Evoking memories of the worst excesses of Pol Pot’s Cambodia, Geoff Ryman’s “The Unconquered Country” is a brooding dark fantasy of civil war and genocide. In an unnamed Asian country Third-born must flee her motile home and her job giving birth to bio-equipment to be with her betrothed, Crow. No fairy tale endings here. Bruce Sterling gives us a snapshot of life in a cyberpunk future with “Life In The Mechanist/Shaper Era: 20 Evocations”, and Michael Blumlein, a medical doctor, gives us a blow-by-blow description of the complete vivisection of a certain Mr. Reagan, disposing of all but his brain and spinal column to the needy, in “Tissue Ablation And Variant Regeneration: A Case Report”. Highly descriptive and uncomfortable to digest, no matter what the aforementioned Mr. Reagan’s faults and failings.