Though he is one of the most interesting science fiction authors to come out of the United Kingdom in recent years, English science fiction author Neal Asher remains a relative unknown in the United States, with many of his books as yet unpublished in this country and others available only from small independent publishers. After years of being published in small-press English magazines, Asher’s first novel, Gridlinked, was released in the U.K. in 2001 and in America in 2002. Since then he has become one of the most prolific men in science fiction. Unfortunately, out of his prodigious output, so far only the novels Gridlinked, Brass Man, Prador Moon, The Skinner, and Cowl, and the story collections The Engineer Reconditioned and Africa Zero have seen American releases, with others only available as imports. His novel Shadow of the Scorpion is slated for a summer American release by Nightshade Books.
Eight books in the U.S. probably sound like plenty, but Asher is one of the most addictive science fiction authors writing today. Most of his work could broadly be considered part of what is called the New Space Opera, which combines the epic scale and adventure of classic science fiction with a greater attention to detail, more realistic science, and (often) a darker tone.
The majority of his books are set in the universe of the Human Polity, an enormously advanced far-future interstellar civilization linked together by teleporters called “runcibles” that can send people across light years in an instant. The Polity is ruled not by human beings but by artificial intelligences, led by the godlike Earth Central, who usurped control from humans in a mostly-bloodless coup in the late 21st century. Though they have lost control of their racial destiny, the human citizens of the Polity enjoy both a material standard of living and a range of individual freedom beyond anything known today.
Defending this civilization are the agents and soldiers, both human and machine, of Earth Central Security. The threats are many: The Polity itself is plagued by the violence of internal Separatist groups of all kinds who resent the rule of machines and hope to set up their own regimes and tyrannies without the interference of humanity’s inhuman masters. Beyond the Line of Polity lie innumerable independent human worlds settled by the vast waves of colonization that left Earth in the early days of interstellar travel, their precise extent still unknown, and not all of them are friendly. Humanity’s first contact with another space-going species, the grotesque Prador, resulted in a conflict that left billions dead on both sides, and now the two species are in an uneasy cold war. A bizarre biomechanical alien artifact kilometers across, called “Dragon” by humans, appeared to humanity decades ago, leaving cryptic messages and warnings for humanity before vanishing. Perhaps worst of all are the scattered artifacts of a long-vanished species dubbed the “Jain,” which, after millions of years, still seem to have a sort of malignant life to them. Human archaeologists have found traces of several advanced alien races who once shared our corner of the galaxy. They all appear to have died out, and no one understands why…
This background provides a background for a broad variety of stories, and Asher exploits it well. The heart of the Polity universe, the Ian Cormac series (Gridlinked, The Line of Polity, Brass Man, Polity Agent, Line War) follows Cormac, an agent of Earth Central Security, as he defends the Polity against Separatist terrorists, the bizarre machinations of Dragon, hostile human factions and governments from the other side of the Line, and forces in possession of unimaginably dangerous and poorly understood alien technology. The novel Prador Moon recalls humanity’s fateful first contact and deadly struggle with the Prador. The Skinner tells the story of Sable Keech, a relentless avenger who has spent the last 800 years hunting down human war criminals who collaborated with enemy in the Prador War, and hasn’t allowed being dead for centuries get in his way. His quest for vengeance takes him to the nightmarish world of Spatterjay, the source of a virus that slowly transforms humans, making them harder and harder to kill… and can turn them into things not human at all. The novella The Engineer, included in the story collection The Engineer Revisited, chillingly reveals humanity’s first meeting with a live member of the Jain species.
Asher’s style is intense and fast moving, and shows great skill at visceral action and the evocation of bizarre and often sinister locations and beings. He imaginatively extrapolates some of the possibilities of a society as advanced as the Polity, and offers an interesting take on the idea of a society ruled by machine intelligence that is neither the utopian idyll of Iain M. Banks’ Culture series nor the oppressive dystopian nightmare often envisioned in television and film. While most of the stories are primarily epic-scale action/adventure, Asher also has a great talent for the creepy, ominous, and horrific: the bizarre semi-alive Dragon, with its cryptic utterances and grandiose claims of power, the monstrously dangerous native life of planets like Spatterjay, the grotesque biotechnology of the Jain, and virtually everything about the inhuman (in both senses of the word) Prador.
I can only hope that Neal Asher’s recognition in the United States will grow and more of his work will become available here, but until then there’s plenty available for a new reader to start with. If you enjoy science fiction, fast-paced action, or imaginative stories with aspects of horror, Neal Asher cannot be recommended strongly enough.
Questions and comments may be sent to John.Markley@CrucialPop.com
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