Tag Archives: Dr Easy

Ezekiel of the University of the Sun

Short story in the New Scientist

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My short story ‘The University of the Sun’ is published in the New Scientist. I was tasked with writing something “wilfully seasonal yet completely nuts”. It is accompanied by alluringly strange illustrations by Dave McKean. The story takes place in the same fictional universe as my last novel The Destructives, and explores the working lives of the emergences.

“A CHIME in his office informed him that the third and final candidate had arrived for the test. He kept a physical office in the University of the Sun with a view of the curve of Istor College, and – as the university drifted between the sun and the perihelion of Mercury – a veined sunsky of roiling violet.

Ezekiel was a solar academic specialising in human studies, and he pressed the rituals of humanity – gender, the office, the interview and Christmas – on his fellow emergences at every opportunity…”

Read the rest of the story at the New Scientist

The Red Men by Matthew De Abaitua

The Red Men published by Gollancz

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Gollancz  are delighted to be publishing an updated edition of Matthew De Abaitua’s Arthur C. Clarke Award-shortlisted debut novel The Red Men in eBook for the first time. The release will coincide with Film4’s worldwide digital release of Dr Easy, a short film based on The Red Men’s opening chapter, starring Tom Hollander and the voice of Geraldine James.

The Red Men by Matthew De Abaitua

Buy the ebook from Gollancz/Orion

Buy the ebook from Amazon UK

Buy the ebook from Amazon US

Marcus Gipps, editor at Gollancz, has acquired the UK and Commonwealth (ex Can) digital e-book rights to Matthew De Abaitua’s cult novel The Red Men from Sarah Such of Sarah Such Literary Agency, who has also recently sold The Red Men feature film rights to Warp Films, producers of This is England,Four Lions, and The Stone Roses: Made of Stone amongst many others.

Set in tomorrow’s Hackney, the novel’s ambitious executives and new technology satirise the modern workplace, where the Red Men of the title are an alluringly strange and prescient vision of the human cost of digital culture.

Dr Easy is written and directed by Shynola, multi-award-winning animators and directors of music videos for international bands including Coldplay, Radiohead, Beck and Blur. It is produced by Warp Films and shot by DOP Barry Ackroyd. It will premiere at Edinburgh International Film Festival 2013 the day before Film 4.0’s simultaneous worldwide online release on 21st June on film4.com and Vimeo, from where it can be embedded into other sites, with both platforms promoting its release heavily as part of a sustained digital marketing campaign to reach wider audiences.  Gollancz publish The Red Men (ebook) on 13 June 2013 at an introductory price of £2.99.

Marcus Gipps says: ‘We’re delighted to welcome Matthew to Gollancz, and thrilled that his remarkable novel will be available in eBook for the first time. With the forthcoming release of the very exciting short film Dr Easy, this is the perfect time to rediscover Matthew’s chilling vision of the near-future.’

Matthew De Abaitua says:  ‘It’s a great honour for me that The Red Men is appearing on the Gollancz imprint. I am always inspired by their SF Masterworks list, from Theodore Sturgeon’s More Than Human to Philip K Dick’s Ubik. And as the novel explores the outer possibilities of digital culture, I’m very pleased that Gollancz are making The Red Men available as an eBook for the first time.’

Buy the ebook from Gollancz/Orion

Buy the ebook from Amazon UK

Buy the ebook from Amazon US

Follow @MDeabaitua @Gollancz @SFGateway @SHYNOLAfilms  @WarpFilms @Film4  @SarahSuch

Created To Help You

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Dr Easy the short film from Shynola based on Matthew De Abaitua's novel The Red Men

Dr Easy and the police

Shynola’s production diary of the making of Dr Easy, their short film or teaser for their full-length adaptation of my novel The Red Men, is now up: http://www.blog.created-to-help-you.com/

Tom Hollander, Geraldine James and Alex McQueen star, and the film was shot by Barry Ackroyd, cinematographer on The Hurt Locker and many Ken Loach films from Ladybird, Ladybird to Looking for Eric.

Shynola are working with visual effects studio Jellyfish to bring to life the robot of the title, Dr Easy. In the book, Dr Easy is tall and light, the bodies fairly disposable and a mere casing for an intelligence that exists in the cloud.

Dr Easy from Shynola's film Dr Easy

Dr Easy descending stairs

Tom Hollander in Dr Easy

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The first publicity still from Shynola’s short film ‘Dr Easy’ features star Tom Hollander.
Tom Hollander in Dr Easy, a short film by Shynola
From The Red Men:

The room was dingy. A dirty single bed. A Baby Belling oven on a peeling melamine surface. A microwave. A stereo. A half unpacked suitcase. Michael Michael was crouched in the corner. His shirt was slick with blood. At the sight of the robot, he gurgled and gesticulated with the handgun.
‘He has a bullet wound to the mouth,’ observed Dr Easy. ‘And there is an overpowering smell of petrol in here.’
‘Ask him what he wants,’ ordered the police captain.
‘He can’t speak,’ said the robot. ‘The sniper shot him in the tongue.’
‘Can he write it down?’
‘It doesn’t matter. I know what he wants.’
Dr Easy moved forward to comfort the injured man.
Michael Michael made a gesture that was like Atlas trying to shake some sense into the world.

Warning sign from Shynola's short film Dr Easy

Dr Easy

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Anna Higgs at Film 4.0 has announced that Shnyola’s short film ‘Dr Easy’, which is taken from the universe of ‘The Red Men’, will be released online March 2013. The action of the film follows the first chapter of The Red Men: a siege in a rundown flat in Hackney that is resolved by the arrival of the robot, Dr Easy. It features Tom Hollander.
Warning sign from Shynola's short film Dr Easy
See also the Film4 blog:
and Warp’s page on the film.

and Shynola’s online production diary, TheRedMen. The film is shot, edited and currently having the VFX put together.

From The Red Men novel:

The siege house was a Victorian terrace carved up into bedsits. Six doorbells clustered beside the shattered front door. Dr Easy went inside. On the screens, we watched the robot’s slow progress up the staircase. Its inner monologue came through the monitors. It could already smell Michael Michael. He was giving off waves of fear hormones, the stink of a wounded and hunted animal. The robot crept up a tilted cobwebbed staircase until it came to an unlocked door. The gentlest pressure from the robot’s paw swung it back on its hinges.
The room was dingy. A dirty single bed. A Baby Belling oven on a peeling melamine surface. A microwave. A stereo. A half unpacked suitcase. Michael Michael was crouched in the corner. His shirt was slick with blood. At the sight of the robot, he gurgled and gesticulated with the handgun.
“He has a bullet wound to the mouth,” observed Dr Easy. “And there is an overpowering smell of petrol in here.”