Much cyberpunk SF is grimly noir in depicting future-shocked people trapped by their limitations, but in this collection of 19 laid-back yarns, Rucker finds human dilemmas much too important to take seriously. "Jenna and Me," for example, co-written with his son Rudy Rucker Jr., shows President Bush's daughter brain-wiped by agents of the "conspiracy elite," but eventually becoming the unwitting focus for an alien invasion that may remake humanity for the better.