Brilliant Scottish writer Ken MacLeod brings the U.K. into a near future that echoes McHugh's in many ways — the economy is sagging, and previously democratic societies are closing up into police states. In London, where Hope and Hugh are raising a family, women are being bullied by the medico-surveillance state into taking "the Fix." This is a pill that corrects a number of genetic abnormalities in children, and the newly pregnant Hope doesn't want to take it — for reasons that bring her

—Annalee Newitz