Lockdown Tales 2

Lockdown Tales II Neal Asher NewCon Press England First edition, published in the UK February 2023 by NewCon Press 41 Wheatsheaf Road, Alconbury Weston, Cambs, PE28 4LF, UK NCP297 (hardback) NCP298 (softback) 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 This collection copyright © 2023 by Ian Whates All stories copyright © by Neal Asher Introduction and story notes copyright © 2023 by Neal Asher Covert art copyright © 2023 by Vincent Sammy “An Alien on Crete” copyright © 2020, originally appeared in Asimov’s “Skin” copyright © 2020, originally appeared in London Centric (NewCon Press) “The Host” copyright © 2020, originally appeared in Clarkesworld “Moral Biology” copyright © 2020, originally appeared in Analog “Longevity Averaging” copyright © 2021, originally appeared in Analog “Xenovore”, “The Translator”, “Eels”, and “Antique Battlefields” are original to this collection, copyright © 2023. All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-914953-42-2 (hardback) 978-1-914953-43-9 (softback) Cover Art and front cover titles by Vincent Sammy Editing and typesetting by Ian Whates LOCKDOWN TALES II An Introduction I would have preferred not to have a Lockdown Tales II, rather some other collection with the necessity for another title, but it was not to be. Frightened politicians who want all the power without the responsibility deferring to ‘experts’ who, like many before them, continued predicting catastrophe so as to maintain their position in the limelight and their ‘importance’, have kept the lockdowns going. And, of course, as with all these ersatz catastrophes, big vested interests have put their weight behind this one, and the corporatist money-trousering circuit has kicked in. But enough of When I started out writing short stories I was still under the influence of all the stuff I’d read before so threw in everything. While transitioning from Fantasy to Science Fiction I still included psychic powers. In fact a very early story (which I can’t find at the moment) concerned a telepath travelling by runcible to triangulate the position of an alien psychic scream. Later on I dropped that stuff because, though I don’t mind ‘technology indistinguishable from magic’, psychic powers began to strike me as simply magic. They seemed like a copout. In retrospect I see that they, and