Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0316738573, Paperback)

From a fearless new voice-a writer in the tradition of George Saunders and Jonathan Lethem-comes a collection of fantastical, gut-wrenching stories of an imagined future epoch crippled by the unfulfilled promises of technology. With a heightened sense of the boundless possibility and lurking doom that Orwell and Huxley once envisioned, each of Matthew Derby's stories provides a glimpse into an intricately imagined world-a world in which clouds are treated with behavioral serum, children are handicapped by their ability to float, all food (including Popsicles) is made of meat-and parodies our contemporary notions of family, government, and technology with razor-sharp wit. The result: a book that is both a brilliant satire and an assault on the senses. - Matthew Derby joins the ranks of Jonathan Lethem, Donald Antrim, Kelly Link, Shelley Jackson, et al.-a new generation of writers whose edgy, experimental fiction has achieved critical and popular success.