Showing results by author "Neal Asher" in All Categories

Long ago, the Cyberat left Earth to co-evolve with machines. Now, led by the powerful dictator Castron, their Old Guard believe that machines should replace the physical body. But these beliefs are upended with the arrival of the human Polity—and their presence ignites rebellion.

Captain Blite knows that someone, or something, is trying to kill him. But a device he possesses, known only as the dark diamond, won't let that happen. After surviving a series of catastrophic accidents and assassination attempts, Blite realizes that whenever he dies, the dark diamond reverses time to a moment before his death. He must go through the traumatic experience again and again until he escapes....

On Mars, Var Delex fights for the survival of Antares Base, while the Argus Space Station hurls towards the red planet. And she knows whomever, or whatever, trashed Earth is still aboard. Var must save the base, while also dealing with the first signs of rebellion. And aboard Argus Station, Alan Saul’s mind has expanded into the local computer network. In the process, he uncovers the ghastly experiments of the Humanoid Unit Development.

The Theocracy has been dead for 20 years, and the Polity rules on Masada - but it is an order that the rebels of the Tidy Squad cannot accept, and the iconic Jeremiah Tombs is top of their hitlist. Tombs, meanwhile, has escaped his sanatorium. His insanity must be cured, because the near-mythical hooder, called "the Technician", that attacked him all those years ago, did something to his mind even the AIs fail to understand. Tombs might possess information about the suicide of an entire alien race.

Neal Asher takes on first contact, Polity style. This original novel recounts the first contact between the aggressive Prador aliens, and the Polity Collective as it is forced to retool its society to a war footing. The overwhelming brute force of the Prador dreadnaughts causes several worlds and space stations to be overrun. Prador Moon follows the initial Polity defeats, to the first draws, and culminates in what might be the first Polity victory, told from the point of view of two unlikely heroes.

Captain Blite and Agent Cormac thought they had defeated the malevolent AI Straeger. But Straeger's mission to plunge the galaxy into a devastating war is far from over. With a twisted p-prador army bred from the Spatterjay virus, Straeger sets his plans in motion.

One man will transcend death to seek vengeance. One woman will transform herself to gain power. And no one will emerge unscathed... Thorvald Spear wakes in a hospital to find he's been brought back from the dead. What's more, he died in a human vs. alien war that ended a century ago.

During a war between two planets in the same solar system - each occupied by adapted humans - what is thought to be a cosmic superstring is discovered. After being cut, this object collapses into four cylindrical pieces, each about the size of a tube train. Each is densely packed with either alien technology or some kind of life. They are placed for safety in three ozark cylinders of a massively secure space station.

He can jump between worlds. But can he save his own? As the totalitarian Inspectorate tightens its grip, one man discovers the power to slip through the gaps and traverse alternate universes. World Walkers by Neal Asher is an exhilarating standalone novel set within the Owner universe. Ottanger...

No one can outrun the past in Brass Man, is the third novel in Neal Asher's popular Agent Cormac series. Imperfectly resurrected by Jain technology, Mr Crane is back from the dead. The brass killing machine is haunted by a violent past he can’t fully forget or truly remember. He seeks to heal...

Alan Saul is now part-human and part-machine, and our solar system isn't big enough to hold him. He craves the stars, but can't leave yet. His sister Var is trapped on Mars, on the wrong side of a rebellion, and Saul's human side won't let her die. He must leave Argus Station to stage a dangerous rescue - but mutiny is brewing onboard, as Saul's robots make his crew feel increasingly redundant. Serene Galahad will do anything to prevent Saul's escape. Earth’s ruthless dictator hides her crimes from a cowed populace as she readies new warships for pursuit.

Mysterious aliens...ruthless terrorists...androids with attitude...genetic manipulation...punch-ups with lasers...giant spaceships...what more do you want? A collection by the author of Gridlinked, The Skinner, In the Line of Polity, Cowl, Brass Man, and The Voyage of the Sable Keech.

In the outskirts of space, and the far corners of the Polity, complex dealings are in play. Several forces continue to pursue the deadly and enigmatic Penny Royal, none more dangerous than the Brockle, a psychopathic forensics AI and criminal who has escaped the Polity’s confinements and is upgrading itself in anticipation of a deadly showdown, becoming ever more powerful and intelligent.

Doomed to die. And die again. Dark Diamond is the first in a high-octane space opera trilogy, Time’s Shadow. From Neal Asher, creator of the Polity universe. ‘Infinitely entertaining’ – Locus Magazine Somebody is trying to kill Captain Blite, but each attempt ends in unexpected failure...

The Argus Space Station looks down on a nightmarish Earth. And from this safe distance, the Committee enforces its despotic rule. There are too many people and too few resources, and they need 12 billion to die before Earth can be stabilised. So corruption is rife, people starve, and the poor are policed by mechanised overseers and identity-reader guns. Citizens already fear the brutal Inspectorate with its pain inducers. But to reach its goals, the Committee will unleash satellite laser weaponry, taking carnage to a new level. This is the world Alan Saul wakes to.

Dark Intelligence is the first novel in the Transformation series, a no-holds-barred adventure set in Neal Asher's popular Polity universe. One man will transcend death to seek vengeance. One woman will transform herself to gain power. And no one will emerge unscathed . . . Thorvald Spear wakes...

From 800 years in the future, a runcible gate is opened into the Polity and those coming through it have been sent specially to take the alien ‘Maker’ back to its home civilization in the Small Magellanic cloud. Once these refugees are safely through, the gate itself is rapidly shut down – because something alien is pursuing them. The gate is then dumped into a nearby sun. From those refugees who get through, agent Cormac learns that the Maker civilization has been destroyed by pernicious virus known as the Jain technology.

Ottanger is a rebel and mutant on an Earth governed by a ruthless Committee. But after its Inspectorate experiments on him, Ottanger realizes the mutation allows him to reach alternate worlds. The multiverse is revealed in all its glory and terror—and he understands that he can finally flee his timeline. Then Ottanger meets the Fenris, an evolved human, visiting his Earth from the far future. He'd engineered the original world walking mutation, so those altered could escape the Committee's nightmarish regime. And Ottanger sees that that Committee will become unstoppable if not destroyed.

The haiman Orlandine, charged with safeguarding lethal Jain tech swirling inside an accretion disc located in the distant reaches of space, has weaponized a black hole to eliminate the threat. But others are suspicious of her motives, and both the Polity AIs and the leaders of the alien prador kingdom dispatch fleets of warships in anticipation of conflict. As the black hole continues to eat its way through the planets in the accretion disc, making its way towards a dead sun, it becomes clear the disc has been hiding a larger secret.

The Polity is under attack from a "melded" AI entity with control of the lethal Jain technology, yet the attack seems to have no coherence. When one of Erebus' wormships kills millions on the world of Klurhammon, a high-tech agricultural world of no real tactical significance, agent Ian Cormac is sent to investigate, though he is secretly struggling to control a new ability no human being should possess... and beginning to question the motives of his AI masters.