The Parasite - Neal Asher - Review



The Parasite, by Neal Asher is a 1996 novella sized SF tale. It is does not take place in the Polity universe, although any casual reader familiar with Asher later works would probably assume it was - the main topic is an alien tech or species that takes over humans, making them better in the process. And it also has a  golem that someone tries to make crazy and anti-proton weapons.

Clearly Asher was already interested in these topics way before he got around to the Polity books.

It is a pretty good read (and in fact it had been a while since I couldn't sleep before finishing a book), and there is a nice amount of action.

The ending is nice, but clearly less optimal to the creation of a continuing series than the regular Jain tech used later.

On a side note, it is somewhat interesting that this is the first time Asher self-publishes. I imagine that he gets a lot more per unit than on regular books. Good look with that!

Very much recommended.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

[Fixed] Just Cause 3 Mouse offset

I've sort of "fixed" my mouse offset problems and cursor exits from Just Cause 3. For whatever reason, both seem to happen sometime, specially if I need to change focus from the game. Sometimes just going to another app and returning solves it, otherwise if I go to Options, Graphics, and turn full screen back on (or turn it off and on again), it seems to get fixed. However, still annoying.
Read more

Solved - You have an incorrect version of driver "vmx86.sys" - VMWare Workstation 8

I have just installed VMWare Workstation 8 over my old VMWare Workstation 6.5 on Windows 7. On my first run I already got the error message: Could not get vmx86 driver version: The handle is invalid. You have an incorrect version of driver "vmx86.sys". Try reinstalling VMware Workstation. Failed to initialize monitor device. Obviously, I was concerned, but there is a simple way to solve it - just right-click the VMWare Workstation icon and use Run as Administrator. This is a bit annoying, but at least it is easy to solve. Update: I forgot to mention it, but as Dave said on the comments, you can right-click on the program shortcut, choose Properties, Compatibility tab and check Run as Administrator so that it will always run properly. Thanks, Dave!
Read more

Elon Musk: How the Billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla is shaping our Future - Book Review

Elon Musk: How the Billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla is shaping our Future - by Ashlee Vance - is a very entertaining biography about Elon Musk (which as the title says, is the biggest drive behind SpaceX and Tesla, and is also involved in SolarCity - all companies with possible huge effects in the world).  The story half reads as a bigger-than-life fictional account of what a genius industrialist goes through to save the world from pollution (with Tesla and SolarCity) and to get us into space. The fact that it all happened makes it even more interesting. It also made me really want to get a Tesla. Well, kind of... The triumphs really do, but the listings of problems don't (irrelevant either way as they are not available here)... Less revisions and "free" gas would be great, though. I'd also love to get cheap solar from SolarCity! Overall, very entertaining, and pretty much recommended for anyone interested in any of the companies.
Read more