The concepts of mercy and compassion are alien to the prador, and in the war against the Polity, hundreds of worlds and entire populations are annihilated because of their vicious and genocidal nature. For this there are no rewards and many first-children are called to their father’s lair only to be torn apart and eaten for no reason. Those who manage to avoid such neural enslavement and dismemberment are directly subject to their father-captains, who demand absolute loyalty from all children aboard their ships. The second-children also have their parts harvested by larger prador who’ve lost limbs and need replacements. Known as “thralling,” this is the prador version of AI. This helps the prador control their ships and missiles. Those that survive this culling, the second-children, can grow to be as large as automobiles and usually have their neural ganglia removed and placed inside computers. They normally end up spending their lives fighting and eating their fellows in shallow ponds. Young prador, called third-children, are about the size of an Irish wolfhound and are not allowed to mature naturally.

All prador are controlled by pheromones to be loyal to their king and father captains. Their society is a brutal experiment in violent domination in which the strong eat the weak. The prador are a race of intelligent crab-like beings that are first introduced in Prador Moon, where they wage war against the Polity. If real aliens are anything like these, perhaps the human race is better off staying on planet Earth.

The detail he uses to create such horror allows the reader to contemplate what really lies out there beyond our simple horizon. The nightmare creatures in Neal Asher’s worlds are truly frightening.

Neal asher prador