It’s an oft-quoted maxim that an infinite number of monkeys with an infinite numbers of typewriters, given an infinite time span, would eventually produce the complete works of Shakespeare in English. Toronto sci-fi writer Peter Watts, a marine biologist, figures that it would take ten monkeys ten minutes to reproduce his oeuvre to date.

Perhaps. Watts has two books to his credit: his first novel, Starfish, and now Ten Monkeys, Ten Minutes, a collection of short fiction. Starfish was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Ten Monkeys, Ten Minutes deserves to do just as well.

Watts has a painter’s way with mood and setting, and his chorus of characters rounds out the composition. In the space of nine short stories (one of them an excerpt from Starfish and one co-written with Laurie Channer), he introduces the reader to a compelling cast of irrational scientists, sensitive bigots, loving murderesses, scheming whales, and living clouds. Two women living in a claustrophobic underwater environment battle their fear of the world and of each other; a white Vancouverite struggles with his feelings as the Asian population of his city increases; a graduate student in physics makes a quantum leap of faith in an effort to save her dying husband.

Whatever their dilemmas, Watts’s characters wrestle hard with the forces that rule their lives: Watts asks if we are ever truly capable of free will, or are we simply biological machines responding predictably to the chemical stimuli from our surroundings? His answers are sometimes eerie, often upsetting, and readers may disagree with his conclusions, but it’s clear that Watts cares deeply about the people whose lives he imagines. The characters are passionately drawn in all their complex loves, despairs, and hatreds, making the collection an absorbing read. Long after closing the book, readers will be arguing and reasoning with the people they met between its pages.