In the year 2020 global warming has made the world a warmer, wetter place, but technological developments have run on apace. One of the hottest such areas is medicine, where organ transplants and gene therapy have introduced infinite new vistas to what was once the staid old human condition.

One of the most remarkable inhabitants of this new age is Crygender, a surgical hermaphrodite so deftly constructed that it is impossible to determine his/her original sex. Cry is the proprietor of Babylon, the world's most famous bordello. Located on the Japanese-owned island off San Francisco that once housed Alcatraz, but it is no longer officially part of the United States, anything can be bought on Babylon, anything at all. Even murder... (Goodreads)