The title novelette, its companions touch on the past, present, and future-from the inflationary insanity of Weimar Germany ("Aryans and Absinthe") to disco club-era Manhattan ("When He Was Fab"), to the rationing of medical services in a grim near future ("Offshore"). Wilson's stylistic diversity and versatility are on display in stories that pay tribute to Ray Bradbury ("The November Game"), use a sentient killer virus as a point-of-view character ("Lysing toward Bethlehem"), and pay unabashed homage to pure pulp fiction in two yellow peril stories ("Sex Slaves of the Dragon Tong" and "Part of the Game"). And finally, Wilson treats us to his popular antihero Repairman Jack at his most inventive: trapped in a drugstore with four killers ("Interlude at Duane's")

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