Tomorrow Factory

Whether Larson's tomorrows are just around the corner or in the far future, they tend to be equally dire. Humans, especially younger humans, are enthusiastic about all the pharmaceuticals and high tech enhancements, but they often prove to be diminishments, and in one case may destroy all life in the universe. (Kids, don't play around with old-fashioned bubonic plague.) Gender and desire are predictably fluid in these new worlds, and one of the tenderest relationships depicted involves three either highly evolved or alien cephalopods. The squid story is out of character for Larson, because most of the story explore what will being human will mean in these new worlds.