Salvage

When Salvageman Ed saves Ella Rodriguez from spider-drones on the pleasure planet of Sinclairs Landfall, he has no idea what hes letting himself in for. Ella is not at all what she seems, as hes soon about to find out. What follows, as the spider-drones and the Hayakawa Organisation chase Ed, Ella and engineer Karrie light-years across space, is a fast-paced adventure with Ed learning more about Ella and about himself than he ever expected. The Salvageman Ed series of linked stories four of which appear here for the first time combine action, humour and pathos, from the master of character-based adventure science fiction. Eric Browns modest, slightly retro, extremely charming and very human voice has been a distinctive, indeed unique, presence in British SF for many years. Here he offers another interlinked selection of stories which, as is typical of Eric Brown, manage to be small scale, close-up, and completely free of heroic posturing, in spite of the galactic scale of their setting. There is something restful about them, something comforting. Yet while they gently entertain, they also, very quietly, deal with big questions about identity, love, and the relationship between body and soul. Chris Beckett , Arthur C Clarke Award-winning author of Dark Eden These stories demonstrate everything that Eric Brown excels at: intelligent high adventure in space featuring fully-rounded characters that the reader can instantly relate to, revelling in their evolving relationship as Ed and his crew are forced to contend with all that the authors vivid imagination throws at them. Wonderful stuff! Ian Whates , author of The Noise Within **