Simon Ings - simonings at gmail.com

October 26, 2009

Headlong

Headlong, Simon Ings' fourth novel, is an intelligent, compassionate portrayal of one man's struggle to rediscover his humanity after the plugs wiring him up to enhanced sensory input are disconnected... The focus is on Christopher and his grapplings with everyday life, told in well-chosen, prosaic detail... Unlike many who write about neural implants and cyberspace, Ings remains firmly grounded in the everyday, with its small triumphs and disasters and roots in human frailty. Yale's relationship with his posthuman powers is not simply one of longing for paradise lost. Rather, the message of this mature and thoughtful book seems to be that, ultimately, the human condition is worth fighting for, and transcendent itself in comparison to the mire and immorality of a dystopia that may be just around the corner.

Liz Sourbut in New Scientist, 27 February 1999

First published in1999 by HarperCollins. ISBN: 0006477259

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October 26, 2009

Hotwire

Not a sequel to his first novel Hot Head, but set in the same world and sharing some of the same preoccupations, Simon Ings' Hotwire asks some interesting questions about how we become human, and how to become human again. Ajay made some bad choices once upon a time--he got his grandfather killed and his sister horribly mutilated; to pay to have her rebuilt, an organ at a time, he has become an all-purpose heavy, first a secret policeman and then an assassin. Rosa has never had any choices--she roams, inconsequentially, the corridors of the space station that is, in a very real sense, her mother, scared of everything she meets and sees. When these two find themselves in improbable alliance, the consequences could be scary, and are highly charged and erotic and at times touching. This is a book about coming to terms with reality, and the very improbability of much of the reality with which the central characters have to come to terms does not lessen the hardness of their choices and our sympathy with them. Full of strongly visualised exotic settings--the slums of Brazil and the interiors of mind human and artificial--this lives up to Ings' early promise.

Roz Kaveney, Amazon.co.uk

First published in 1995 by Collins. ISBN: 0006477240

(Datafat, 1999 Heyne, Germany, 345-3156-49-8

Kuumalinja, 1996 Loki Kirjat, Finland, 952-9646-87-9)

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October 26, 2009

Hot Head

There is something perverse about a story of hi-tech high adventure which not only insists on describing the damaged childhood of the heroine in quietly sinister detail, but holds the attention while it does so. Simon Ings' first novel has a charismatically neurotic protagonist--a lapsed Islamic cyborg with a defective exoskeleton nostalgic for the extra senses that the authorities have taken away. She was part of a military force that saved the world once, from the angry Artificial Intelligence Moonwolf, but she is reduced to making blue movies to get access to exotic sensory equipment. And no matter how badly the authorities have behaved, they will always need you when the Earth is in danger again... This is less a cyberpunk novel than one which shares some of the same noirish preoccupations as cyberpunk--AI, the extension of human senses, strange virtual realities--in this case a decrepit seaside resort that is also a lesbian paradise of wistfulness and good coffeeshops. And the heroine does come through, and the world does get saved, but this was never going to be a book that ended otherwise. Hot Head is a remarkable debut, full of startling imagery and set pieces of bizarrely inventive action.

Roz Kaveney, Amazon.co.uk

First published in 1992 byGrafton Books. ISBN: 0586214968

(Kuuma Pää, 1993, Loki Kirjat, Finland, 952-9646-97-6)

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October 26, 2009

City of the Iron Fish

My less-than-widely-read second novel, written in a brothel in Oporto, on the run from my reputation as a cyberpunk writer.

The following review appears on Novel Reflections http://www.novelreflections.com/reviews/simon-ings/city-of-the-iron-fish:

'The City is isolated. There is some land around the city, but beyond that there is nothing. Every twenty years the city performs the ceremony of the iron fish and things are changed. Years ago, whole sections of the city moved and were rearranged, new animals, new places arrived through the magic of the ceremony. But over time people have lost interest in it, and lost the rites and rituals to make the magic work.

'Thomas Kemp grows up in the shadow of the ceremony and his father’s obsession with it. By the time the ceremony comes around again, he is one of the few who remembers or cares enough about it to begin preparations.

'Simon Ings has created a strange world here, and one that has no explanation. Some of the inhabitants search for meaning, debate whether there is an outside world that their myths of jungles and oceans derive from. One of these is Kemp’s friend Blythe, an artist. Together they travel to find the edge of their world, and discover nothingness. Their journey changes them both in different ways. Blythe reacts to her experience by creating bleak and frightening work, while Kemp becomes an artist himself.

In a closed environment, what would happen to the people who live there? Their hopes and dreams, their need for freedom and new experiences? This is a place where all forms of artistic expression feed on each other and the past, constantly repeating and vainly striving.

'I found this to be a deeply strange book, and I was impressed that the author did not try to explain the existence of the city, and the magic of the fish. Somehow it all worked better to read of Kemp’s life as he lived it, without knowing these things, and stumbling along in this strange world without a map. His passions, confusion, pain and everyday life are laid out to see, and even an evening’s drunken debauch has a ring of truth to it that is very appealing.'

First published in 1994 by Collins. ISBN: 0006476538

(Rautakalan Kaupunki 2005, Loki Kirjat, Finland, 952-9646-05-4)

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October 26, 2009

Painkillers

I remember them. Their mouths, and their needles. That is all. That, and their painted eyes. Their mouths. They never spoke...

So begins Adam's odyssey into a nightmare of corruption and violence, where it is only his forlorn hope that he is helping his autistic son Justin that offers any solace. As everything implodes around him, Adam risks everything – his marriage, his family, his life – to lay hands on the one thing that might save him. His way out. His grail. A small bakelite box with a dial.

A grim, gripping and unrelenting tale in which a neat and happy ending is simply not an option.

IRISH INDEPENDENT

Cinematically graphic yet deeply literate, Painkillersoffers a chilling ride into a hell both individual and universal.

ASIMOV’S

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