Bacigalupi produces fine work -- for example, his award-winning novel _The Windup Girl_. The seed story of that book is in this collection ("Yellow Card Man"), and it and the other story set in the same world ("The Calorie Man") benefit from an exotic, thoroughly worked out setting and characters I can understand (although I do have to wonder at the dearth of solar and wind and nuclear and hydroelectric plants in that future...)

Several other stories sound a strong note of existentialist horror, as subtly or not so subtly inhuman protagonists take center stage: the genetically-modified monsters of "The People of Sand and Slang", the moronic world of "Pump Six", the Camus-like protagonist of "Softer", and the enforcer of "Pop Squad". All these stories depend for their effects on nominally human protagonists not acting like humans, though the worlds they invoke are mundane or science fictional and accessible from the present. This produces a dissonance. [While they squick, they don't stick. (Too cute?)]

Another horrific story, "The Fluted Girl", is more successful: though it is SF, it reads as fantasy tonally and I'm a lot more willing to accept inhuman behavior from a Dark Lord or Lady.

Mixed.