I decided to go all out and even read the short stories surrounding some of the memorable and unknown peeps in the connected universe that Neal Asher has made.

I mean, why not? He has a very engaging splatterpunk Hard-SF style with tons of great alien environments, interesting aliens, AIs, enormous constructs, ancient dead alien cultures, cyborgs, regenerative immortals, and more bullets and interesting ways to kill stuff than you can shake a railgun at.

These stories are all pretty fun. Of course, it's even more fun when you've been building up a corpus of his novels and can start pointing fingers and laughing at the in-jokes, and that's where I'm beginning to be. I'm no master yet, of course, but as I get closer, I tend to have a lot more fun.

Worldbuilding! Universe-building! And a few core characters that always show up.

It's NICE. :)


Softly Spoke the Gabbleduck - Re-introduction to the alien duck. Semi-sentient, funny, scary. :) I liked all the stories that had them. This includes Alien Archaeology and The Gabble, as well. Fascinating stuff! Devolved? A victim? Who knows?

Putrefactors was like a wild-west town with some horrible company secrets, enforcers, and angry locals. With horrible alien biology involved.

Garp and Geronamid was a very fun whodoneit involving a not-quite-dead corpse and an AI finding justice on a non-polity world. :)

Acephalous Dreams has the AI Geronamid in a very cool alien-tech (Jain) cautionary tale.

The Sea of Death, even though it has a pretty cool concept, kinda left me cold. Same is true for Adaptogenic. They seemed to have some promise, but I liked all the others much better.

Snow in the Desert was just fun and funny and was full of sex and a weird conspiracy. :)


Now, I can't really say whether this would be a good place to start with Asher's writings or not, but it definitely fills in a few gaps for me and whets my appetite for the rest. Definitely worth reading. ( )

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Title: The Gabble and Other Stories
Series: Polity #12
Author: Neal Asher
Rating: 5 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF
Pages: 384
Format: Digital Edition

Synopsis:

A collection of short stories ranging all throughout Asher's Polity Universe.

My Thoughts:

Several stories deal with the Gabbleducks, which we know are the deliberately devolved descendants of the Atheter. We also get one story about the Csorians, the 2nd alien lifeform wiped out by the jaintech; from how the story goes it appears that they won't be making any reappearances in Asher's writings any time soon. Another story has Penny Royal involved. Since Penny Royal got its own trilogy, I've been paying a lot more attention any time it is mentioned.

In my last review, The Technician, I mistakenly claimed that this book explained how the Atheter mem-crystal was found. That is not so. Instead, a bit of the original is used as bait in one story and that is how I got things messed up. The Technician should be #11 in the Polity series and this one the 12th.

I gave this 5stars this time around because of several reasons. One, I really do enjoy the short story format when there is a bunch of them all by one author. It really works for me. Two, I enjoyed this just as much as I did back in '12, if not more. Third, I plan on enjoying this just as much when I re-read it yet again in another decade or so. Finally, I enjoyed this a ton of a lot more than I have the previous 3 SF books I've posted on the previous Fridays.

★★★★★ ( )

have you acquired a taste for Neal Asher yet? if you love sf, you will. he specializes in dense but compulsively readable adventures set in a dark but inexhaustibly inventive far-future that seems to have arisen out of combining an Edward Lear sensibility with hard science and a positively viral imagination. this volume consists of ten essential stories that shed much light on some of the larger questions of this universe, including the nature of the biotech human extremadapts, the intrigues of various AIs, and the finer points of the language and xenobiology of the proscribed world Masala and those mysterious gabbleducks. ( )

This series of short stories boils Asher's essence" down to it's essentials.

I highly recommending reading at least through [b:The Technician|7704959|The Technician|Neal Asher|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1265715884s/7704959.jpg|10409832], as many of the stories deal with planets, people, incidents that have already been introduced, however slightly, in previous book.

Hardcore violence and the fleshing out of the Polity Universe..." ( )

The Gabble and Other Stories is a collection of short fiction set in the universe of the Polity series by Neal Asher. I’ve been curious about his books for a long time now, especially since his work has been described as being close to Splatterpunk, a sub-genre often characterized by its depiction of gory graphic violence, fast-paced action, and a tendency to push the boundaries especially in horror-themed sci-fi.

I was not disappointed! Indeed, The Gabble ended up being a lot of fun and I enjoyed a lot of the stories in here. Being an anthology, I also went with the assumption that this book would work well as a stand-alone read, and thus a good place to jump on board. I think for the most part my instinct was correct, though I do have more to add to this. I will go into the details below in my in-depth analyses of each story, but I did notice a couple trends in my overall experience:

1) My favorite stories tended to be shorter ones, while the longer novelettes are perhaps too steeped in the Polity lore for me to get into as easily.

2) If the main focus of a story is aliens or alien culture, there’s a good chance I really liked it!

Softly Spoke the Gabbleduck – 4 of 5 stars
A pair of incestuous siblings hires a guide for a killer safari on the planet Myral in this adventure tale that ends in terror as a Gabbleduck appears through the mist and hunts them in return. Honestly, you couldn’t have found a better opener for this book of short stories. The Gabbleduck is of course the creature featured on the cover, a cool and scary looking thing with too many limbs and a duck-bill like mouth full of sharp teeth. Its comical appearance belies its deadly predatory tendencies, and should at once tell you what kind of bizarreness you’re in for. Softly Spoke the Gabbleduck is a fantastic introduction – to this anthology, to Neal Asher’s writing style, to his world of Polity, to the eponymous alien, and heck, just to everything! I wish more of the stories were like this one.

Putrefactors – 5 of 5 stars
A bounty arrives on a planet to kill his target and instead uncovers a corrupt plot that spells dire consequences for the colonists there. By the time he realizes he himself is caught up in the conspiracy’s net, it is too late. Hands down, this was my favorite story in this collection. It was totally awesome, featuring concepts that will leave you feeling truly horrified. Not to mention, I will never look at the phrase “a good friend” the same way again.

Garp and Geronamid – 3 of 5 stars
Garp is a former policeman and a reification, a corpse kept alive through advanced tech because he simply could not stop doing his job even after death claims him. Geronamid is an AI, who in this particular story is implanted into a body of an allosaur. Yes, you read that right. An allosaur. Very cool ideas in this very cool story, but the heavy involvement of things like politics and the underworld drug trade made this one harder for me to follow. It’s got some great twists and turns though, and a sensational finish.

The Sea of Death – 3 of 5 stars
Two characters discuss the millions of frozen sarcophagi found below the surface of Orbus, each filled with the remains of aliens that bear some resemblance to humans. This is one of the shorter stories in this collection and can truly be read as a standalone, albeit it is not very exciting and ends quite abruptly. Not bad, but with such an interesting premise, I’d hoped for a bit more.

Alien Archaeology – 2.5 of 5 stars
Another tale featuring the Gabbleduck, Alien Archaeology is a novella – and therefore the longest story in this collection – that greatly expands our understanding into the history of alien life on the many worlds of Polity. But what should have been an exciting plot and engaging experience instead left me feeling cold. I could barely keep myself focused while reading, and felt no connection to the characters. The title and some of the mildly cyberpunkish themes of the story intrigued me, as well as the idea that Gabbleducks are actually the “devolved” descendants of the Atheter race. But I just couldn’t get into it. I can definitely see someone who is more familiar with the Polity universe or Neal Asher’s work liking this one way more than I did, though.

Acephalous Dreams – 2.5 of 5 stars
Another story featuring the A.I. Geronamid. After the discovery of a Csorian node, a death row prisoner is offered the chance to clear his sentence if he agrees to test drive the device. Having a bit of alien brain implanted in your head versus execution. Should have been an easy choice, right? This is another story that should have been awesome, but again it didn’t quite grab me. I liked it, but with such an ambitious plot, I think this one would have worked better given more pages to develop. I might have enjoyed it even more if it had been a full-length novel.

Snow in the Desert – 4 of 5 stars
Snow is an albino living in the desert…and everyone wants his balls. Literally! His unique DNA means that he has an exorbitant bounty placed on his testicles. While everyone is hunting him, Snow does what he can to survive the numerous attempts on his life as well as the dangerous conditions of his hot, arid planet. I really liked the crazy, over-the-top premise and nature of this offering. A fun and action-packed novelette.

Choudapt – 3.5 of 5 stars
Perhaps a cautionary tale into the dangers of mixing alien DNA just to gain an edge. We venture a little into horror territory here. Truly terrifying. Truly enjoyable. Don’t want say anything more than that, for fear of spoilers.

Adaptogenic – 3 of 5 stars
It all began with an auction. Two relic hunters go searching for a missing piece of a puzzle, and their efforts land on a planet at the worst time possible. An enjoyable yarn, but not the most memorable. I had to go back to the book to remind myself what happened because I can hardly remember the nitty-gritty of it, especially since some of the better stories have gone ahead, and the bar to impress me now is set pretty high at this point. Not bad though, and I don’t remember disliking the story when I read it.

The Gabble – 4 of 5 stars
We end the same way as we began – with a Gabbleduck! Researchers want to uncover the secrets behind these mysterious and frightful beings. Like Alien Archaeology, this story concerns itself with revealing a little bit more about the history and connections between different species, especially when it comes to Gabbleducks and Hooders. The Gabble is a great closer for this collection, wrapping things up with a solid tale that ties together some of the threads introduced in some of the previous stories in this book. It’s not an overly powerful or profound offering, but it cuts deeply all the same, making it an apt conclusion.

On the whole, this is a great collection. Like all anthologies, it has its ups and downs, i.e. some stories are better than others. I’m admittedly not a big reader of short fiction because I so often find stories to be too short (“I want more character development! More world building!”) or too long (“Wait, what’s going on? Am I supposed to understand this part? But I haven’t read the original series, there’s just too much I don’t know here!” etc., etc.) My experience with The Gabble was not so different, but I did enjoy myself a lot more than expected.

I think this is a decent place to start if you’re curious about Neal Asher’s work and want to give it a try, or if you want just a taste of what Polity has to offer before taking the full plunge. Being new to this universe, I have to say I’m pretty impressed with the stories here, and if you’re already familiar with Asher’s Polity series, you’ll probably enjoy it even more. My interest is piqued now; I just might have to check out his other books. ( )