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
means nature prize prizes
Prize lists are out, and you're not on them? Nature of the world - means nothing. Prizes are a lottery.
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.
life mean ends
And don't tell me the end justifies the means because it doesn't. We never reach the end. All we ever get is means. That's what we live with.
fell stack
I'm usually reading too many books - in fact, I'm usually reading enough books that if the stack fell on me, I'd be injured.
both bound characters
In both 'Tigerman' and my first book, 'The Gone-Away World,' there are characters who never really get names. They're too fundamentally who they are to be bound by a name, so I couldn't give them one.
additional claim country
In a novel, even if you put a country in the wrong hemisphere, which I've done, I can always claim it was part of the additional weirdness of the story.
argue believe issue lies nature newspapers rarely time
I'm not an absolutist about free speech. Intellectually, I believe that most of the time it's better to let things get said, argue them, and put lies and stupidities to rest. Practically, I know that newspapers rarely issue corrections with the same prominence they give to denouncements - and Twitter, by its nature, never does.
assistant brief few found january quite wrote
After university, I went into film. I started out making tea, managed a brief stint as an assistant director, then found myself writing a screenplay. In the end, I wrote quite a few - but by January 2006, I wanted out.
I'm not shy, exactly, but I am private. I don't like to talk about myself. I had to learn - I was interviewed for print, radio and even TV.
apparently engage move negatively people says
I never engage negatively with reviewers. If someone says something that enrages me, I do what I do on stage. I make a joke about myself and move on. Sometimes people say things that are manifestly wrong or even apparently malicious. That's fine, too. It's a response.
close mind neighbours people separated social technology
In a social context, digital technology introduces you to neighbours of the mind - people who are separated by distance, but close to you in thought and interest.
capacity extend genuine internet power
The Internet has the capacity to extend to us genuine choice, and that is not without risk. Real power does entail real responsibility.
drift limbo stories vast whose
We lose stories every day because they drift out of use and into the vast limbo of in-copyright, out-of-print books whose ownership is unclear.
allow bleak cannot government simply war
We simply cannot afford to allow our government to go unscrutinised, most of all in amid the bleak seeming imperatives of the 'war on terror'.