This collection gathers twelve tales by one of the leading new voices in science fiction. The stories are divided into three groups: Five fall into Sterling's "Shaper/Mechanist" coterie of tales; three are science fiction of a more generic type; and four tales are labeled as fantasy. The Shaper/Mechanist stories center on a future world in which two opposing sects have developed: the "Shapers" have evolved themselves through genetic tinkering; the "Mechanists" through computerized prosthetics. Sterling explores the consequences of both approaches, painting neither side as necessarily good nor evil, and stories are related Erom both points of view. Among the other tales, "20 Evocations" effectively links anecdotal episodes of Nikolai Leng's life to create a coherent picture of Leng's gradual transformation from young innocent to cornipt elder. In "Spook," the earth has suffered a "brain drain" through mass emigrations to space leaving a world populated mainly with "undesirables." The powers-diat-be have their hands full trying to maintain a semblance of order and control; faced with a potential uprising in Central America, they contract the services of a futuristic secret agent-the "spook" of the title-to quell the insurgency. The denouement to this space-age thriller is devasting. "Green Days in Brunei" is set in the tiny nation of Brunei on the island of Borneo to which Canadian engineer Turner Choi has been dispatched to help introduce a bit of twenty-first-century technology to a society that has previously rejected high tech to the point of outlawing telephones. Choi eventually becomes romantically involved with the royal princess of Brunei in this, what may well be Sterling's best story. The fantasy-oriented tales which close out the collection largely feature a tongue-in-cheek tone and are, unfortunately, not as interesting as the preceding works.
