Nick Harkaway
Nick Harkaway
Nick Harkawayis a novelist and commentator. He is the author of the novels The Gone-Away World, Angelmaker and Tigerman; and a non-fiction study of the digital world, The Blind Giant: Being Human in a Digital World...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionNovelist
earned entitled looked sir suitcases terry wrote
Sir Terry Pratchett - he was knighted in 2009, and on him it looked earned rather than entitled - wrote about dragons, wizards, turtles, witches, time-travelling monks, and suitcases with legs.
along names people time
I make up names for people all the time - it's part of writing. Very often, the name comes with the character, along with of a sense of who they are and what they do.
time work
When the time comes to work, I work.
family relationship
My family has something of a special relationship with confidence tricks: my grandfather was a professional swindler.
analyze classic detective filter handy structures work
As I work, I see my writing - each scene, each chapter, each section, each book - in three-act structures and classic myths, and I analyze them through the handy filter of the detective story.
benefit including nor novel novelists suspect wary works
There is not now, nor I suspect will there ever be, a le Carre novel with ninjas in it. Most serious novelists are wary of including ninjas in their writing. That's a shame, because many much-admired works of modern fiction could benefit from a few.
consider facial helping means rather text tone
It's true that interacting through text means no eyelines, no facial expressions, no tone of voice. That can be an advantage, helping us to consider content rather than eloquence, import rather than source.
saying
There's a saying in the movie industry that if your movie is about what you actually think it's about, you're in big trouble. I think it's the same with books.
The notion of our leaders as patrician ascetics of unassailable virtue is risible.
author bad basically classes entropy events hard stick
A lot of author events are basically hour-long classes in entropy perched on bad seating under bright, hard lights, with - if you're lucky - bad Chardonnay and cheese on a stick waiting for you at the end of the ride.
legislate million people reach speech understanding voluntary whisper
With true free speech has to come an understanding of when and when not to use it. But you can't legislate that. It must be voluntary - especially in a world where a whisper can reach a million people in an eye blink.
both fascinated human individual
I'm fascinated by human agency - by the process of decision, both in the individual and the mass.
male
I'm a white, middle-aged, married, middle-class male with kids. I couldn't be disenfranchised if I tried.
enormous room underneath work
I work in our living room, a strange room in a strange, topsy-turvy house. I work underneath this enormous bookshelf.