Andy Remic Interview Your latest book Theme Planet launched in December, published by Solaris Books. Tell us about that. The book follows Dexter Colls, a policeman from a futuristic London who goes on holiday with his wife and two little girls to the Theme Planet. The Theme Planet is an alien theme world, an entire planet dedicated to insane rides and hedonistic pursuits; it has five kilometre high roller coasters that plunge into the sea, it has capsule rides through the guts of giant desert worms, it has dangerous quests to the tops of mountains and down insane river rapids... When Dexter’s wife and kids go missing, and people and aliens begin trying to kill him, Dex must travel the dark underbelly of Theme Planet, searching for his family... and he soon realises that Monolith, the owners of Theme Planet, and the Earth’s Oblivion Government and its Ministers of Joy are all massively corrupt and up to something very, very special. Then mix all this up with the Anarchy Androids (torture/kill models that desperately want to be human) and Amba Miskalov, who’s on a very special mission, and it makes for a fast-paced SF android theme planet thriller. Theme Planet is the first in the Anarchy series. What can we expect from future books, and will it be a trilogy like many of your other series? My Combat K books are an ongoing series, which I love working on, but with the Novels of the Anarchy I wanted to create a universe for which I could write individual, standalone novels. Thus, Theme Planet is a work unto itself, and the second Anarchy Book, Toxicity (out in 2012), is another completely standalone novel - about ECO terrorists on a junk world. I suppose the Anarchy universe works very much the same way as Iain Banks’ Culture novels. After Toxicity I’m back to writing another Combat K novel, then it’s another Anarchy Books novel; ad infinitum, until I die, I expect. :-) You started writing Theme Planet in the midnineties. Why did it take so long? Ha! I had the idea in the mid-nineties, and wrote the 60,000 word novel - a book that’s very, very different from this one, but with the same premise of
an alien Theme Planet. The book was good enough to get me an agent and get me noticed by publishers, but not good enough to be published. The idea, however, stayed with me, nagging, nagging, nagging, until I had to write the damned thing just to get it out of my brain. So, it’s been gestating for 15 years. I hope you like it. Roller coasters: get on or get off? Are we talking about Ronan Keating here? Heh. No, I love roller coasters, love the speed and madness., which is one reason I came up with Theme Planet in the first place. I hate stuff that spins around, however. Waltzers make me very sick. I had an incident with a tuna salad once... So, I’d always stay on a roller coaster for just one more go. Your story “Mongrel Days” features in the Morpheus Tales original anthology 13: Tales of Dark Fiction. Can you tell us a bit about the story? Mongrel Days is about a big scruffy badass war veteran called Mongrel, who ends up owing a large London crime syndicate an awful lot of money. After a savage beating, he is helped by a ragged, worn-out cafe owner called Josie, and decides to sort himself out - by robbing a group of bank robbers. But when things go from bad to worse; Josie turns out to be something quite special... Mongrel Days is the first Anarchy Android short story, and is set in the same universe as Theme Planet and Toxicity. I like it. But then, I’m probably biased. You are well known for your action-packed writing. What is the secret to writing an action sequence?