A mermaid delves into the dark underpinnings of her Utopian society; a dying boy finds himself trapped in a virtual world beyond his wildest imagining; Friedrich Nietzsche meets Wyatt Earp on the dusty streets of Tombstone, Arizona; a gorilla strives to remain relevant among the info-streams and easily distracted eyeballs of a shallow, media-addled culture; a civilization raises its young as computer programs, deleting problematic children at will.....