David Marusek’s most recent story for us, “We Were out of Our Minds with Joy” (November 1995), was a finalist for both the Hugo and the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award. Although Mr. Marusek’s latest tale has a new cast of characters, he considers it the second in “what I hope to be a series of stories about life in the next century.” A substantially different version of “Getting to Know You” originally appeared in England in Horizon House Publications’ 1997 anthology, future histories. Readers can reach the author at his home page URL, which is:www.sff.net/people/david_marusek/