What has six arms a large beak looks like a pyramid has more eyes than youd expect & talks nonsense? If you dont know the answer to that then 1) you should & 2) you havent been reading Neal Asher (see point 1) Jon Courtenay Grimwood In the eight years since his first full-length novel Gridlinked was published by Pan Macmillan Neal Asher has firmly established himself as one of the leading British writers of Science Fiction & his novels are now translated in many languages. Most of his stories are set in a galactic future-scape called The Polity & with this collection of marvellously inventive & action-packed short stories he takes us further into the manifold diversities of that amazing universe. No one does monsters better than Neal Asher so be prepared to revisit the lives & lifestyles of such favourites as the gabbleduck & the hooder to savour alien poisons the walking dead the Sea of Death & the putrefactor symbiont.