The plot here concerns the efforts of Rebel Elizabeth Mudlark (an artificial personality layered over the shattered mind of psychological engineer Eucrasia) and Wyeth (he has four amicably coexisting personalities and capabilities) to grapple with, and eventually defeat, the dangerously expansionist Comprise. Brains and psyches can be rebuilt and reprogrammed in hours ''wetware'' plug-in computer chips can enhance human capabilities, even to providing artificial personalities. Thanks to a planet-wide computer hookup, the people of Earth have become a vastly intelligent but error-prone colony mind, the Comprise. The setting is a provocatively imaginative yet intelligently levelheaded ''cyberpunk'' future (comparable in style and quality to the Shaper/Mechanist universe of Bruce Sterling's fine Schismatrix) where humans, dwelling in artificial space-habitats, hollowed-out asteroids, tunneled comets, etc., have spread throughout the solar system. (Feb.Scintillating hard-cover debut from one of science fiction's most promising newcomers.

Science Fiction Book Club featured alternate. Swanwick's fluid prose is enriched by symbolism that add to the maturity of this highly readable work.

In an atmosphere of urgency and tension, the bureaucrat/agent must discover whether Gregorian is using proscribed high-tech for his magic, and if he is willing to kill to keep it. The unnamed protagonist (he is called ``the bureaucrat'') is assigned to travel in person (rather than via mental communication) to the planet Miranda in order to track down an ex-employee of the division named Gregorian, who has set himself up as a bush wizard in the Tidewater region, currently in chaos because of the approaching date of its once-a-century flooding.

These meet in the agreed-upon dataspace called the Puzzle Palace and work to restrict the level of planetside high technology. Employees of the Division of Technology Transfer live in space and conduct their business through electronic doppelganger. Swanwick ( Vacuum Flowers ) takes a fascinating mix of nanotechnology, magic, the vagaries of human nature (including the dynamics of office politics, transmitted to a higher plane) and an accidental genocide, and creates a futuristic detective novel with believable, motivated characters and a tight and exciting plot.

Vacuum flowers michael swanwick