s realm of science bordering on magic. Despite the constrictions of those continuity errors mentioned above, I can let rip in the Polity—the Owner was more constrained by being closer to the present.
You’ve got an A.I. ship in Dark Intelligence—Penny Royal—can you talk a little about the inspiration for that?
Penny Royal first turned up as a throwaway character in a story (published in Asimov’s) called “Alien Archaeology.” The A.I. was the go-to mad scientist to get something high-tech done. I brought him back in The Technician and there he grew in the telling as something enigmatic and dangerous. In a way, my readers are responsible for what happened next: my readers rather liked that creation, and I like it too. Other elements have now been incorporated, like my reading on swarm robots and ideas about distributed intelligence, and in Dark Intelligence and the ensuing books, Penny Royal has grown in the telling. Hugely.

Something similar happened in my 5-book Cormac series. In the first book, Gridlinked, I wrote about a character called Mr. Crane—a rather large android made of brass—and the readers came back at me saying just how much they enjoyed him, [so] the third book of the series, Brass Man, I wrapped around Mr. Crane. But it was also my choice, because I’m a fan at heart, and really enjoyed writing about Mr. Crane.
I’ve read that you think your patronus would be a lobster, but what’s your favorite dinosaur?
I was going to say velociraptor, because I like the name and the idea of something so vicious and fast, but the one that has stuck with me is the troodon. This is the dinosaur Dale Russell based his dinosauroid on, and it is also the basis of the dracomen, creatures in my Polity books created by the interstellar entity Dragon as a taunt to humankind. The troodon also turns up in a story I did for Asimov’s called “The Other Gun.” There, it was an enjoyably lethal sidekick for the main character.
Your books put people through a lot of crazy science fiction conflicts. Of all the things you’ve put your characters through, which one scares you the most?
None of them really scare me because most are unlikely in my lifetime. I guess the idea of immortality combined with endless torture is pretty grim, which is why it’s the big stick wielded by religion. Closer to home is stuff in the Owner books: the technology to utterly control the populace in the hands of authoritarian government.
You’ve got a bit of a Rip Van Winkle story at the start of Dark Intelligence: someone waking up after a century of being dead. Why is this trope so compelling for writers?
For me the appeal had more to do with ideas about immortality, mind recording, and past sins coming back to haunt us. I also like the aspect of the timespan involved. But I guess the appeal in most cases is perspective—bringing back someone from the past to see the changes.
Your parents both loved science fiction. What would you say to a young writer whose parents hate science fiction?
Pity them.
What can readers expect from the next book in the Transformation series?
They can expect numerous twists and turns, growing insight into what Penny Royal is up to, the introduction of a few more seriously odd characters and, I hope, another wild ride.
Dark Intelligence is available now.