Product Description

Mysterious aliens, ruthless terrorists, androids with attitude, genetic manipulation, punch-ups with lasers and giant spaceships! What more do you want?

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #93812 in Books
• Published on: 2006-01-29
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 244 pages

Customer Reviews

Great stuff
I must admit i'm a big fan of Asher's work and this re-issued collection of short stories hasn't caused me to change my opinion of his stuff. This is a collection of quality short fiction loosely bound into slabs which may or may not link in with his other, novel based, work. The little notes from the author, about each story and how hard it is to be a sucessful SF writer, are a mild distraction but don't lessen the enjoyment of the collection. Good stuff.

Short or long, Asher delivers
Although I don't generally like to read short stories (the longer and more complex the story the better, I say), because I enjoy Asher's novels so much, I gave The Engineer a chance. I enjoyed each of the stories, even though they simply left me wanting more. It was particularly interesting to see characters from a few of his novels (Erlin, for example) before they figured in those novels. Some of the stories are set in the Polity universe, but, with the exception of the novella "The Engineer," the AI minds of the Polity play no role in those stories. Most of the stories take place in backwater or primitive worlds which have lost touch with the technology that brought the inhabitants to those worlds in the first place.

My one complaint is that the book is very poorly edited - many typos and even missing words, which surprised me since most of the stories were published earlier. Even the page numbers in the table of contents was screwed up.

But, still, if you enjoy Asher's novels, you will be sure to enjoy these stories. And, unlike the first reviewer, I liked the very short blurbs prefacing each story. It is interesting to get a sense of the person "behind" the author.

Good stories but a really shoddy book
This is a collection of some of Neal Asher's earlier stories and it gives an interesting glimpse into his first forays into his Runcible universe and the planet Spatterjay.

These stories aren't quite as good as his more recent novels but any fan of his is really going to enjoy this novella and short stories.

But there is a huge problem with this book, and it has nothing to do with the stories themselves. I've never seen a professionally produced book before with so many amateurish mistakes and this goes far beyond just typos and even characters being called by the wrong names.

Several stories don't appear in the contents list at the front. Small problem you might think, but several of these stories are missing their titles and have been stuck on the end of the previous story as if it was just a new paragraph. This happens once after the story 'The Engineer' and TWICE after the story 'Spatterjay'.

If you can read around these problems there are some enjoyable stories here, but this particular edition is a shoddy mess.