Counting Heads

Marusek’s critically acclaimed launch as an SF novelist.

The year is 2134, and the Information Age has given rise to the Boutique Economy in which mass production and mass consumption are rendered obsolete. Life extension therapies have increased the human lifespan by centuries. Loyal mentars (artificial intelligences) and robots do most of society’s work. The Boutique Economy has made redundant ninety-nine percent of the world’s fifteen billion human inhabitants. The world would be a much better place if they all simply went away.

“Starred Review. This extraordinary debut novel puts Marusek in the first rank of SF writers. Marusek’s writing is ferociously smart, simultaneously horrific and funny, as he forces readers to stretch their imaginations and sympathies. Much of the fun in the story is in the telling rather than its destination—which is just as well, since it doesn’t so much come to a conclusion as crash headlong into the last page.” ~Publishers Weekly

“Critics compared this debut SF novel to works by Charles Stross, Rudy Rucker, John Wright, and even Philip K. Dick. Marusek examines present-day trends in technical and scientific advances, projects the social, biological, economic, and political consequences of such progress—and runs with it. Yet, although the author “is unstintingly generous in his speculations,” notes SciFi.com, he is also “convincingly realistic.” Inventive set pieces, complex and cliché-free characters with ordinary aspirations, and blurred lines between “real” and “artificial” thrilled all reviewers.” ~Bookmarks Magazine