An Introduction to Neal Asher's Polity Universe books

Agent Cormac is sent to investigate a runcible disaster that killed thirty thousand people on the world of Samarkand, sinking it into an Ice Age. This was apparently caused by an alien entity called Dragon, a giant creature who might be older than human history – or a liar.

On the frontiers of human-occupied space, a space station has been destroyed. Suspecting the alien bioconstruct Dragon, Earth Central assigns Agent Ian Cormac to discover the truth. Meanwhile, civil war looms on the planet Masada, aided by lethal Jain technology.

An old nemesis of Agent Cormac resurfaces, along with the terrifying Mr Crane, a brass android killing machine. He journeys to the brutal world of Cull, tasked with hunting a ‘dragon’. There, he discovers its low-tech citizens are assisted by an entity calling itself Dragon – but Agent Cormac isn’t far behind.

Time travelling refugees arrive in Polity, pursued by something alien and dangerous. Meanwhile, Orlandine, an augmented human, hopes to harness Jain technology – even though it could destroy her. But the lethal technology is spreading, and Agent Cormac is determined to stop it.

The Polity worlds are under attack. A renegade AI has merged with Jain technology to become more powerful than before. And it attracts the Polity’s most dangerous individuals: Mr Crane, seeking vengeance; Orlandine, who hunts a weapon; and Dragon, who is determined to wake the sleeping makers of Jain technology. Agent Cormac must risk everything to save the Polity.

On the savage ocean planet of Spatterjay, three travellers arrive. Erlin is immortal and seeks a reason to live. Janer hosts a hive mind – a tourist. And Sable Keech, a policeman who’s been dead for seven hundred years, but still hunts the notorious criminal Spatterjay Hoop. But their lives are disrupted, as a centuries-old prador arrives, to exterminate witnesses to his own war crimes.

Taylor Bloc is a dead man walking, desperate to gain the secret of immortality. So he travels to Spatterjay to discover its secrets, retracing Sable Keech’s journey across the wild seas. Erlin’s solitude is disrupted, while Janer returns with forbidden weaponry. And in the deeps, an alien prador stirs, horribly transformed by Spatterjay’s immortality virus.

Old Captain Orbus flees Spatterjay, escaping violence. And his alien enemy, the prador Vrell, has also moved on after the immortality virus mutated him into something even more dangerous. They clash in the Graveyard, a lawless zone where the prador have seized a key space station. But their actions will awaken an ancient intelligence, capable of annihilating entire civilizations . . .

Thorvald Spear wakes in hospital, resurrected from a war that ended a century ago. Penny Royal, the rogue AI on a rescue ship, annihilated friendly forces in a frenzy of destruction – and it’s still free. So Spear hires Isobel Satomi, another of Penny Royal’s victims, to take him to the rogue AI’s last known whereabouts. But he cheats her in the process, sparking a quest for vengeance.

Thorvald Spear is losing his mind, after Penny Royal links Spear with the stored personalities of those it’s murdered. He tracks it across a hostile starscape along with Sverl, an alien prador warped by the rogue AI. But Sverl’s prador enemies aren’t far behind. Enemies and allies converge on a defective war factory, Penny Royal’s goal – and birthplace.

Several forces now pursue Penny Royal, including swarm-robot AI Brockle – the most dangerous of them all. He upgrades himself, becoming ever more powerful in anticipation of a showdown. Meanwhile, Thorvald Spear, Sverl and an assassin drone struggle to survive the war factory. And beyond it, a black hole conceals a tantalising secret, one which could destroy the Polity.

Orlandine keeps vigil over lethal Jain technology. She is hatching a plan to obliterate it, removing the threat forever. But enemies seek to stop her by activating a Jain super-soldier, which may breach her defences. And while she continues her quest, the Polity and prador are watching, each waiting for the other to strike . . .

Orlandine has destroyed the Jain super-soldier by deploying her weapon – a black hole. And now it hoovers up the lethal Jain technology within the accretion disc’s event horizon. But Earth Central and the prador king know Orlandine was tricked into releasing her weapon – and fear the Jain may be behind it.

The epic finale to the Rise of the Jain trilogy, The Human opens with the fate of an entire galaxy hanging in the balance. A Jain warship has risen from a five million year old prison, determined to catch an old enemy, and willing to destroy anything in its path. Orlandine must once again fight the seemingly unstoppable Jain and their ancient yet lethal technology, to save humanity, and herself.

Set in the same world as Neal Asher's acclaimed Polity universe, Jack Four is a thrilling, fast-paced standalone novel packed with action. Jack Four – one of twenty human clones – has been created to be sold. His purchasers are the alien prador and they only want him for their experimentation program. But there is something different about Jack. No clone should possess the knowledge that’s been loaded into his mind. And no normal citizen of humanity’s Polity worlds would have this information. . .

Many worlds beyond Earth are occupied by alien life, but alien intelligence seems harder to find. Polity scientists find the remains of ancient civilizations called the Atheter, Csorians and the Jain. But when they discover the prador – giant, hostile arthropods – the Polity are immediately thrust into war.

Ian Cormac is haunted by memories of a sinister scorpion-shaped war drone, and the burden of losses he cannot remember. He signs up with Earth Central Security, who send him to restore order in worlds devastated by prador bombardment. But old and new enemies dog his path to memory through the ruins left by wartime genocides. And he discovers in himself a cold capacity for violence.

On the world of Masada, the gabbleducks are strange animals who speak nonsense in human language. They are the devolved descendants of the Atheter, who deliberately sacrificed their intelligence to escape a millennia of war instigated by Jain technology. It seems that Jain technology is responsible for the destruction of the Atheter, the Csorians and the Jain themselves. But the dormant Atheter tech is about to awaken.

A cosmic super-string drifts into the system of Sudoria and Brumal, two planets locked in war. Packed with alien technology, it’s stored in four segments within a maximum-security space station. There, a scientist falls pregnant and gives birth to quadruplets before committing suicide. By the war’s end, one planet is devastated by the other’s hilldigger weaponry – so named as their blasts create mountain ranges. When Polity ambassador McCrooger arrives, the quadruplets are powerful adults in post-war society. One of them has his sights set on claiming the hilldiggers for himself, but is his agenda his own?

This is a collection of short stories about some shadier corners of the Polity. Find out about the gabbleducks and hooders of Masada, ancient races and ancient technologies resurrected, and dangerous alien life forms – the hunters and the hunted.