Counting Heads is David Marusek's extraordinary launch as an SF novelist: The year is 2134, and the Information Age has given rise to the Boutique Economy in which mass production and mass consumption are rendered obsolete. Life extension therapies have increased the human lifespan by centuries. Loyal mentars (artificial intelligence) and robots do most of society's work. The Boutique Economy has made redundant ninety-nine percent of the world's fifteen billion human inhabitants. The world would be a much better place if they all simply went away.

Eleanor K. Starke, one of the world's leading citizens, is assassinated, and her daughter, Ellen, is mortally wounded. Only Ellen, the heir to her mother's financial empire, is capable of saving Earth from complete domination plotted by the cynical, selfish, immortal rich, if she, herself, survives. Her cryonically frozen head is in the hands of her family's enemies. A ragtag ensemble of unlikely heroes join forces to rescue Ellen's head, all for their own purposes.

Counting Heads arrives as a science fiction novel like a bolt of electricity, galvanizing readers with an entirely new vision of the future. It's the debut of the year in SF.

"This extraordinary debut novel puts Marusek in the first rank of SF writers. Life on Earth in 2134 ought to be perfect: nanotechnology can manufacture anything humans need; medical science can control the human body's shape or age; and AIs, robots and contented clones do most of the work. If only there were a way to get rid of the surplus people. When Eleanor Starke, one of the major power brokers, is assassinated, her daughter's cryogenically frozen head becomes the object of a quest by representatives of several factions, including Eleanor's aged and outcast husband, a dense zealot for interstellar colonization, a decades-old little boy and husband and wife clones who are straining at the limitations of their natures. Marusek's writing is ferociously smart, simultaneously horrific and funny, as he forces readers to stretch their imaginations and sympathies. Much of the fun in the story is in the telling rather than its destination — which is just as well, since it doesn't so much come to a conclusion as crash headlong into the last page. But the trip has been exciting and wonderful. Agent, Ralph Vicinanza. (Nov.)" Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

"One of my favorite books of last year in any category, and an exemplary entry in the sci-fi genre....[A]n ambitious, sometimes brilliant and sometimes overwhelming attempt to provide a fully realized portrait of what society might be like in the 22nd century..." Dave Itzkoff, The New York Times Book Review

"[A]mbitious and rambunctious....Marusek is unstintingly generous in his speculations, which are all entertainingly wild yet convincingly realistic....[A] marvelous, alternately hilarious and melancholy new world." Paul Di Filippo, SciFi.com

"I haven't felt as buffeted by a book since Gibson's Neuromancer — haven't felt more like I was reading something truly radical, new and exciting....[David Marusek is] practically a force of nature." Cory Doctorow, BoingBoing.net

"[A]lmost certainly the most impressive and significant first novel the SF field will see this year." Gary K. Wolfe, Locus

"[A]n ambitious and well-executed first novel....Counting Heads is a worthwhile and impressive debut filled with wonder and excitement." SFSignal.com

"Counting Heads is full of both invention and action. It is dense and thought-provoking, and its story pulls the reader along until the very last page. Let's hope there's more where this came from." BookPage

"Counting Heads is a great example of the best science fiction has to offer. The world of this book is complete and true to its own rules, down to the smallest details..." Fairbanks Daily News-Miner

David Marusek has spent most of the last 20 years as a graphic designer, including 11 years teaching computer graphics at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks.