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The eleven stories in Designer Genes showcase the latest volume in this intriguing science fiction that explores intriguing future possibilities in biotechnology, ranging from stories of imminent technology reflecting issues that are already controversial, to stories that feature drastically altered worlds. Most of the stories are domestic dramas in which ordinary people are trying to get on with their everyday lives in circumstances that are altering in confusing ways by the year or by the day. Most of them have an element of comedy, because the human predicament is essentially comic, and most of them sound a powerful note of optimism, or at least of hope, because, the world being what it is, biotechnology is the one realistic source of optimism and hope that we have, if we are to come through the present ecocatastrophe relatively unscathed. Great, thought-provoking entertainment by a major SF writer!