The Engineer Reconditioned

ABOUT “THE ENGINEER”

Novellas being notoriously difficult to publish, unless in collections like this, The Engineer has been seen nowhere but in the Tanjen edition. In this story you can find some of the roots of the runcible universe portrayed in my Macmillan books. Here you get to see one of the Jain, who made a technology that destroyed them, and other races after them… maybe. It was utterly natural for humans, on the archaeological evidence, to attribute the technology to the species that used it, rather than see a species used by a technology. They got it wrong, didn’t they? I know some readers would like to fit this story into a chronology. Did these events occur before or after Skellor started throwing his weight around?

Someone said to me that because the Cable Hogue is referred to in the Gridlinked sequence, the events here must have been just after, because had they been before, more mention would have been made of them. Well, not really. Immortal AI starships can exist for a very long time, and covering significant screw-ups is not an unusual governmental technique. Will I answer the question? Some day, in another book or short story, but not here. You see, my future history has not sprung full-grown from my forehead, but is still fermenting behind it.