of the statue, and is surprised to find a cold cleanroom filled with computing hardware. Unbeknownst to him, his mother had been dead all along, existing only as a "downloaded intelligence". Peter leaves with Treemonisha, hoping that being poor is better than "being rich and hating yourself". In the final line, Peter asks Treemonisha to call him "Pete", rather than the "Mr. Boy" moniker he had previously used throughout the story. Analysis In an introduction to the story, Gardner Dozois draws parallels between "Mr. Boy" and the works of F. Scott Fitzgerald, alluding to the opening line of Fitzgerald's short story "The Rich Boy": "Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me." Publication history "Mr. Boy" was originally published in the June 1990 issue of Asimov's Science Fiction. It has subsequently been reprinted in the following anthologies: The Year's Best Science Fiction: Eighth Annual Collection (1991, edited by Gardner Dozois) Modern Classic Short Novels of Science Fiction (1994, edited by Gardner Dozois) Visions of Wonder (1996, edited by David G. Hartwell and Milton T. Wolf) Think Like a Dinosaur and Other Stories, a 1997 collection of James Patrick Kelly's short fiction Cyberpunk: Stories of Hardware, Software, Wetware, Evolution, and Revolution (2012, edited by Victoria Blake) References External links 1990 short stories Short stories by James Patrick Kelly Works originally published in Asimov's Science Fiction