Description

This collection of stories about possible future developments in biotechnology juxtaposes the ultra-large scale of "Mortimer Gray's History of Death", which encapsulates several thousand years of human history, both past and future, with the intimate scale of "Next to Godliness," in which a dinner party goes wrong, in a fashion obliquely connected to the psychotropic drug-patches worn by all the guests. Among the other tales are "Some like it Hot" which deals with possible approaches, both biological and psychological, to the prospect of global warming; while the previously-unpublished novella "The Golden Fleece" offers a comparative study of the scientific and artistic responses to a natural ability to perceive more shades of color than most people can. All the stories work at the interface between biological possibility and philosophical potential. First-rate SF speculation by a master storyteller.