Science Fiction: The Engineer Reconditioned By Neil Asher

 (Drivebycuriosity) - I like science fiction. Unfortunately most science fiction novels disappoint. Often a writer has an interesting idea which carries a story about maybe 100 pages or less, but when she stretches the plot the story gets thinner and thinner and the text has too many fillers.  Just a minority of authors is capable to keep the tension over hundreds of pages. Therefore I usually skim collections of science fiction short stories in order to find some gems.

I just finished "The Engineer Reconditioned" by Neil Asher, a rising star on the sci-fi horizon (amazon). The books contains a collection of stories apparently written more than 20 years ago. They are all set in the same fictional far future universe and related to popular Asher novel series. My favorite is the name giving novella "The Engineer ". The crew of an interstellar research space ship picks up an escape pod that has been drifting for millions of years which causes a lot of events (this is a spoiler free blog). It`s a masterpiece of very hard science fiction with a lot of sophisticated but plausible technology & breath taking action - a fascinating space opera.

The #Snairls" is about a man who travels inside a giant snail. The plot - which reminds me of Kafka - is full of fascinating ideas and spiced with interesting sex scenes.

Some stories are set on very exotic planets with dangerous & weird plants and animals: "Spatterjay", "Jable Sharks" & "The Thrake".

Asher has humor, plenty of surprising ideas and he can write. "The Engineer Reconditioned" is a fine introduction into Asher`s universes and in the moment of writing the Kindle version cost just $3.82.