New Cover: Owning the Future

Here's the last of the new covers for my Kindle and POD books produced by Vincent Sammy. I think he's done an excellent job. Depicted here is a scene from the short story Bioship.

Stories:

Memories of Earth
I believe I wrote this one as a publicity exercise for Tor Macmillan while they were publishing the Owner trilogy, but then it wasn’t used. I subsequently shunted it off to Asimov’s and they published it in their October/November 2013 issue. There’s also an audible version on Starship Sofa (No. 383).

Shell Game
This appeared in The New Space Opera 2 edited by Gardner Dozois and Johnathan Strahan published in July 2009.

The Rhine’s World Incident
First appeared in Subterfuge from Newcon Press in 2008, next appeared in In Space No One Can Hear You Scream from Baen Books in 2013. This is the story where the swarm AI the Brockle makes its first appearance.

Owner Space
Appeared in Galactic Empires published by Gardner Dozois in 2008

Strood
First appeared in Asimov’s in December 2004, next in Year’s Best SF 10 published by Hartwell and Kramer in 2005. StarShipSofa did an audible version: No. 463

The Other Gun
Cover picture story in Asimov’s April/May 2013. This is a backstory for the Rise of the Jain trilogy – it concerns the Client. 

Bioship
This appeared in George Mann’s Solaris Book of New Science Fiction in 2007

Scar Tissue
Not appeared anywhere at all!

The Veteran
There’s an audible version of this on Escape Pod, episode 118, read by Steve Eley – went up there in 2007

Introduction:

I have a varied collection of short stories in my files and, of course, the temptation is there to dump them on Kindle, take the money and run. However, though I think some of them are great, some aren’t, and some are profoundly dated. I am aware that there are those out there, who will just buy these without a second thought, so I have to edit, be selective, and I damned well have to show some respect for my readers. Kindle in this respect can be a danger for a known writer, because you can publish any old twaddle and someone will buy it. Time and again, I’ve had fans, upon hearing that I have this and that unpublished in my files, demanding that I publish it at once because surely they’ll love it. No they won’t. A reputation like trust: difficult to build and easy to destroy.
I’ve therefore chosen stories other people have published here and there, and filled in with those I really think someone should have published. Here you’ll find some Polity tales, some that could have been set in the Polity (at a stretch) and some from the bleak Owner universe. Enjoy!

Neal Asher 04/06/18

New Short Story Collection: Fantastical

 

I’ve stuck a new short story collection up on Kindle and POD. This was shortly after I received the cover from Vincent Sammy, who has again done an excellent job. The picture is from a short story called Marie and the Witchfinder, and he nailed it.

Included in this collection are the three Mason’s Rats stories because though these can be bought as a booklet through Kindle it is too small for Amazon to do a print version. Also included – another that appeared on Tim Miller’s Love, Death and Robots on Netflix – is Bad Travelling. Along with that are two others set in the same world.

 

Introduction:

I’m known for science fiction and that work ends up as a book or in some story collection. But as over the years I scrabbled around to find my opening I also wrote fantasy and other stuff that doesn’t comfortably take a label. These stories have been mouldering on my hard drive for years and I thought it time to scrub them up and put them out there. It concerned me that some might be a bit duff. Publish them anyway, cried the readers, either out of genuine interest or eager to see me fall flat on my face. Some stories were duff, but I have rewritten them into functionality, I think – there are a few here about which I have my doubts. The one about a twenty-something wannabe artist running away with elves still makes me cringe. I also said I would write waffly introduction to each. Do more waffle, the readers cried, so I did. 

Enjoy. . .

 

Neal Asher 20/04/23