Michael Swanwick (www.michaelswanwick.com) lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His novels include the Nebula Award winner Stations of the Tide (1991), The Iron Dragon’s Daughter (1993), and Bones of the Earth (2002). He is unquestionably one of the finest writers currently working in SF and fantasy. His short fiction collections include Gravity’s Angels (1991), A Geography of Unknown Lands (1997), Moon Dogs (2000), Tales of Old Earth (2000), and The Periodic Table of Science Fiction (2005). Three years ago, he began a series of stories set in a fantastic Cordwainer Smithian future world, somewhat recovered from the destruction of the ancient civilization of the Utopians, where biotechnology rules. A human, Aubrey Darger, and a genetically engineered thief, lover, and dog, Sir Blackthorpe Ravenscairn de Plus Preciuex, also known as “Surplus,” plan complex scams.
“Girls and Boys, Come Out to Play” was published in Asimov’s, and is the third in the series. Set in a future Greece, an African post-human scientist uses biotech to invent gods patterned on some of the ancient Greek gods as a means of controlling a society. Surplus and Darger have a wild time. The story is a good illustration of Swanwick’s current aesthetic: combining good old-fashined SF ideas with a certain calculated luridness.