Whatever the neighbours insisted would be worth keeping a body for, he always responded that he would still prefer to live as data.

The citizens of Plainfield, Texas, have had it with the United States. So they decide to secede, rename themselves America in memory of their former country, and set themselves up to receive tourists from their closest neighbour: America.

A young man breaks the news to his family that he is going to transition from an analogue body to a digital existence.

A young woman abducts a child - her own - from a government-run childcare facility.

A man returns home after committing a great crime, his sentence being that his memory, and thereby his entire life, is wiped clean.

Urgent, exhilarating and strange, the stories in Matthew Baker's collection portray a world within touching distance of our own. This is an America riven by dilemmas confronting so many of us - from old age to consumerism, drugs to internet culture - turned on its head by one of the most extraordinary and sought-after imaginations in fiction today.