Tomorrow and Tomorrow
In the not-too-distant future, a mysterious explosion has reduced the city of Pittsburgh to rubble and ashes. A virtual-reality re-creation of it, the Archive, allows people to revisit the lost city and lost loved ones. John Blaxton, who lost his wife and unborn child, investigates deaths long since relegated to files in the Archive. Then he finds a murder victim not recorded in the Archive. Is the line between physical and virtual reality breaking down? Or is there some other—and possibly more sinister—explanation? A very good job of keeping cyberpunk (which has lost much of its original connection to punk culture) up-to-date in its extrapolation of cybernetics and culture. --Roland Green