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British author Asher is rapidly becoming one of the major figures in 21st-century SF, as shown by the 10 powerful and entertaining stories in this collection. In “The Engineer,” an interstellar research vessel picks up an escape pod that has been drifting for millions of years. The alien it contains turns out to be the last of a long-extinct race of genetic engineers with terrifying capabilities. The gruesome “Spatterjay” is set on an alien world whose human colonists have been radically modified and made virtually indestructible, by the enormously hostile environment. “Proctors” and “The Owner” are part of a series in which human beings must come to terms with the universe being ruled by an inscrutable, virtually immortal alien with godlike powers. “The Thrake” concerns the fate of a Christian pseudoscientist who makes a near-fatal mistake while looking for signs of religious belief in the aliens he’s studying. Though occasionally unpleasant (the author appears to have a thing about parasites) and often violent, these well-crafted tales provide plenty of high-concept scientific extrapolation.

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