First up is "The Wedding Album" (CH). Making "sims," or partial digital xeroxes of humans, is the standard method in the future of archiving milestones in one's life. Thus, our protagonists, Anne and Ben, choose to memorialize their wedding day with a virtual-reality tableau, inside which their sims live eternally young. But the amazing revolutions that happen outside the tableau over the course of centuries, both personal and societal, will send these bits of archaic sentient software on a tragic course.

Marusek's first sale was "The Earth Is on the Mend," a brief slice of post-apocalyptic lady-or-the-tiger tension. Following this comes the comedic "Yurek Rutz, Yurek Rutz, Yurek Rutz." A struggling writer named David Marusek gets an assignment that defies completion: confer immortality in only four brief lines.

Two (CH) stories come next: "A Boy in Cathyland" chronicles the dire fate of a woman who dares to hide some "paste brains" from the anti-AI authorities. "We Were Out of Our Minds With Joy," the longest item in the collection, tells the tragic but rollicking tale of Sam and Eleanor, who meet, fall in love, marry, conceive and separate, all amid a mad milieu of nanotech and immortality.

"VTV" is a standalone, a mordant near-future extrapolation of some of the worst reality-show/newscast trends. Will low-level producer Tony Jonestone survive his interview with a woman under the threat of assassination, or will he be swept up in the carnage he seeks to film? "Cabbages and Kale, or How We Downsized North America" (CH) is kind of a prequel to that future history. Saul Jaspersen, vice president of the USNA, finds that his political goals are being undermined by sabotage of his "proxies," those AI representatives he counts on to be in a hundred places at once.

A journalist named Zoranna pays a visit to her sister in "Getting to Know You" (CH) and uncovers a scam at the Applied People tower. Will her new "belt valet" AI, named Bug, help or hinder her in solving the crisis? And lastly come two standalones: "Listen to Me," about interpersonal tribulations aboard a starship, and "My Morning Glory," a dystopian snippet.

A strong but overlapping collection

Marusek, as he admits, writes only about one short story a year, rather like Ted Chiang. He's a deft and meticulous worker, full of craft, bright ideas and fresh new visions. But this collection suffers a bit by comparison with his debut novel. So much in this new volume replicates the frissons of that first book, often in more elementary fashion, that the reader who encounters both will definitely feel a little shortchanged. Especially since the standalone pieces are slighter than the (CH) ones.

If only Marusek had enough fiction outside his future history to fill a similar volume. Then we'd really get a sense of his range and talents. But as it stands, this book is a tad frustrating. Read on its own merits, it's one of the best collections in a while, up there with a Cory Doctorow or Rudy Rucker or Greg Egan volume, writers Marusek shares affinities with. But regarded in the light of his whole career path, it's a bit of a placeholder.

Nonetheless, I suppose, we should be thankful to have these raw bones of his (CH) universe assembled and on display, to give us insights into the creative assaults that preceded the novel. And, as I intimated, enjoyed on their own and with no comparative juxtapositions to their later iterations, they shine. Marusek has a lot to say about important subjects, from civil rights to love to "the true purpose of hi-tech itself."

He has a master tactic he uses fruitfully over and over. Take the eternal domestic, quotidian verities of humanity—love, marriage, children, family, work—then invert them through a posthuman filter. It's a technique perfected by John Varley in the 1970s—hell, maybe by Heinlein in the 1940s—but it still delivers unfailing epiphanies. Marusek has a handle on the future and can really crank it up.