But the local Monitor has other plans despite having to leave the following day. With political wrangling going on between the Polity and the Prador, the Polity is having to withdraw from this place, much to the satisfaction of Trader John and the miners who have enslaved to local stone people to maximise their profits. As it is dug out it quickly becomes clear what he’s discovered, though not what the consequences of digging it out will be, and Rune is also clearly not who he appears to be…Ī story set in the post- Prador War period and on a planet close to the border between Polity and Prador Space. Here we are introduced to two warring societies on a planet that is clearly coming out of a technological regression, and we follow Rune, a relict hunter who has discovered something buried in an ancient lava flow. While not the first post- Polity story Asher has written, this is my first venture into the galaxy thousands of years down the line from the Polity novels. Within their pages you will encounter prador, hoopers, sassy A.I.s, resurrected Golem, a mutated giant whelk that can ravage an island, hooders, megalomaniacs, war drones, Penny Royal, an intriguing sfnal take on High Planes Drifter and another with echoes of Robinson Crusoe… In fact, everything you might expect from concentrated Neal Asher and more. Six stories, 150,000 words of fiction that crackle with energy, invention and excitement. What lies in wait for humanity after the Polity has gone? Together, they form Lockdown Tales, exploring the latter days of the Polity universe and beyond. Five brand new novellas and novelettes and one novella reworked and expanded from a story first published in 2019.

And his imagination was clearly in overdrive.

What was even more alluring to me was the promise of some stories set after the downfall of the Polity some hundreds or thousands of years in this milieu’s future.īest-selling author Neal Asher was far from idle during the isolation of lockdown he kept himself occupied in the best way possible: he wrote. I’m a long-time fan of Asher’s work and have loved his stories set in the Polity, and all six included here share that very setting. As you can likely tell from the title, these stories were written and/or edited/expanded during the lockdown period of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020.

Lockdown Tales is the latest collection from British science fiction author Neal Asher.

Neal asher polity