Acephalous Dreams, by Neal Asher

Acephalous Dreams is a novelette-length story, about a man convicted of murder given the opportunity to be in an alien tech experiment instead. Neal Asher's work is pretty uneven, ranging from OK to unreadable--haven't found one I really liked. This one has better execution than average, but has some unnecessary violence that isn't quite justified by the story quality. A near miss, maybe the next one will be a hit.