David Marusek’s most recent story for us, “We Were out of Our Minds with Joy” (November 1995), was a finalist for both the Hugo and the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award. Although Mr. Marusek’s latest tale has a new cast of characters, he considers it the second in “what I hope to be a series of stories about life in the next century.” A substantially different version of “Getting to Know You” originally appeared in England in Horizon House Publications’ 1997 anthology, future histories. Readers can reach the author at his home page URL, which is: www.sff.net/people/david_marusek/

The year is 2135, and the international program to seed the galaxy with human colonies has stalled as greedy, immoral powerbrokers park their starships in Earth’s orbit and begin to convert them into space condos. Ellen Starke’s head, rescued from the fiery crash that killed her mother, struggles to regrow a new body in time to restore her dead mother’s financial empire. And Pre-Singularity AIs conspire to join the human race just as human clones, such as Mary Skarland and her sisters, want nothing more than to leave it.Welcome to Mind Over Ship, the sequel to Marusek’s stunning debut novel, Counting Heads, which Publishers Weekly called “ferociously smart, simultaneously horrific and funny.”

Cyberpunk is deadThe revolution has been co-opted by half-assed heroes, overclocked CGI, and tricked-out sunglasses. Once radical, cyberpunk is nothing more than a brand. Time to stop flipping the channelThese sixteen extreme stories reveal a government ninja routed by a bicycle repairman, the inventor of digitized paper hijacked by his college crush, a dead boy trapped in a warped storybook paradise, and the Queen of England attacked with the deadliest of forbidden technology: a working modem. You'll meet Manfred Macx, renegade meme-broker, Red Sonja, virtual reality sex-goddess, and Felix, humble sysadmin and post-apocalyptic hero. Editors James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel (Feeling Very Strange: The Slipstream Anthology) have united cyberpunk visionaries William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, and Pat Cadigan with the new post-cyberpunk vanguard including Cory Doctorow, Charles Stross, and Jonathan Lethem. Including a canon-establishing introduction and excerpts from a hotly-contested online debate, Rewired is the first anthology to define and capture the crackling excitement of the post-cyberpunks. From the grittiness of Mirrorshades to the Singularity and beyond, it's time to revive the revolution. Are you ready?