Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Wikipedia

It seems I don't need to write an encyclopedia of the Polity. Here's the start of a piece on the Prador over at Wikipedia:

Physical description

Prador are amphibious crustaceans with flattened pear-shaped shells with scalloped rims and a raised visual turret at the broad end that houses several pairs of red spider-like eyes, some of which are on movable stalks. Prador move about on six long legs, each terminating in a wicked spike. The rear pair of legs fall off when adolescent Prador make the transition to adults, exposing their sexual organs in the process.

Along their underside Prador have four manipulatory arms, each ending in a hand described as "a complex arrangement of hooks and fingers". These hands are highly dexterous and capable of fine manipulation, just like a human hand. It appears Prador can use all four hands to perform different tasks simultaneously, such as drawing and firing four different weapons at separate targets. Above these are the two heavy "working claws"; large crab-claw limbs that can easily cut through tough materials and crush human bones.

Prador feed with a set of dangerous mandibles, capable of grasping, cutting and chewing flesh. Prador are carnivorous, and mostly feed on decaying flesh, primarily harvested from giant mudskippers farmed on their homeworld. Adult Prador are very fond of human flesh, however, and many humans are bred just for this purpose, although by the end of the book The Skinner, this practice has begun to decline.

Prador shells are particularly tough, able to withstand impacts and small arms fire, but they seem quite vulnerable to energy weapons and heat, which can cause the shells to burst open.

And here's their entry about me.

8 comments:

LarryS said...

Pretty neat,and I just saw your sketches,nicely done! I'll be visiting the library tomorrow and hopefully I'll find one of your books to read! You'll hear about it on my SF blog!

vaudeviewgalor raandisisraisins said...

they've got about 40 more of these to write. as the world catches up with the stories, there will be 10 more by the time the info dent is made on politypedia.

Neal Asher said...

I must go and alter that post with the sketches on. Those are not sketches by me but by someone preparing something for the previous art competition.

Anonymous said...

Why is the picture of you in a doctors office?

Neal Asher said...

That's a picture of me in a back room of Forbidden Planet. The white object I'm holding, of which you can only see a bit, is a weird plastic dolly that I added my signature to. It was auctioned off covered with author signatures for the 'Match it for Pratchett' campaign.

LarryS said...

Just picked up Prador Moon from the refurbed library to read as my first Asher book!

Neal Asher said...

Nice one Larry - let's hope you enjoy it!

LarryS said...

Neal, I am enjoying it so far-its all out action with nasty aliens-how could one not enjoy it! I'm scratching my head to visualise a runcible tho…