Unintended Consequences contains 13 narratives, bookended by a pair of novellas. 'Jimmy Guang's House of Gladmech' examines the life of an entrepreneur caught up in a near-future ethnic war from which no one escapes untouched. 'A Peaceable Man,' an original novella, takes a familiar subject -- a heist gone wrong -- and enriches it with memorable characters and an unexpected infusion of magic. In between, Irvine presents a gallery of tales ranging from the god-haunted world of ancient Egypt ('Akhenaten') to an entropic colonial outpost in a remote galaxy ('Elegy for a Greenwiper.').

Among the collection's other stories are 'Rossetti Song,' a meditation on survival, loss, and the power of the past; 'Chichen Itza,' in which an ancient Mayan site becomes the focal point of a new chapter in human evolution; 'Tato Chip, Tato Chip, Sing Me a Song,' a comic reflection on the uses of technology and the ubiquitous appeal of junk food; and 'Agent Provocateur,' which uncovers connections between baseball, the processes of history, and Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle.