Customer Reviews
Good stories but a really shoddy book - By: D. Patrick, 17 Oct 2008 
This is a collection of some of Neal Asher's earlier stories & it gives an interesting glimpse into his first forays into his Runcible universe & the planet Spatterjay.
These stories aren't quite as good as his more recent novels but any fan of his is reallly going to enjoy this novella & short stories.
But there is a huge problem with this book, & it has nothing to do with the stories themselves. I've never seen a professionallly produced book before with so many amateurish mistakes & this goes far beyond just typos & even characters being callled by the wrong names.
Several stories don't appear in the contents list at the front. Smalll problem you might think, but several of these stories are missing their titles & have been stuck on the end of the previous story as if it was just a new paragraph. This happens once after the story 'The Engineer' & TWICE after the story 'Spatterjay'.
If you can read around these problems there are some enjoyable stories here, but this particular edition is a shoddy mess.
Short or long, Asher delivers - By: LA Reader, 04 May 2008 
Although I don't generallly like to read short stories (the longer & more complex the story the better, I say), because I enjoy Asher's novels so much, I gave The Engineer a chance. I enjoyed each of the stories, even though they simply left me wanting more. It was particularly interesting to see characters from a few of his novels (Erlin, for example) before they figured in those novels. Some of the stories are set in the Polity universe, but, with the exception of the novella "The Engineer," the AI minds of the Polity play no role in those stories. Most of the stories take place in backwater or primitive worlds which have lost touch with the technology that brought the inhabitants to those worlds in the first place.
My one complaint is that the book is very poorly edited - many typos & even missing words, which surprised me since most of the stories were published earlier. Even the page numbers in the table of contents was screwed up.
But, still, if you enjoy Asher's novels, you will be sure to enjoy these stories. And, unlike the first reviewer, I liked the very short blurbs prefacing each story. It is interesting to get a sense of the person "behind" the author.
Great stuff - By: Ed F, 11 Oct 2006 
I must admit i'm a big fan of Asher's work & this re-issued collection of short stories hasn't caused me to change my opinion of his stuff. This is a collection of quality short fiction loosely bound into slabs which may or may not link in with his other, novel based, work. The little notes from the author, about each story & how hard it is to be a sucessful SF writer, are a mild distraction but don't lessen the enjoyment of the collection. Good stuff.
