Science Fiction horror is one of the most fun things to read. There is certainly a strain of this running throughou the various stories of Neal Asher's Polity Future History. Cover blurbs are often hyperbolic, to put it politely (complete crap, when being less so) but when a bit on this one says that Asher does the best monsters, the claim is quite correct.

If you take Science Fiction and Horror as a continuum, then unlike say Brian Lumley and his Screaming Science Fiction, Asher approaches Horror from the Science Fiction end, while Lumley does the reverse. Contemporary Alastair Reynolds does something different, but his atmosphere of gloomy gothic decay is radically different to the rather more gleefully (a la Lumley) exuberant style of mayhem, mycelium and machines that this author employs.

The Gabble and Other Stories collects Polity stories from a variety of venues, some so obscure I've never heard of them, so you are unlikely to ever track them down there, I think.

The coolest writers of Future Histories manage to have both longer and shorter works set in their universes, and this Asher handles with aplomb. In fact, while the various Polity novels (a couple of which I haven't read) are generally in the decent or better range, his shorter works are, I think, superior, as evidenced here by a 3.90 average rating for this book. many of them falling into the very good class, at least those I have come across. The longer work suffers a bit at times from just that, length, given the style of story he tells. Or at the very least you could say his Polity short stories in general are really excellent, as I believe he has a collection of other earlier work. Hopefully sometime this century when Tor gets around to webscriptions there will be a 'Polity' bundle, or at least Cormac and Polity bundles if the former has too much stuff.

The cover of this book would have lots of kids (and those older) saying 'where can I get the toy of that!' Steve Rawlings, very well done. Referencing the cover, 'Garp and Geronamid' has a Polity AI investigating dodgy drug dealings while in the body of an Allosaurus!!!

Asher has written an afterword giving some brief info about each story. Other than monster in the intro to 'Snow In the Desert' he says 'I like my super-tough heroes and lethal androids'. Sometimes even combined.

If monsters, biowarped stuff, weird ecology, dinosaur AI, super-tough heroes lethal androids and blowing stuff up appeals to you, then Asher is your guy. Great stuff.

Gabble and Other Stories : Softly Spoke the Gabbleduck - Neal Asher
Gabble and Other Stories : Putrefactors - Neal Asher
Gabble and Other Stories : Garp and Geronamid - Neal Asher
Gabble and Other Stories : The Sea of Death - Neal Asher
Gabble and Other Stories : Alien Archeaology - Neal Asher
Gabble and Other Stories : Acephalous Dreams - Neal Asher
Gabble and Other Stories : Snow in the Desert - Neal Asher
Gabble and Other Stories : Choudapt - Neal Asher
Gabble and Other Stories : Adaptogenic - Neal Asher
Gabble and Other Stories : The Gabble - Neal Asher

Wave bye-bye to the monster, now.

4.5 out of 5

Terminal gutcheck case.

3.5 out of 5

Allosaurus AI Intervention ingestion.

4 out of 5

Cold and cracked up to be with aliens.

4 out of 5

Making a xenodiscovery killing.

4 out of 5

Abused religious cult murderer's execution given AI exchange for hive mind implantation and multiplicitous disintegration.

4 out of 5

Immortality bounty is more than a load of old bollocks.

4 out of 5

Fungus the virusman.

3.5 out of 5

Hanging out at auctions leads to an interesting confrontation via shape-shifting technology.

3.5 out of 5

Artificial discovery.

4 out of 5

http://notfreesf.blogspot.com/2009/02... ( )