The robot's twilight companion

A hero returns home from the end of time, and must ignore a savage band of outlaws or risk everything for which he's struggled. A derelict man-god holds the only hope against a tyrant whose influence reaches the molecular level of the solar system. And at the twilight of the millennium, the pressurized geology and politics of Washington state build toward eruption as a mining robot gains human understanding. These are just a few of the excellent, idiosyncratic stories presented here by one of the very best new professionals in science fiction.