“The Blossoming” - Guglielmo Miccolupi; Laura C. Zanetti-Domingues (Grist/Imagine 2000 2024, 2024)
The story is set in a future Italy and focuses on a young man trying to decide his future in a society where “The Universal Basics, things like guaranteed housing, health care, education, and food, ensure that everyone has a good, dignified life no matter whether they can work at all.”
Keywords: English author; Female author; Italian author; Male author

The Alphabet Tax - Rosa Woolf Ainley (Grand Iota UK, 2023)
An odd novel in which the price of a universal welfare system that appears to have created utopia is silence.
Keywords: English author; Female author

The Finery - Rachel Grosvenor (Fly on the Wall Press, 2023)
The Finery are the police in an authoritarian system and appear to be all-powerful until they confront a centenarian and her wolf.
Keywords: English author; Female author

Immechanica - E. F. Coleman (Luminastra Press, 2023)
Surveillance dystopia.
Keywords: English author; Female author

The Lost Cause - Cory [Efram] Doctorow (b. 1971) (Tor/Tom Doherty Associates/Tor Publishing Group, 2023)
The novel is set in a fairly near future U.S. deeply divided between aging, violent MAGA (Make America Great Again) activists funded by the wealthy living in Seasteads, where they are served by the very poor, and young activists helping immigrants in and from parts of the world devastated by climate change. The “Canadian Miracle” has shown that an equal society is possible, and the novel focus on Burbank, California, where the divisions are deep.
Keywords: Canadian author; English author; Male author; US author

“Moral Hazard” - Cory [Efram] Doctorow (b. 1971) (Communications Breakdown: SF Stories About the Future of Connection, 2023)
The story is set in the present or near future and involves a plan to direct federal bailout money first to the homeless and the a scam to redirect it to large corporations.
Keywords: Canadian author; English author; Male author; US author

“The Scent of Green” - Ana Sun (Fighting for the Future: Cyberpunk and-Solarpunk Tales, 2023)
The story is set in a community that was established as an eco-resort but was unable to survive as a business during the collapse of the economy due to climate change. Much later, it is one of a number of settlements that survived and are learning to cooperate to solve their problems. He protagonist is a woman whose job is to move from community to community to try to find those solutions.
Keywords: English author; Female author; Malaysian Borneo author

“Anomaly in the Rhythm” - Viraj Joshi (Vital Signals: Virtual Futures Near-Future Fictions, 2022)
The story is set in a flawed utopian future London with Universal Basic Income in which all citizens wear a biomechanical glove that give them “suggestions” and monitors their behavior.
Keywords: English author; Irish author

“Blue Nation” - Rasha Barrage (No More Fairy Tales: Stories to Save Our Planet, 2022)
The story concerns the attempt to get the world’s oceans recognized as a nation and the reasons for doing so. Two other stories in the book are connected to this one, Brian Burt, “OasIS” (102-112), and Steve Willis, “Penang Fairhaven -- A Visitor’s Guide" (296-304). For more information, see https://www.greenstones.org.uk/anthology-for-cop27/solutions/oceans-as-a-nation/ The last story in the book, Steve Willis, Martin Hastie, and D[enise]. A. Baden, “Saving the Titanic,” (304-327), summarizes all the solutions to the current environmental situation presented in the rest of the book.
Keywords: English author; Female author; Iraqi author

"The Caretaker" - Matthew Hanson-Kahn (No More Fairy Tales: Stories to Save Our Planet, 2022)
The story is set in a future as told by an old sea turtle where most coral has been bleached but reflects on a restoration project with humans commenting on the environmental changes. For more information, see https://www.greenstones.org.uk/anthology-for-cop27/solutions/coral-planting/ The last story in the book, Steve Willis, Martin Hastie, and D[enise]. A. Baden, “Saving the Titanic,” (304-327), summarizes all the solutions to the current environmental situation presented in the rest of the book.
Keywords: English author; Male author

"The Changing Man" - David Gullen (Vital Signals: Virtual Futures Near-Future Fictions, 2022)
The story is set in a future in which a white supremacist releases a virus that he thinks will infect people so that only white babies are born. Of course, things do not turn out as expected.
Keywords: English author; Male author; South African author

“Conjugal Frape” - Jamie Watt (Vital Signals: Virtual Futures Near-Future Fictions, 2022)
A divorce case in which a wife charges her husband of fraud reveals the fundamental law of the society that the 99% do not want the 1% to know: “Economic self-interest is paramount” (24), and the 99% are manipulated to ensure the self-interest of the 1%.
Keywords: English author; Irish author

“Down and Out in Exile Park” - Tade Thompson (Tomorrow’s Parties: Life in the Anthropocene, 2022)
The story is set on Exile Park, an island off the coast of Nigeria created from plastic and other waste that has become a refuge for dissidents and developed a system of governance and way of life that involves everyone and a parliament that operates like a Quaker meeting. They have redefined crime as Acts of Social Crime and the entire society is based around reducing such acts.
Keywords: English author; Male author; Nigerian author

eden - Jim [James] Crace (b. 1946). (Picador, 2022)
The novel is set in eden long after the Fall, an eden that is populated by gardeners and surrounded by the real world of hard work, poverty, sickness and death. But to some in eden the outside world of freedom is appealing.
Keywords: English author; Male author

“I Give You the Moon” - Justina [Louise Alice] Robson (b. 1968) (Tomorrow’s Parties: Life in the Anthropocene, 2022)
The story is set in a depopulated but high-tech future after a slow apocalypse produced by diseases and climate change. It focuses on a man living on the African coast helping to regulate the machines that are cleaning up the oceans and living in a simple hut on the beach living off the credits he earns and his interactions with his son and others, mostly at a distance through an unexplained wireless system.
Keywords: English author; Female author

"Naked Earth" - Eugen [Matoyo] Bacon (Phase Change: Imagining Energy Futures, 2022)
The story is set in a climate change future where society is divided into three class, the embracers who do everything possible to personally produce power that is sent to the grid. The unshackled do as they like, and the undecided are essentially outcasts who pay a heavy price for their agnostic position. The protagonist is a young women trying to decide.
Keywords: Australian author; English author; Female author; Tanzanian author

The Red Children or, Likeness - Maggie [Margaret Mary] Gee (b. 1948) (Telegram/Saqi Books, 2022)
The novel is set in 2030 in Ramsgate, England, and centers on the sudden arrival of people who don’t look quite human, they are Neanderthals, sitting, nude, on the quay, followed by many more, who are dubbed the red children and their impact on the town, which is ultimately transformative. The novel is about the situation and influence of migration--“history’s all about migrants” (91).
Keywords: English author; Female author

“The Sand Ship Builders of Chitungwiza” - [Julius] Masimba Musodza (Save The World: Twenty Sci-Fi Writers Save The Planet, 2022)
The story takes places in a drought stricken future Africa in which the entire world system has collapsed and focuses on one group of survivors that is divided between the followers of a strong man and those of a technocrat.
Rpt. Illus. Little Blue Marble (October 20, 2023). https://littlebluemarble.ca/2023/10/20/the-sand-ship-builders-of-chitungwiza/
Keywords: English author; Male author; Zimbabwean author

"The Secret Source" - Ben Okri (b. 1959) (The New Yorker, 2022)
The story is set in the future in an unidentified country with a severe water shortage and rationing. What is available appears to cause people to become “docile, amenable to all suggestions from the government” (89), and the protagonists search for answers. The author discusses the story in an interview with Deborah Treisman at https://www.newyorker.com/books/this-week-in-fiction/ben-okri-09-19-22.
The author reading the story can be found at https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/the-writers-voice/ben-okri-reads-the-secret-source.
Keywords: English author; Male author; Nigerian author

Sweep of Stars - Maurice [Gerald] Broaddus (b. 1970) (Tor/Tom Doherty Associates, 2022)
First volume of the Astra Black trilogy. In this volume the Muungano (Togetherness in Swahili) empire has separated from Old Earth and its wars to establish a better future for their people. But Old Earth does not want to lose its power over them. There is a Glossary on pp. 345-348. See 2020 Broaddus for a story set in the same future.
Keywords: African American author; English author; Male author

“Transmissions from the Vitality Pod” - Dan Coxon (Vital Signals: Virtual Futures Near-Future Fictions, 2022)
A brief depiction of an Earth so polluted that it is divided between those who live and work inside as much as possible, are constantly remotely monitored and treated, and venture outside, where others live short lives, only in a completely sealed hazmat suit.
Keywords: English author; Male author

The Trials - Dawn KIng (2022)
The play takes place in a near future badly impacted by climate change in which three people from the previous generation is being put on trial in a trial in which children are the jurors. It premiered, with different casts, at the Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus, Düsseldorf, Germany, January 15, 2022 and at the Donmar Warehouse, London, August 12, 2022. See also 2011 King, Foxfinder, her rave Dystopia387 (https://www.dawn-king.com/#dystopia987), and her adaption of Brave New World (https://www.dawn-king.com/#brave-new-world).
Keywords: English author; Female author

“The UmLosinga Tree (The Fever Tree)” - Nick [Nicholas] Wood (1961-2023) (Omenana Speculative Fiction Magazine,, 2022)
In the story a man living in a hierarchically structured dome is outside planning to cut down the last remaining tree in “what used to be called Afrika.” Selling the wood will enable to retire and move up one level in the dome and live with the Elite. 2022 Wood “The White Necked Ravens of Camissa” is a sequel.
Keywords: English author; Male author; South African author; Zambian author

Visco - David Fell (Habitat Press, 2022)
Detailed eutopia that develops on an island in the Thames after people refuse to leave a festival. About half the book concerns the buildup to the festival and the festival. The rest covers the emergence of Care City based on a Declaration of Care, which then becomes Visco, the strong opposition to it brought by property developers, and the success of Visco, although not without problems and the fact that the property developers have not given up. The “guiding mantra” of Care City is “Those who can, walk; those who can’t, we carry” (137).
Keywords: English author; Male author

“The White Necked Ravens of Camissa” - Nick [Nicholas] Wood (1961-2023) (Omenana Speculative Fiction Magazine, 2022)
Sequel to of 2022 Wood “The UmLosinga Tree (The Fever Tree)” in which the protagonist struggles with his past in concert with friends who are trying to destroy the dome described in the first story.
Keywords: African author; English author; Male author; South African author

“Acts of Defiance” - Eric Brown (1960-2023) (Burning Brightly: 50 Years of Novacon, 2021)
The story is set on one of the islands of Orkney, Scotland, where the protagonist had moved to distance himself from the current regime that destroys books that meet its disapproval and kills dissidents. Having destroyed all philosophy books, it is now coming for his favorite novels.
Keywords: English author; Male author; Scottish author

Apocalypse Cancelled - Luke Melia (Dreamscape Books, 2021)
The work follows what happens after it is announced that an asteroid will hit and destroy Earth and then what happens when it misses Earth. It includes many stories, some co-authored, by the creator and editor as well as stories by other contributors.
Keywords: English author; Male author

“Arfabad” - Rimi B. Chatterjee (b. 1969) (Multispecies Cities: Solarpunk Urban Futures, 2021)
Fantasy with both explicit dystopia and eutopian elements. It is set in what is planned to be a hexology in which the protagonist, Zigsa, plays a significant role. The world in the story appears to be mostly a desert, and Zigsa has been rescued from the Test to Destruction  Centre by dead friends but must walk across the desert to reach Arfabad, a eutopian area where the climate has not changed.
Keywords: English author; Female author; Indian author; Northern Ireland author

“Arisudan” - Rimi B. Chatterjee (b. 1969) (Mithila Review, 2021)
A complex story told from the viewpoint of an Indian man as a grows up in a future India being destroyed by floods and earthquakes combined with an irresponsible corporation that is using its power to make everything worse. It is set in what is planned to be a hexology.
Keywords: English author; Female author; Indian author; Northern Ireland author

"Baartman" - Nick [Nicholas] Wood (1961-2023) (Omenana Speculative Fiction Magazine, 2021)
The story is set in South Africa in a future where corporations have  destroyed the environment while pretending to be green. A movement of Africans, led by Saartjie Baartman, has been destroying all such corporations in southern Africa and has reached the last holdout on the south coast. Sara Baartman (c. 1789-1815) was the “Hottentot Venus” exhibited in freak shows in Europe.
Keywords: English author; Male author; South African author; Zambian author

The Coldness of Objects - Panayotis Cacoyannis (Np, 2021)
The novel is set in London in 2030 and is told by an aging gay man. After a pandemic that ends in 2024, the Government Party is elected on a program of complete control and constant surveillance. Much of the novel traces the man’s life and loves until he is chosen for Museum Service, where he will be encased in a plastic case where party members will be able to see him go through his daily routine.
Keywords: Cypriot author; English author; Male author

The Council of Animals - Nick [Robert Nicholas] McDonell (b. 1984) (2021)
Given the disastrous climate change brought about by humans, wild animals hold a council to decide what to do about them.
Keywords: English author; Male author; US author

"Curing" - Kristien Potgieter (Omenana Speculative Fiction Magazine, 2021)
The story is set in a future South Africa experiencing long term drought where cacti are grown for their water, which is sold to the cities. Some hopeful signs of change.
Keywords: English author; Female author; South African author

Cyclopedia Exotica - Aminder Dhaliwal (b. 1988) (Drawn & Quarterly, 2021)
Graphic novel depicting a growing community of Cyclops living in the contemporary world that depicts the experiences of minorities and immigrants.
Keywords: Canadian author; English author; Female author; US author

“The Difference Between Me and You” - Courttia Newland (b. 1973) (Cosmogramma, 2021)
The story is set in a future London in which a wall is being built to divide the city between the rich, white citizens and everyone else.
U.S. ed. (Brooklyn, NY: Akashic Books, 2021), 249-59.
Keywords: English author; Male author

Dreamland - Rankin-Gee, Rosa (Scribner/Simon & Schuster, 2021)
The novel is set in near future dystopian England in which Government policies to advantage the already advantaged are even more clear cut, to the extent of building walls around to exclude the less well off. The novel explores a wide range of issues and problems in contemporary England. The book includes an Author’s Note (451-457) that discusses some of the issues raised in the novel and “Sources for Author’s Note” (459-463).
Keywords: English author; Female author

The End of Men - Christina [Rose] Sweeney-Baird (b. 1993) (Penguin Random House/G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2021)
A pandemic novel set in the near future, with part located in the Independent Republic of Scotland, about the impact of a disease that, while carried by both men and women, only kills men, except for the few who are immune. The novel, which is told in multiple voices, depicts the trauma, the desperate search for a vaccine, and the growth of a successful world run by women. The focus is on the West, but one thread concerns China, which breaks apart immediately followed by a civil war that is resolved by the end of the novel. Other parts of the world are briefly mentioned, with all contact lost with much of the Middle East.
UK ed. London: HarperCollins UK/The Borough Press, 2021.
Keywords: English author; Female author; Scottish author

No Child of Mine - Olga Gibbs (Raging Bear Publishing, 2021)
Dystopia set in a totalitarian state from the point-of-view of a true believer.
Keywords: English author; Female author; Russian author

Notes from the Burning Age - [Catherine] [Webb] (b. 1986) (Orbit/Hachette, 2021)
The Burning Age was a past time of climate disaster and excess, and the protagonist is a keeper of the archives of that time dedicated to not revealing their secrets to avoid a repeat.
U.S. ed. New York: Orbit/Hachette, 2021
Keywords: English author; Female author

"The Park" - Adam Marx (XR WORDSMITHS Solarpunk Storytelling Contest, 2021)
The story concerns a supposedly temporary statue of a girl created and placed in a park by parents to memorialize the children they had lost because of the damaged environment. It became a focus for other parents and helped bring about significant changes.
Rpt. illus. in Shoreline of Infinity, no 31 (Summer 2022): 92-97
Keywords: English author; Male author

The Pod Tower - Pete Alexander (Author, 2021)
Authoritarian dystopia. The novel focus on a man trying to understand the society he lives in. Ending suggests a possible sequel.
Keywords: English author; Male author

“Political and Policy Programme” - Adrian Pabst (Postliberal Politics: The Coming Era of Renewal, 2021)
Non-Fiction utopia based on a relational economy, democratic corporatism, a renewed social fabric, environmentalism, and civic nationalism.
Keywords: English author; Male author

A River Called Time - Courttia Newland (b. 1973) (Canongate Books, 2021)
Complex alternative history in which colonialism and slavery had not happened but the future is still deeply divided between rich and poor, with the rich building an ark to protect themselves. Of course, it does not work out as planned. Spiritualism. Magic realism.
U.S. ed. Brooklyn, NY: Akashic Books. 462 pp.
Keywords: English author; Male author

“The Sabhu My Destination” - Maurice [Gerald] Broaddus (b. 1970) (Seasons Between Us: Tales of Identities and Memories, 2021)
The story focuses on an African American boy growing up in the contemporary United States and the long-lived man he becomes mostly in Africa told in stages with each stage beginning in italics with the experiences that make him who he is in the future. The story is played out in a world transformed by climate change, with much both changed and unchanged at a both a personal level and socially and politically, such as the abandonment of a base on the moon and its redevelopment by Ghana.
Keywords: African American author; English author; Male author

"Sweeten the Deal" - Dan Micklethwaite (Little Blue Marble, 2021)
The protagonist of the story has just moved from the depopulating countryside into a building in the city that requires every tenant to produce edible crops on the rooftop garden.
Keywords: English author; Male author

“The Walls of Benin City” - M[odupe].H. Ayinde (Omenana, 2021)
The story is set in a future where Earth has been devastated in conflict with the unidentified Reapers. The protagonist is a man struggling to reach the last remain bit of human civilization, Benin City, having abandoned family and friends along the way. He is rescued by an AI version of a Benin bronze.
Rpt. in Shoreline of Infinity, no. 33 (Winter 2022): 30-40.
Keywords: English author; Female author

"The Water Runner" - Eugen [Matoyo] Bacon (Danged Black Thing, 2021)
The story is set in a drought ravaged African country in which the rich lived in a city in a city with plenty of water and outside the city the protagonist, a water runner, harvests water from the bodies of the newly deceased.
Keywords: African author; Australian author; English author; Female author

“When the Water Stops” - Eugen [Matoyo] Bacon (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 2021)
The story is first set in a village where people bleed so that the water can be separated out for use by the community and then in areas where the wealthy have everything they might want or need. The rest of the book consists of various responses to the story including poems, stories, including a number of both by Bacon, and translations of the story into French, Malay (illus.), Swahili, Cantonese, and Bengali.
Rpt. in Languages of Water. Ed. Eugen [Matoyo] Bacon (Fayettesville, GA: MVmedia, 2023), 19-24.
Keywords: Australian author; English author; Female author; Tanzanian author

“All Fuzzed Out and Fractal” - Cleden, David (Gotta Wear Eclipse Glasses. Third Flatiron Anthologies Volume 9, Book 28 (Summer 2020), 2020)
A world where everyone constantly wears virtual reality glasses that disguise the climate change dystopia they live in, and the response of one woman who removes hers.
Keywords: English author; Male author

Another Now: Dispatches from an Alternative Present - Yanis [Ioannis Georgiou] Varoufakis (b. 1961) (Bodley Head, 2020)
The Other Now has restructured its economy to create a more egalitarian society. The novel primarily consists of debates among individuals in Our Now over the changes in the Other Now. Lots of detail, mostly over the economic system, which has made all workers equal shareholders in wherever they work and given everyone a basic income, among other changes.
U.S. ed. as Another Now. A Novel. New York: Melville House, 2021. 233 pp. without an index.
Keywords: Australian author; English author; Greek author; Male author

Attack Surface - Cory [Efram] Doctorow (b. 1971) (Tor/Tom Doherty Associates, 2020)
Third volume in a loosely connected series following Little Brother (2008) and Homeland (2013). This volume follows one of the minor characters from Little Brother, a woman who, as an adult, sells her skills to a corporation that helps the dictators of the world with the woman also assisting her friends who are trying to overthrow the same people. The novel focuses on her actions after she is forced to make a choice. A related novella is his “Lawful Interception.” Tor.com. Illus. Yuko Shimizu. http://www.tor.com/stories/2013/08/lawful-interception.
Keywords: Canadian author; English author; Male author; US author

Blue Ticket. A Novel - Sophie Mackintosh (b. 1988) (Hamish Hamilton, 2020)
The novel is set in a future in which girls at puberty are chosen to have either marriage and motherhood or a career and independence.
U.S. ed. New York: Doubleday, 2020. 287 pp.
Keywords: English author; Female author; Welsh author

"Branching Out" - Pippa Goldschmidt (b. 1985) (Biopolis: Tales of Urban Biology, 2020)
The story is set on Scottish island where housing developments are being carefully planned using computer models based on plants and constant detailed surveillance of the surroundings to keep them free of any invasive species.
Keywords: English author; Female author; Scottish author

Bridge 108 - Anne Charnock (b. 1954) (47North, 2020)
A gritty future dystopia set in the same future as 2012 Charnock in which a boy who is a refugee and has been trafficked struggles to find freedom. An expansion of her The Enclave. [Weston, Eng.]: NewCon Press, 2017. 66 pp.
Keywords: English author; Female author

"Choice" - Tomas Marcantonio (Metaphorosis, 2020)
The story is set in a post-nuclear war unified Korea in which supposed abortion providers are extracting the fetuses and raising them in incubators with negative impacts on the children.
Rpt. in Metaphorosis 2020. The Complete Stories. Ed. B. Morris Allen (Neskowin, OR: Metaphorosis, [2021]), 53-62.
Keywords: English author; Male author

Chronicle from the Land of Happiest People on Earth. A Novel - Wole [Akinwande Oluwole Babatunde] Soyinka (b. 1934) (Bookcraft, 2020)
The novel depicts a future African country, similar to Nigeria, that is corrupted by greed and the desire for power. Part mystery novel. Much humor.
U.S. ed. as Chronicle from the Land of Happiest People on Earth. New York: Pantheon Books, 2021. 444 pp.
Keywords: English author; Male author; Nigerian author; US author

"City of Refuge" - Maurice [Gerald] Broaddus (b. 1970) (Escape Pod: The Science Fiction Anthology, 2020)
The story is set in a future Indianapolis on “Original Earth,” or what remains after the rich have left to settle Mars and African Americans who can afford to have settled the moon and orbiting cities around it. Those left behind include those who can afford to ensure clean air and water by building a dome over their neighborhood and those who can’t. The viewpoint character is an African American ex-convict struggling to survive.
Keywords: African American author; English author; Male author

Dark Lullaby - Polly Ho-Yen (Titan Books, 2020)
The novel is set in a future undergoing a fertility crisis, and every child born is closely monitored and removed from parents deemed unfit by OSIP (Office of Standards in Parenting) which can issue an ISIP (Insufficient Standard of Parenting) for any infraction. ISIPs accumulate until a child is removed. The novel centers on the struggles of a mother to have a child and then keep it.
Keywords: English author; Female author

"Death Aid" - Joseph Elliott-Coleman (London Centric: Tales of Future London, 2020)
The story is set in Croydon in South London after the Eurowars and the protagonists are all survivors, mostly from the military, dealing with injuries, PSTD, poor housing, and, for many, no purpose in life. The expanded European Union, known as Neo Euro, which includes a United Ireland, states that have broken away from Europe, and a dysfunctional United Kingdom, establishes radical new policies to deal with housing, the homeless, and health care, but the U.K. fails to introduce any of the reforms, and the story is set in a Croydon in South London, where people have taken things into their own hands. In this setting, some of the veterans are deciding whether or not to rejoin the United Nations military with the aim of suppressing the government of Myanmar, which is still killing its citizens. The story is riddled with typos.
Keywords: English author; Male author

“Exhibit E” - L. P. Melling (Little Blue Marble, 2020)
An art exhibit projected on the moon shows the effects of climate change on Earth from the present to a dead planet.
Rpt. without the illustration in Little Blue Marble 2020: Greener Futures. Ed. Katrina Archer (Vancouver, BC, Canada: Ganache Media, 2020), 117-19, with a note on the author on 119; and in Best of British Science Fiction 2020. Ed. Donna Scott ([Weston, Eng.: NewCon Press, 2021), 155-56.
Keywords: English author; Male author

Firewalkers - Adrian [Czajkowski] (b. 1972) (Solaris/Rebellion, 2020)
Climate-change dystopia set in and around Achouka, Gabon, where there is an anchor to an elevator to an orbiting space station for the rich. The hotel where the rich wait requires air conditioning and clean water, which requires function solar panels, which break down and get covered with dust, and the Firewalkers are the people who risk death from the heat to clean and repair them.
Keywords: English author; Male author

“Gulliver’s Travels Into Several Remote Nations Of The World. Part V: A Voyage To The Island of The Wolves” - Philip Palmer (b. 1960) (Stories of Hope and Wonder in Support of the UK’S Healthcare Workers, 2020)
Gulliver is thrown off a hip and ends up on an island that at first appears to be inhabited solely by a community of mostly young vegetarians who do not wear clothes and are promiscuous. But then, in what turns out to be a yearly ceremony, a pack of clothed wolves walking on two legs appear who feed on the humans.
Keywords: English author; Male author; Welsh author

“The Last Good Time to Be Alive” - Waverly SM (Reckoning 4: Creative Writing on Environmental Justice, 2020)
The story takes place in a future London facing constant flooding.
Also published online at https://reckoning.press/the-last-good-time-to-be-alive/ (February 5, 2020).
Keywords: English author

Londonia - Kate A. Hardy (Tartarus Press, 2020)
The novel is set in what remains of London after a series of climate-change catastrophes. It is divided between the “cincture,” a wealthy area protected from the climate, and Londonia where people get by as they can. The female protagonist wakes up in Londonia with much of her memory gone, and she makes a life for herself as a “finder” of artifacts from before the catastrophe which are traded within Londonia or sold/traded in the cincture. Uses an invented language that combines English with words derived mostly from French. There is a Glossary on 397-99.
This is a revised version of her Hoxton. Np: Lulu Publishing, 2016, which cannot be found. Hoxton is the name of the protagonist in Londonia.
Keywords: English author; Female author; French author

Losing Eden: Why Our Minds Need the Wild - Lucy Jones (Allen Lane/Penguin Random House, 2020)
The book is a science based exploration of the point made in the subtitle, but it begins with a brief “Prologue” (1-4) and ends with a brief “Epilogue” (199-200). The Prologue set in the near future our world where a girl walking outside needs a hat, goggles, and respirator and the girl’s grandmother explaining about nature and why it ended. The Epilogue is set in a future where the girl can walk outside in the woods.
Keywords: English author; Female author; Scottish author

Paper Hearts - Justina [Louise Alice] Robson (b. 1968) (NewCon Press, 2020)
One of a set of novellas published as Robot Dreams that begins with what seems to be a series of unconnected dreams that coalesces around one Artificial Intelligence that “dreams” of taking over the world and turning it a eutopia. Whether it is a dream and whether it is a good thing are both left open.
Keywords: English author; Female author

Samson in somnium: A Will and Testament” - Deborah Walker (Nature, 2020)
The first story set in her Mundane Sovereigns world in which the singularity as occurred, and AIs, who humans call the All Knowings, have effectively enslaved humans. This story focuses on conflict among AIs that reveals that while brilliant, they are emotionally immature. The second story is “Fear of the Empty: Broken Dreams.” Illus. Jacey. Nature (January 20, 2021). nature.com/futures. 1476-4687 (web) 0028-0836 (print) https://doi 10.1038/d41586-021-00122-y and focuses on a human, a potter who makes pots ordered by an AI and tries not to remember making art.
Keywords: English author; Female author

"Singular Outrage" - Ian Creasey (Again, Hazardous Imaginings: More Politically Incorrect Science Fiction. An International Anthology, 2020)
The story is set in a post-singularity future eutopia where everyone is supposedly equal because all needs are filled, but there is fierce competition in game creation. The protagonist is a ninety-nine-year-old Native American woman who has been given her health back but is upset by the appropriation and trivialization of her heritage.
Keywords: English author; Male author

The Swimmers - Marian Womack (b. 1975) (Titan Books, 2020)
A climate change dystopia novel is set in a future Andalusia, where the author was born, with rapidly evolving plants and animals. The remaining humans are divided between those of Earth, which has a complex social fabric, and those in the Upper Settlement, a ring at the edge of Earth’s, with a more egalitarian social structure. Retelling of Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), which is, of course, related to Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre (1847), with reference to Wide Sargasso Sea throughout the text. The female author was born María de los Ángeles Via Rivera in Cádiz, Spain and lives in Spain and England and writes in both in English and Spanish. Womack is her married name.
Keywords: English author; Female author; Spanish author

"The Twenty-Second" - C. M. Franklyn (The Dystopian States of America: A Charity Anthology Benefiting the ACLU Foundation, 2020)
The story is set in a future in which the president for life is being kept alive by harvesting body parts from people created for that purpose.
Keywords: English author; Female author

The Wall: Being the First Book of the Chronicles of Sumer - Gautam Bhatia (b. 1988) (HarperCollins India, 2020)
While the novel is explicitly fantasy, it is set in a walled city that has been cut off from the rest of the world for centuries that has a strictly hierarchical society and power structure reinforced by religion. One focus is on the desire to break the structure and find out what is on the other side of the wall. Presumably the first volume of a series.
Keywords: English author; Indian author; Male author

Water Must Fall - Nick [Nicholas] Wood (1961-2023) (NewCon Press, 2020)
A complex novel with a number of intersecting storylines set in a future where much of the world is experiencing a drought and the corporation that control most of the water supply is all-powerful.
Keywords: English author; Male author; South African author; Zambian author

Where the World Turns Wild - Nicola Penfold (Stripes Publisjing, 2020)
Post-apocalypse (disease) young adult dystopia in which two children who are immune escape from the locked down city and search for their mother in the wild lands.
Excerpts were published in the SCBWI (Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators) Undiscovered Voices anthology for 2018.
Keywords: English author; Female author

"The Aqueduct" - Webb, Steve (Gross Ideas: Tales of Tomorrow’s Architecture, 2019)
Keywords: English author; Male author

Bearmouth - Liz Hyder (Pushkin Press, 2019)
Young adult dystopia based on the history of child labor in the Welsh coal mines moved into a future where children are kept permanently underground. The protagonist is one of the few boys in the mine learning to read and the language in the novel progresses together with his abilities.
. U.S. ed. New York: Norton Young Readers, 2020. 251 pp.
Keywords: English author; Female author

“Bigger Faraday Cages, Longer Blockchains” - Dan Grace (Big Echo: Critical SF, 2019)
The story depicts future in which people must live inside Faraday cages to protect themselves from constant surveillance and capture.
Keywords: English author; Male author

“Bittersweet Building” - Rachel Armstrong (Gross Ideas: Tales of Tomorrow’s Architecture, 2019)
The story describes an experiment in “living architecture” in which the responds to and changes the people living in it.
Keywords: English author; Female author

“Call and Answer” - Langley Hyde (If This Goes On, 2019)
The U.S. is completely controlled by fundamentalists, and bordering countries, like Canada, will not admit anyone with the U.S. passport, which separates a mother from her husband and child, with the story told in letters by the mother.
Keywords: English author; Female author; US author

“The Chosen. Novella Extract” - Thomas Pitts (New Welsh Reader, 2019)
Extract depicting a future in which Earth has been abandoned and people have settled in hollowed out asteroids. In the story an asteroid of Amish of various persuasions regarding technology are dealing with the problem of shortages of essential rare earths.
Keywords: English author; Male author; Welsh author

“A City of the People, For the People, By the People” - Ayona Datta (How to Run a City Like Amazon, and Other Fables, 2019)
In the story, an Indian city noted for its corruption is taken over by Whatsapp and “is owned and managed by a commercial company for private property” (1336 [341]). All the stories in the book are responses to a recent book, A New City O/S: The Power of Open, Collaborative, and Distributed Government (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2017), by Stephen Goldsmith and Neil Kleiman, that proposes, in the editors’ interpretation, that cities should act more like Amazon in dealing with their citizens.
Keywords: English author; Female author; Indian author; US author

“Counting the Days” - Kathy Schilbach (If This Goes On, 2019)
A dystopia in which at age seventy-five no further medical care is given. you then have ninety days to live.
Keywords: English author; Female author; French author

The Deep - Rivers Solomon (b. 1989); Daveed Diggs (b. 1982); William Hutson; Jonathan Snipes (Saga Press, 2019)
The short novel describes the underwater eutopian society that develop when pregnant women were thrown or jumped overboard from slave ships in the middle passage. An “Afterword” by Diggs, Hutson, and Snipes (157-63) explains the evolution of the work from its origins in the techno-electro duo Drexciya and their collaborators, followed by the song “The Deep” by the band clipping. (Diggs, Hutson, and Snipes), and then the written work.
Keywords: African American author; English author; Male author; Transgender author; US author

The Divide - Alan Ayckbourn (b. 1939) (Drugstore Indian Press/PS Publishing, 2019)
Dystopia based on the teachings of The Preacher as found in the Book of Certitude in which men and women from age eighteen live in different parts of the country. Both must be robed and masked when they must meet.
Keywords: English author; Male author

“Early Warning: The Power of Publication” - Gilbey, John (Nature, 2019)
After it is announced that the world will be destroyed by a solar flare, the big tech companies put all their resources into developing AI’s that will helping people to leave. As people leave, the Earth’s damaged environment slowly recovers, and the AIs announce that they can protect those who have chosen to stay.
Keywords: English author; Male author

Frankissstein: A Love Story - Jeanette Winterson (b. 1959) (Jonathan Cape, 2019)
A complex novel, some of which tells the story of Mary Shelley, her husband, Byron, and their friends and the writing of Frankenstein. Another part, set in post-Brexit Britain concerns a transgender doctor, also a Shelley, and their love for an AI specialist, Victor Stein. Another main character is Ron Lord, who creates sexbots for lonely men like him. A related theme is cryrogenics, with all of it coming more or less together.
U.S. ed. New York: Grove Press, 2019. 343 pp.
Keywords: English author; Female author

Freedom Artist - Ben Okri (b. 1959) (Head of Zeus, 2019)
The novel tells how the people of the country come to free themselves from the Hierarchy, a particularly vicious authoritarian dystopia told through the stories of three main characters, a boy whose grandfather has passed on the traditional myths, a man whose lover is suddenly taken by the police for speaking forbidden words, and a girl whose father is imprisoned for writing. All the old myths are rewritten to support the current situation and all other books are burned.
U.S. ed. Brooklyn, NY: Akashic Books, 2020.
Keywords: English author; Male author; Nigerian author

From What Is to What If: Unleashing the Power of Imagination to Create the Future We Want - Rob Hopkins (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2019)
The book begins with a brief eutopia that the author says isn’t one because it still rains, and people don’t always get along. The eutopia follows its protagonist through a day in his life in a town completely transformed into a one in tune with nature and with good schooling and a town-meeting democracy that works. The rest of the book is on the ways cultivating imagination would improve life with a concluding essay entitled “What If All This Came to Pass?” (164-84, 214-16).
Keywords: English author; Irish author; Male author

“Grindr City” - Gavin Brown (How to Run a City Like Amazon, and Other Fables, 2019)
Grindr City starts as an app for gay and bi men to chat and meet, and it evolves into an all-consuming way of life, which then evolves into an actual city. All the stories in the book are responses to a recent book, A New City O/S: The Power of Open, Collaborative, and Distributed Government (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2017), by Stephen Goldsmith and Neil Kleiman, that proposes, in the editors’ interpretation, that cities should act more like Amazon in dealing with their citizens.
Keywords: English author; Transgender author

“Growing Resistance” - Juliet Kemp (Translunar Lounge: A Speculative Fiction Magazine, 2019)
Post-apocalyptic (pandemic/plague) dystopia in which a small group was isolated behind a barrier, which, though no longer necessary, separates the better off and the poor, who produce most of the goods needed by those beyond the wall.
Rpt. in Best Vegan Science Fiction & Fantasy 2019. Ed. B. Morris Allen (Np: Metamorphosis Books, 2020), 23-36.
Keywords: English author; Non-binary author; Queer author

“Growing the New City: London 2039” - Robin Robinson (b. 1944) (Gross Ideas: Tales of Tomorrow’s Architecture, 2019)
London in 2039 is becoming a sustainable city after years of demonstrations by the youth of the city.
Keywords: English author; Male author

I Am Not a Number - Lisa Heathfield (Electric Monkey/Egmont, 2019)
The U.K elects the Traditional Party, which promises to re-establish the country’s greatness, but it rapidly becomes a dictatorship with concentration camps. The protagonist is a young woman sent to one of the camps where she is given a number.
Keywords: English author; Female author

“I Shouldn’t Have to Publish This in The New York Times” - Cory [Efram] Doctorow (b. 1971) (The New York Times, 2019)
The Op-Ed discusses a future where bad government regulated combined with poorly automated private regulation of social media has badly damaged free speech.
Keywords: Canadian author; English author; Male author; US author

"In Arms" - Jo Lindsay Walton (b. 1982) (Gross Ideas: Tales of Tomorrow’s Architecture, 2019)
A complex future tale with what appears to be two separate story lines (one indicated by black dots in the left margin) plus some explanation of the how the current situation evolved (indicated by red dots in the left margin). Reference to the Palace of Westminster/Wetminster in England’s green and pleasant seas suggests a climate change dystopia, but there are also suggestions of having achieved sustainability, and at for a time.
Keywords: English author; Male author

"K" - Jez Noond (Citizens of Nowhere: An Anthology of Utopic Fiction, 2019)
The story suggests rather than describes the situation, but it appears to be set in a dystopia at war where a Gleaners has collected a child to have his memory obscured (the machine used is an Obscura) and then join the military.
Keywords: English author; Male author

"Keep Your Augmented Reality. Give Me a Secret Garden” - Hannu [Jaakko] Rajaniemi (b. 1978) (The New York Times, 2019)
A dystopian future in which most people wear glasses that edited out much of the reality around them. The story focuses on a young girl who takes off her glasses and discovers spaces where it is possible to be free.
Keywords: English author; Finnish author; Male author; Scottish author; US author

"Lay Low" - Maria Smith (Gross Ideas: Tales of Tomorrow’s Architecture, 2019)
The story is set in a future where the .1% control the world and people exist of allowances allocated for specific things such as water and transport.
Keywords: English author; Female author

"Letters From Nowhere" - Rowan B. Fortune (Citizens of Nowhere: An Anthology of Utopic Fiction, 2019)
The protagonist is an elderly, terminally ill woman who begins to receive letters from her doppelganger who lives in a parallel, eutopian world that branched off our timeline in about the eleventh century. She is only one of many receiving such letters, and a picture of the other world is pieced together from the letters.
Keywords: English author; Male author

The Light at the Bottom of the World - London Shah (Disney Book Group/Hyperion, 2019)
First volume in a young adult duology to be followed by the Journey the Heart of the Abyss (2021). The protagonist is a young Muslim London girl, but a London that in 2099 is part of a completely submerged world. The novel focus on the girl’s search for her father, who has been arrested on false charges by the corrupt, authoritarian government. She hopes to gain his release by winning the London Marathon, which is a race of submersibles.
Keywords: English author; Female author

"Materiality" - Cory [Efram] Doctorow (b. 1971) (Gross Ideas: Tales of Tomorrow’s Architecture, 2019)
The story of told from the point-of-view of young boy living in southern California in a future that is dealing with the effects of climate change. A class project at the end of middle school is to act as a model classroom in a model Twenty-first Century Town, including wearing the clothes of the time.
Rpt. in Fighting for the Future: Cyberpunk and-Solarpunk Tales. Ed. Phoebe Warner (Eugene, OR: Android Press, 2023), 186-201. 978-
Keywords: Canadian author; English author; Male author; US author

“Model Minority” - Cory [Efram] Doctorow (b. 1971) (Radicalized [The front cover adds Four Tales of Our Present Moment and the back cover say Dystopia is now], 2019)
Satirical dystopia on the treatment of minorities in the United States.
Keywords: Canadian author; English author; Male author; US author

“Monetizing Movement” - Harrison Smith (How to Run a City Like Amazon, and Other Fables, 2019)
The story is in the form of a sales pitch from a company, based on Groundtruth, selling constantly updated location data by accessing phones. All the stories in the book are responses to a recent book, A New City O/S: The Power of Open, Collaborative, and Distributed Government (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2017), by Stephen Goldsmith and Neil Kleiman, that proposes, in the editors’ interpretation, that cities should act more like Amazon in dealing with their citizens.
Keywords: English author; Male author

“A Night with the Joking Clown” - Rimi B. Chatterjee (b. 1969) (The Gollancz Book of South Asian Science Fiction, 2019)
Corporations have divided up the world but are in conflict over their spheres of influence. Men completely dominate women, which they divide into “slags” and “chicks.”
Keywords: English author; Female author; Indian author; Northern Ireland author

“Nový Ys” - Krzysztof Fijalkowski (The Ashes of the Cities. Eldorado. Liber Tertius, 2019)
Surrealistic dystopia of a dangerous, future city that slowly disappears under rising tides.
Keywords: English author; Male author

"Oli Away" - Edward Davey (Gross Ideas: Tales of Tomorrow’s Architecture, 2019)
The story describes a trip around the world made sustainable that describes all the advances made in protecting the environment.
Keywords: English author; Male author

Pimp My Airship: A Naptown by Airship Novel - Maurice [Gerald] Broaddus (b. 1970) (Apex Book Co., 2019)
The novel is set in a steampunk alternative future America with most of its current problems, but, in the novel. they are faced and combatted. Stories in the “Pimp My Airship Universe” include “Pimp My Airship.” Apex Magazine, no. 2 (July 2009) https://www.apex-magazine.com/pimp-my-airship/; “The Problem of Trystan.” Hot and Steamy: Tales of Steampunk Romance. Ed. Martin H. Greenberg and Jean Rabe (New York: DAW Books, 2011), 46-63; “Steppin’ Razor.” Asimov’s Science Fiction 38.2 (457) (February 2014): 82-104; rpt. in Lightspeed Magazine, no. 87 (August 2017); “I Used to Love H.E.R. (A/K/A/ Help Engineer and Rebuild My Robot <s>Girlfriend</s> Roommate.” Help Fund My Robot Army!!! and Other Improbable Crowdfunding Projects. Ed. John Joseph Adams. Np: John Joseph Adams, 2014. EBook; “(120 Degrees of) Know the Ledge.” Not Our Kind. Ed. Nayad Monroe (Dayton, OH: Alliteration Ink, 2015), 264-86 [Incorrect in the Table of Contents]; Buffalo Soldier. New York: Tor.com, 2017; and “All God's Chillun Got Wings.” Illus. Jenna Fowler Steampunk Universe. Ed. Sarah Hans (Dayton, OH: Alliteration Ink, 2017), 15-33.
An excerpt was published in Apex Magazine, no. 120 (May 2019). EJournal.
Keywords: African American author; English author; US author

“[Pink Heart Shape]” - Lesley [Naa Norle] Lokko; Maria Smith (Gross Ideas: Tales of Tomorrow’s Architecture, 2019)
The story begins and ends with a young woman living in poverty in Ghana, dependent of remittances from her sister in London. In between is a discussion African migration, the causes of the woman’s poverty, and the importance of such remittances.
Keywords: English author; Female author; Ghanaian author; Scottish author; South African author; US author

"Placation" - Sophie Mackintosh (b. 1988) (Gross Ideas: Tales of Tomorrow’s Architecture, 2019)
In the story, the Earth requires that it be placated annually with the body part of a human and focuses on a girl who cannot decide what part of her body to sacrifice. Compare to 1948 Jackson, “The Lottery.”
Keywords: English author; Female author; Welsh author

“The Referendum” - Lesley Nneka Arimah (b. 1983) (A People’s Future of the United States: Speculative Fiction from 25 Extraordinary Writers, 2019)
A referendum is being held to repeal the thirteenth amendment to the U.S. Constitution that abolished slavery.
Keywords: English author; Female author; Nigerian author; US author

“Registering Eve” - Alison Powell (How to Run a City Like Amazon, and Other Fables, 2019)
A future city in which all interactions are through the blockchain, based on a company like Ethereum, which has many flaws, some of which are deliberately designed to overcharge.
Keywords: English author; Female author

"The Rememberers" - [Qingpei] Rachel Heng (b. 1988) (McSweeney’s 58. 2040 A.D., 2019)
The story is set in Singapore after the water came and most Singaporeans now live underground in inverted skyscrapers with “the elite few . . . who can afford homes within the last remaining gated communities aboveground” (18). The protagonist’s family was among the last to move into the underground bunkers, as she calls them, where status is reflected in how close to the surface you lived. Life is tightly controlled with high unemployment and passes checked on exiting and entering. The authors of the stories were each “assigned a specific climate event mentioned” in the 2018 UN climate report collaborating with experts recommended by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) who “provide a scientific backbone” for the stories while giving the writers free rein to determine how closely they adhered to that science” (6-7). The Introduction to the volume (7-12) is by Susan Casey-Lefkowitz, Chief Program Officer of the NDRC.
Keywords: English author; Female author; Singaporean author; US author

“The Same Place as the Last” - Nina Anana (Citizens of Nowhere: An Anthology of Utopic Fiction, 2019)
The story begins in a near future England divided, often violently, between those accepting of immigrants from countries disappearing under rising oceans. One man is badly hurt by a police attack and appears to wake up in a high-tech future cared for by the immigrants he had been trying to save.
Keywords: Canadian author; English author; Female author

“Save the ShireTM” - Jennifer Gabrys (How to Run a City Like Amazon, and Other Fables, 2019)
A technological libertarian eutopia for the extremely wealthy made possible for the wholesale harvesting of information on individuals used to undermine democracy, based on Palintir. All the stories in the book are responses to a recent book, A New City O/S: The Power of Open, Collaborative, and Distributed Government (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2017), by Stephen Goldsmith and Neil Kleiman, that proposes, in the editors’ interpretation, that cities should act more like Amazon in dealing with their citizens.
Keywords: English author; Female author

“Scrapheap Destiny” - Andrew Knighton (Neo-Opsis Science Fiction Magazine, 2019)
The story takes on Destiny, one of many planets that have been environmentally damaged, that has become a dumping ground for scrap scavenged from space and other planets. A large corporation has essentially bought the planet, and while making promises of a better life for the inhabitants, or at least some of them, will destroy the livelihood and the culture that those working with the scrap have built up over generations.
Keywords: English author; Male author

“Seeking Follows” - James Ash (How to Run a City Like Amazon, and Other Fables, 2019)
In the story, Twitter has taken over London after the collapse of democracy in 2038 and “follows” have become the main medium of exchange with those with the most follows selling their ability to gain attention to advertisers. All the stories in the book are responses to a recent book, A New City O/S: The Power of Open, Collaborative, and Distributed Government (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2017), by Stephen Goldsmith and Neil Kleiman, that proposes, in the editors’ interpretation, that cities should act more like Amazon in dealing with their citizens. The author is Senior Lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies at Newcastle University.
Keywords: English author; Male author

"The Silence of Sound" - Mike Brooks (Translunar Lounge: A Speculative Fiction Magazine, 2019)
Dystopia set after a religious war where all books have been made to say the same things.
Keywords: Bisexual author; English author; Male author

Skin - Liam Brown (b. 1985) (2019)
The novel is set in a highly infectious pandemic in which everyone is required to stay home and focuses on the way one family deals with the issues. It was shortlisted for the Guardian’s Not The Booker Prize.
Keywords: English author; Male author

"St. JuJu" - Rivers Solomon (b. 1989) (The Verge Better Worlds, 2019)
Set in a far-distant future, the story explicitly rejects the idea of a perfect society and explores different notions of what makes a life good.
Keywords: African American author; English author; Transgender author

“The Strive City of Tomorrow” - Katharine S. Willis (How to Run a City Like Amazon, and Other Fables, 2019)
A description of Strive City, which is based on combining Ebenezer Howard’s A Peaceful Path to Real Reform (1898) and Strava Metro, a company that monetizes data sets present as a sales pitch for the city. All the stories in the book are responses to a recent book, A New City O/S: The Power of Open, Collaborative, and Distributed Government (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2017), by Stephen Goldsmith and Neil Kleiman, that proposes, in the editors’ interpretation, that cities should act more like Amazon in dealing with their citizens.
Keywords: English author; Female author

“Swipe Right to Welcome Left to Reject” - Linnet Taylor (How to Run a City Like Amazon, and Other Fables, 2019)
A description of a city that had been welcoming to immigrants and refugees but failing to integrate them partners with Welcome Tinder to pair citizens and immigrants. The relationship apparently begins successfully and then is followed for five years and it spreads across the country at the same time that more and more problems emerge. All the stories in the book are responses to a recent book, A New City O/S: The Power of Open, Collaborative, and Distributed Government (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2017), by Stephen Goldsmith and Neil Kleiman, that proposes, in the editors’ interpretation, that cities should act more like Amazon in dealing with their citizens.
Keywords: Dutch author; English author; Female author

“Three Data Units” - Kitty-Lydia Dye (If This Goes On, 2019)
Dystopia in which AI’s are used to control people.
Keywords: English author; Female author

“Three Tales the River Told: A Glimpse of the Past” - Stewart C. Baker (Nature, 2019)
Climate-change dystopia where everyone lives underground and as entertainment someone goes to the surface to follow the course of the Yellow River.
Keywords: English author; Male author; US author

“Too Much Fulfilment” - Lizzie Richardson (How to Run a City Like Amazon, and Other Fables, 2019)
Food delivery has entirely taken over the food industry and effectively controls what people get to eat, based on a company like Deilveroo. All the stories in the book are responses to a recent book, A New City O/S: The Power of Open, Collaborative, and Distributed Government (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2017), by Stephen Goldsmith and Neil Kleiman, that proposes, in the editors’ interpretation, that cities should act more like Amazon in dealing with their citizens.
Keywords: English author; Female author

"Unauthorized Bread" - Cory [Efram] Doctorow (b. 1971) (Radicalized [The front cover adds Four Tales of Our Present Moment and the back cover say Dystopia is now], 2019)
The story is told from the point-of-view of a woman who is a refugee recently permitted to live in the U.S. as she moves through the system and focuses on the dystopia that is that system. The woman and others caught in the system fight back using their knowledge of technology.
Keywords: Canadian author; English author; Male author; US author

“Ungovernable Cities” - Will[iam Woodward] Self (b. 1961) (Gross Ideas: Tales of Tomorrow’s Architecture, 2019)
Satire describing a number of fantastic or just very odd cities. Inspired by Italo Calvino’s La città invisibili/Invisible Cities 1972/1974).
Keywords: English author; Male author

"The Unseen" - Jeremy W. Crampton; Kara C. Hoover (How to Run a City Like Amazon, and Other Fables, 2019)
The story is set in a future that is completely connected and surveilled by a company like Cambridge Analytica told from the point-of-view of a teenager who doesn’t fit the parameters. All the stories in the book are responses to a recent book, A New City O/S: The Power of Open, Collaborative, and Distributed Government (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2017), by Stephen Goldsmith and Neil Kleiman, that proposes, in the editors’ interpretation, that cities should act more like Amazon in dealing with their citizens.
Keywords: English author; Female author; Ghanaian author; Male author; US author

The Wall. A Novel - John [Henry] Lanchester (b. 1962) (W. W. Norton, 2019)
Climate-change dystopia in which an island has completely surrounded itself by a wall to keep out the Others, those displaced by the effects of climate change. The novels protagonist is a young man enrolled as a Defender of the wall, and it follows his experiences and the doubts he had about what he was doing.
Keywords: English author; Male author

Where the River Runs Gold - Sita Brahmachari (b. 1961) (Orion's Children's Books, 2019)
A climate-change dystopia in which there appear to be no bees left, and young people are lured to what are advertised as well-paid, comfortable, safe jobs to work as pollinators. The reality is closer to slavery.
Keywords: English author; Female author

"Without Fire" - Ben Jacobs (Citizens of Nowhere: An Anthology of Utopic Fiction, 2019)
The background of the story is a society divided into rich and poor living in the Villas and the Warren. The protagonist works in a robotics factory with rules better suited for robots than humans, but the focus of the story is on Mini Worlds, similar to a tank for fish but here a tank for tiny humans.
Keywords: English author; Male author

Zed. A Novel - Joanna Kavenna (b. 1974) (Faber & Faber, 2019)
Dystopia in which one which one large company takes over the surveillance state, the police, and the currency, thus controlling the entire world. The novel follows what happens as the company tries to deal with, and cover up, a flaw in the system.
U. S. ed. Doubleday/Penguin Random House, 2019
Keywords: English author; Female author

Zero Bomb - Hill, M[att] A. (Titan Books, 2019)
Complex novel set in a future automation and surveillance dystopia in which some who oppose the system use a science fiction novel as the basis for their tactics.
Keywords: English author; Male author

84K - [Catherine] [Webb] (b. 1986) (Orbit, 2018)
Dystopia of corporate power with universities closed, all the news outlets controlled by private corporations, and only people from corporations serve are elected to office.
Keywords: English author; Female author

"AT392-Red" - Khairani Barokka (b. 1985) (Economic Science Fictions, 2018)
Dystopia that includes “Biodiversity Credit” that allowed that allowed the destruction of one area of the world’s environment in exchange for the supposed protection of another area. This result in a massive refugee crisis. This was followed by the introduction of “Accessibility Credits” by which improving accessibility for those with disabilities in one part of the world allowed another part of the world to eliminate accessibility.
Keywords: English author; Female author; Indonesian author; US author

The Biggerers - Amy Lilwal (Point Blank/Oneworld Publications, 2018)
In the novel, very small people are created to become the playmates and pets of their owners told largely from te point of view of the new, small people. T
Keywords: English author; Female author

“A Conclusion” - Paul Cornell (b. 1967) (Stories of Hope and Wonder in Support of the UK’S Healthcare Workers, 2018)
The story is set in a future of constant surveillance by the Company, which is everywhere.
Originally published in audio format as an Audible original.
Keywords: English author; Male author

The Devil's Highway - Gregory Norminton (b. 1976) (4th Estate, 2018)
The novel is divided into three interrelated parts set in the same location. The first is in ancient Britain, the second in the twenty-first century, and the third section is a dystopia set 3000 years in the future. The dystopia is a barbarian, violent world in which children who are entirely on their own struggle to survive.
Keywords: English author; Male author

The Dreams of the Eternal City - Mark Reece (Troubador/Matador, 2018)
Dystopia in which, having decided that people were sleeping too much, a strict “sleep code” is established and bureaucracies set up to enforce it.
Keywords: English author; Male author

Early Riser - Jasper Fforde (b. 1961) (Hodder & Stoughton, 2018)
A dystopia in which most people hibernate in towers erected for that purpose and controlled by HiberTech. A few people stay awake to protect the sleepers and others, advocates of RealSleep, try to undermine the system.
U.S. ed. [New York]: Viking, 2018
Keywords: English author; Male author

"Escape Hatch" - Matthew De Abaitua (b. 1971) (2001: An Odyssey in Words: Commemorating the Centenary of Sir Arthur C. Clarke’s Birth, 2018)
An entrance to an apparent eutopia appears, and the story explores the response of one woman who visited and returned.
Rpt. in Best of British Science Fiction 2018. Ed. Donna Scott ([Weston, Eng.]: NewCon Press, 2019), 155-59.
Keywords: English author; Male author

Euphoria - Jayne Lockwood (DSP Publications, 2018)
A transgender alien appears on Earth and develops the intention of saving it from the destruction that enveloped its planet.
Keywords: English author; Female author

Eve of Man - Giovanna Fletcher (b. 1985); Tom Fletcher (b. 1985) (Michael Joseph, 2018)
First volume of trilogy in which the only girl born in fifty years reaches maturity and the society has planned her future.
Keywords: English author; Female author; Male author

"Expiry Date" - Eamonn Murphy (Strange Economics: Economic Speculative Fiction, 2018)
The story is set in a future dystopian England where healthcare has been privatized and each person is given a termination date with their life insurance expiring twenty-four hours later.
Keywords: English author; Male author

Fatberg and the Sinkholes: A Report on the Findings of a Journey into the United Regions of England by PostRational” - Dan Gavshon Brady; James Pockson (Economic Science Fictions, 2018)
Presented as a report on the United Regions of England, which has kicked London out and is establishing a eutopia based on communities and communication.
Keywords: English author; Male author

The Feed. A Novel - Nick Clark Windo (Headline, 2018)
A dystopia in which everyone has an implant that gives them access to all of the world’s information and social media and communicate with each other without speech. While initially, and for most of the characters in the novel, this seems eutopia, everything collapses when the system is hacked, and no one has access to even the most basic information. Even worse, the hackers can implant a new personality in an individual.
U.S. ed. New York: William Morrow, 2018
Keywords: English author; Male author

The Greatest Story Ever Told - Una McCormack (b. 1972) (NewCon Press, 2018)
Dystopia of a society with slavery in which some slavers escape and lead a revolt, which is defeated.
Keywords: English author; Female author

"The Green Man" - Teika Marija Smits (Reckoning 3: Creative Writing on Environmental Justice, 2018)
Environmental dystopia in which, with all the bees and other pollinating insects gone, the young poor are hired as pollinators.
Rpt. https://reckoning.press/the-green-man/ (January 15, 2019).
Keywords: English author; Female author

“HR Confidential” - Sim Bajwa (Shoreline of Infinity, 2018)
The dystopian story is told through exchanges between an employee and a human relations officer, with the employee complaining that the workers are being forced to work around the clock, and the HR person fobbing her off.
Keywords: English author; Female author

"A Modern Ecotopia" - Heather Alberro (My Utopia: A Collection of Creative Writing, 2018)
Brief but fairly detailed communal anarchist eutopia with an emphasis on the environment and comparisons to the current situation. The protagonist is a woman journalist being given a tour of Anakai, with her tour guide giving her a very detailed description. Anakai is composed of “federations of autonomous, self-sufficient, yet interconnected eco-communities of around 500 inhabitants each” (103). “All children . . .are taught from early childhood the basic principles of ecology, how to live sustainably, the unique characteristics of the wonderful animal life with which we share our planet, and how the grand and complex earth systems that support life function" (104).
Keywords: English author; Female author

"Neom" - Lavie Tidhar (b. 1976) (Asimov’s Science Fiction, 2018)
Neom is a city built on the Red Sea on the Arabis peninsula that is designed to attract high-flying tech entrepreneurs and workers with the laws that suit them rather than Saudi Arabia. It is described by a middle-aged woman cleaner as she cleans an apartment and then walks back to the district where poor support workers like her live.
Rpt. in Best of British Science Fiction 2019. Ed. Donna Scott ([Weston, Eng.]: NewCon Press, 2020), 37-45
Keywords: English author; Israeli author; Male author

"Newsletter" - Jennifer Marie Brissett (b. 1969) (Welcome to Dystopia: Forty-five Visions of What Lies Ahead, 2018)
Dystopia of censorship.
Keywords: English author; Female author; US author

Night of the Party - Tracey Mathias (Scholastic, 2018)
Young adult dystopia in which Britain is controlled by a single party and everyone born outside the country is considered illegal and subject to arrest and deportation. Not reporting an illegal is itself a crime.
Keywords: English author; Female author

Oversleeper - [Stewart] [Ferris] (Accent Press, 2018)
A dystopian sleeper awakes tale in which a man who had been in a coma twice awakens to a poor, violent, depopulated future caused by a plague brought to Earth from dirt from Mars. During the man’s comas, doctors had used his sperm to create thousands of babies for local repopulation and had sold his sperm to other countries, who had used it in the same way.
U.S. ed. New York: Simon & Schuster ebook, 2018.
Keywords: English author; Male author

Perfidious Albion - Sam Byers (b. 1979) (Faber & Faber, 2018)
A post-Brexit dystopia set in a small, previously peaceful English town and the media encourages conflict.
Keywords: English author; Male author

Pity - Rory Mullarkey (b. 1987) (Methuen Drama, 2018)
The absurdist play depicts a seemingly quite typical small town in England as that word falls apart. It was first performed at the Royal Court Jerwood Theatre, London, July 12, 2018.
Keywords: Canadian author; English author; Irish author; Male author

“Public Money and Democracy” - Jo[seph Churches] Walton (b. 1982) (Economic Science Fictions, 2018)
A combination of essay and speculative fiction that explores the interactions among value, the commons, algocracy (rule by algorithms), democracy, and complexity and unpredictability.
Keywords: English author; Male author

Salvation - Peter F. Hamilton (b. 1960) (Pan Macmillan, 2018)
First volume of a galaxy spanning trilogy. In the first volume, one thread is that Earth is a near-utopia based on technology provided by apparently friendly aliens, who, at the end are revealed as anything but friendly. Two other threads are developed, the discovery and exploration of an enigmatic crashed alien spaceship and a far-future in which humanity is fighting against extinction by other aliens. Salvation Lost. London: Pan Macmillan; 2019; U.S. ed. New York: Del Rey/Random House, 2019. The Saints of Salvation. London: Pan Macmillan, 2020. U.S. ed. New York: Del Rey/Random House, 2020 is forthcoming.
U.S. ed. New York: Del Rey/Random House, 2018.
Keywords: English author; Male author

Shrinking, Sinking Land - Kell[ey] Cowley (Odd Voice Out Publishing, 2018)
Environmental dystopia in which everyone is required to hibernate underground to survive the winter. Liverpool is under water and Manchester is flooded. The novel focuses on a woman who refuses to hibernate. A prequel is her Last March for Planet Earth. [Chester, Eng.]: Odd Voice Out Publishing, 2018. EBook.
Developed from her “Shrinking, Sinking Land.” By Kelley Cowley. Everything Change: An Anthology of Climate Fiction. Ed. Manjana Milkoreit, Meredish Martinez, and Eschrich. [Tempe: Arizona State University], 2016. EBook.
Keywords: English author; Female author

"Skinned" - Lesley Nneka Arimah (b. 1983) (McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, 2018)
Dystopia set in an unnamed African country in which women past puberty are expected, based on religion and tradition, to wear no clothes until they are married. Most do, and the story is told from the perspective of an older, never married woman.
Keywords: English author; Female author; Nigerian author; US author

“Speculative Hyperstition at a Northern Further Education College” - Judy Thorne (Economic Science Fictions, 2018)
Presented as interviews with a range of people about what they would like the world to be like in the future, which initially seem straightforward, but gradually becomes clear that the setting is a deeply depleted future after the U. K. left the European Union.
Keywords: English author; Female author

“Statues of Limitations” - [Russell] [Schechter] (Welcome to Dystopia: Forty-five Visions of What Lies Ahead, 2018)
Dystopia playing on the removal of Confederate statues in which statues of people currently disapproved of are being replaced by those of right-wing heroes like Rush Limbaugh and Steve Bannon.
Keywords: English author; Male author; US author

Suicide Club: A Novel About Living - [Qingpei] Rachel Heng (b. 1988) (Henry Holt, 2018)
Dystopia in which near-immortality is possible and death is illegal, but there are people who believe that they should have the choice of whether they live or die.
U.K. ed. London: Sceptre, 2018.
Keywords: English author; Female author; Singaporean author; US author

The Synapse Sequence - Daniel Godfrey (Titan Books, 2018)
The novel is set in a future London where algorithms determine who gets what work and are the legal system and humans are overseen by technology.
Keywords: English author; Male author

“Two Explicit and Three Oblique Apologies to My Oldest Daughter One Month Before Her Eighteenth Birthday” - Heather Lindsley (Welcome to Dystopia: Forty-five Visions of What Lies Ahead, 2018)
Surveillance dystopia.
Keywords: English author; Female author; US author

The Water Cure - Sophie Mackintosh (b. 1988) (Hamish Hamilton, 2018)
The novel is set in what is presented as a dystopian future in which men have supposedly become literally toxic to women, and one man isolates his family, including his three daughters, on an island. It is never made clear is the toxicity actually exists.
U. S. edition New York: Doubleday, 2018
Keywords: English author; Female author; Welsh author

Woman World - Aminder Dhaliwal (b. 1988) (Drawn & Quarterly, 2018)
A future graphic novel in which all men have died. Eutopian elements with strong satirical elements.
Keywords: Canadian author; English author; Female author; US author

2023: A Trilogy - Bill [William Ernest] Drummond (b. 1953); Jimmy [James Francis] Cauty (b. 1956) (Faber & Faber, 2017)
Dystopia than builds on and uses themes from to The Illuminatus! Trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson, particularly its libertarianism, and George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, with some of the text written as if from 1984.
Keywords: English author; Male author; Scottish author

“2084 Satoshi AD” - Lavie Tidhar (b. 1976) (2084, 2017)
Dystopia set in a world divided between those who have established a brand for themselves and the no-brand. The key to power is the blockchain.
Keywords: English author; Israeli author; Male author

All the Galaxies - Philip Miller (b. 1973) (Freight books, 2017)
After a second failed independence referendum, Scotland has broken up into autonomous states, and a father searches for his son who disappeared after a protest. In parallel, a boy awakens in space in the afterlife where he searches for his dead mother.
Rpt. Crows Nest, NSW, Australia: Allen & Unwin, 2017.
Keywords: English author; Male author; Scottish author

American City - Chris Beckett (b. 1955) (Corvus, 2017)
A climate-change dystopia focusing on the internal refugee crisis in the United States.
Keywords: English author; Male author

“The Barrette Girls” - Sara Saab (Liminal Stories, 2017)
The story is set in a dystopian future where rare earths required in technology are harvested from manufactured people.
Rpt. in The Apex Book of World SF: Volume 5. Ed. Cristina Jurado and Lavie Tidhar ([Lexington, KY: Apex Publications, 2018]), 153-66.
Keywords: English author; Female author; Lebanese author

Dreams Before the Start of Time - Anne Charnock (b. 1954) (47th North, 2017)
The novel is set in the years from 2034 through 2120 and follows the adjustments made by individuals and families as they adjust to advances in medicine regarding fertility and birth to the point where anyone can have a child through a various of different technologies. It won the 2018 Arthur C. Clarke Award for Science Fiction Literature. Female author.
Keywords: English author; Female author

"Easy" - Liam Hogan (Little Blue Marble, 2017)
A successful environmental movement is undermined and defeated by corporate opposition.
Rpt. without the illus. Little Blue Marble 2017: Stories of Our Changing Climate. Ed. Katrina Archer. Np: Ganache Media. EBook.
Keywords: English author; Male author

The End We Start From - Megan Hunter (b. 1984) (Picador, 2017)
The setting to the novel is a climate-change dystopia in which a woman has to flee flooded London with her just-born baby.
U.S. ed. New York: Grove Press, 2017
Keywords: English author; Female author

Exit West - Mohsin Hamid (b. 1971) (Riverhead Books, 2017)
Refugee dystopia in which refugees are able to move from place to place through “doors.” The novel follows two people from their homeland to the Greek island Mykonos to London to a Marin, a new city created in California.
Keywords: English author; Pakistani author; US author

"Fly Away, Peter" - Ian Hocking (b. 1976) (2084, 2017)
Dystopia in which Germany has become isolated from the rest of Europe and rejects all outsiders.
Keywords: English author; Male author

"Frozen" - Liam Hogan (Alternative Truths, 2017)
In the future each election determines who will be frozen until the next election. This, while apparently eutopian, eliminates unemployment and helps the environment to recover.
Keywords: English author; Male author

Gnomon - [Nicholas] [Cornwall] (b. 1972) (William Heinemann, 2017)
A very complex novel depicting what appears to be a flawed utopia in which constant surveillance and a police force that is able to stop crimes before they happen produces a good life for everyone, but it turns out that there are flaws in the system and unaccountable holders of power.
U.S. ed. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2018
Keywords: English author; Male author

"A Good Citizen" - Anne Charnock (b. 1954) (2084, 2017)
Authoritarian dystopia in which there is a daily referendum in which everyone must vote or lose what few privileges they have.
Rpt. in Best of British Science Fiction 2017. Ed. Donna Scott ([Weston, Eng.]: NewCon Press, 2018), 131-38.
Keywords: English author; Female author

“Good Citizens” - Paula Hammond (Alternative Truths, 2017)
Dystopia in which the presidency of Donald Trump (b. 1946) becomes a monarchy that uses nuclear weapons on Iran and Mexico and is at war with China. Any one not of white, multi-generational U.S. ancestry loses their citizenship, as do gays, Jews, Muslims. Some people had escaped, many were killed. The female author has published many non-fiction books for children, mostly on scientific subjects.
Keywords: English author; Female author

H(a)ppy - Nicola Barker (b. 1966) (Heinemann, 2017)
A woman lives in a future world where “Excess of Emotion” is to be avoided; one must always be “In Balance” and is being constantly adjusted chemically to stay that way. The woman experiences a glitch in her conditioning that leads her to experience emotion, pain, and so forth. Typographically complex. The author says that the book “is best enjoyed in conjunction with Agustin Barrios: The Complete Historical Guitar Recordings 1913-1942.
Keywords: English author; Female author; South African author

Hold Back the Stars - Katie Khan (Doubleday, 2017)
The novel is a love story that begins and ends in a catastrophe in space. But for most of the novel, it is set in a future multi-cultural European eutopia in which populations move from place to place to mix with other populations.
Keywords: English author; Female author

“In the Night of the Comet: A Sequel to H. G. Wells’ In the Days of the Comet” - Adam [Charles] Roberts (b. 1965) (Best of British Science Fiction 2017, 2017)
Sequel to 1905-06 Wells in which the comet in Wells that brings a eutopia is followed some years by a second comet that produces a dystopia.
Originally published in the author’s blog in May 2017 (http://www.adamroberts.com/2017/05/), but it appears to be no longer accessible.
Keywords: English author; Male author

"The Infinite Eye" - J[ames] P. Smythe (b. 1980) (2084, 2017)
Dystopia of a surveillance society exploiting the poor and undocumented.
Keywords: English author; Male author

Ink - Alice Broadway (Scholastic Children’s Books, 2017)
A religious dystopia in which the major events of a person’s life are inked on their skin, which is made into a book on their death. The book is given to the family if the person has lived a good life and publicly burned if judged to have not led a good life. First volume in a trilogy. The second volume, Spark. London: Scholastic Children’s Books, 2018, is a standard middle volume in which the protagonist searches for answers to the questions raised in the first volume. The third volume, Scar. London: Scholastic Children’s Books, 2019, pulls the various threads together.
U. S. ed. New York: Scholastic, 2018.
Keywords: English author; Female author

The Last Dog on Earth - Adrian J. Walker (Del Rey/Ebury Publishing, 2017)
Post-apocalyptic dystopia (bomb) told from the points-of-view of a dog and his master.
Keywords: English author; Male author

“Lowland Clearances.” - Pippa Goldschmidt (b. 1985) (Shoreline of Infinity, 2017)
Satire on the Highland Clearances in which the people of Glasgow are resettled in the Scottish Highlands and replaced by sheep.
Keywords: English author; Female author; Scottish author

"March, April, May" - [Vince] [Haig] (b. 1976) (2084, 2017)
Dystopia in which The Space, rather like Facebook, controls the news and most human interaction.
Keywords: English author; Male author

“Mercury Teardrops” - Jeff Noon (b. 1957) (Haunted Futures, 2017)
The dystopia brought about by the end of the digital age when all the enhanced bodies fail.
Rpt. in Best of British Science Fiction 2017. Ed. Donna Scott ([Weston, Eng.]: NewCon Press, 2018), 139-59.
Keywords: English author; Male author

"Once Upon a Trump" - Timothy Carter (Trump: Utopia or Dystopia, 2017)
The future Emperor Trump visits the current president to try to get him to fight the effects of climate change that has produced a dystopia.
Keywords: Canadian author; English author; Male author

"Pan-Humanism: Hope and Pragmatics” - Jess[ica] Barber; Sara Saab (Clarkesworld, 2017)
The story is set mostly in Beirut, Lebanon, and takes place during a dystopian period of extreme drought. It traces the life choices of two scientists as they work to help the planet recover, and the projects they develop  that will do that.
Rpt. in The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Fifth Annual Collection. Ed. Gardner Dozois (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2018), 293-316 with an editor’s note on 293.
Keywords: English author; Female author; Lebanese author; US author

"Pink Footed" - Marian Womack (b. 1975) (Ecopunk! [Cover adds Speculative Tales of Radical Futures], 2017)
Dystopia in which most animals, and birds in particular, have disappeared.
Keywords: English author; Female author; Spanish author

Proof of Concept - Gwyneth [Ann] Jones (b. 1952) (Tor, 2017)
The novel is set in a dystopian overpopulated world with most people living in huge hives with their survival threatened by climate change.
Keywords: English author; Female author

“The Road to the Sea” - Lavie Tidhar (b. 1976) (Sunvault: Stories of Solarpunk and Eco-Speculation, 2017)
Climate-change dystopia.
Rpt. in The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Fifth Annual Collection. Ed. Gardner Dozois (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2018), 252-57 with an editor’s note on 252; in Best of British Science Fiction 2017. Ed. Donna Scott ([Weston, Eng.]: NewCon Press, 2018), 175-81; and in Stories of Hope and Wonder in Support of the UK’S Healthcare Workers. Ed. Ian [George] Whates (Weston, Eng.: NewCon Press, 2020), 608-14. EBook.
Keywords: English author; Israeli author; Male author

See You in September - Charity Norman (Allen & Unwin, 2017)
The novel is set in New Zealand where a woman joins a farming collective that is the basis for an end-of-the-world cult and follows the woman’s life in the community and her parent’s attempts to get her to leave.
Keywords: English author; Female author

“Sensing the Dust” - Eliza Chan (Persisten Visions, 2017)
The background to the story is a future authoritarian dystopia set in Hong Kong.
Keywords: English author; Female author; Scottish author

"Shooting an Episode" - Christopher [McKenzie] Priest (1943-2024) (Unsung Stories/Red Squirrel Publishing, 2017)
Dystopia depicting a “reality” game that has taken over the entire society as seen through the eyes of someone working for the company producing the show. The stories are supposed to be predictions regarding the world fifty years after Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, and Priest took his title from Orwell’s “Shooting the Elephant,” a work that greatly influenced his own work.
Rpt. in his Episodes: Short Stories (London: Gollancz, 2019), 292-320, with notes “Before” on what led him to write the story (289-91) and “After” on its publication and some reflections on it (321-22).
Keywords: English author; Male author

Show Stopper - Hayley Barker (Scholastic, 2017)
Dystopia in which immigrants are required to sell their children to a circus watched by the “Pures”. The novel focuses on the son of a high-ranking “Pure” who falls for one of the performers. A sequel, Show Stealer, is scheduled for late 2018.
Keywords: English author; Female author

Space Between the Stars - Anne Corlett (Pan Macmillan, 2017)
A virus wipes most of the human race on Earth and on the colony worlds. A few survivors on one of the colony worlds returns to Earth, where they discover a group of survivors that are instituting a required, controlled breeding program. Some of them escape to Scotland where they live a simple life that attracts other survivors, and a community develops.
U. S. ed. New York: Berkeley, 2017.
Keywords: English author; Female author

"Targets" - Eric Brown (1960-2023) (Shoreline of Infinity, 2017)
Overpopulation dystopia set in Los Angeles in which people are chosen, supposedly randomly, as targets for killing by the police. Such people are not eligible for higher education, cannot venture out after dark, and can only get low-level jobs. The protagonist and his family are colored, and they are all chosen.
Rpt. in Best of British Science Fiction 2017. Ed. Donna Scott ([Weston, Eng.]: NewCon Press, 2018), 201-205; and in Shoreline of Infinity, no. 35 (Summer 2023): 47-52.
Keywords: English author; Male author; Scottish author

“Thirstlands” - Nick [Nicholas] Wood (1961-2023) (Sunvault: Stories of Solarpunk and Eco-Speculation, 2017)
Climate-change dystopia set in a drought-stricken Africa.
Rpt. in his Learning Monkey and Crocodile (Edinburgh, Scot.: Luna Press, 2019), 129-42, with a note on the story on 177.
Keywords: English author; Male author; South African author; Zambian author

The Transition - Luke Kennard (b. 1981) (Fourth Estate, 2017)
The novel begins in what is the current dystopia for many couples, spiraling debt, landlords who constantly raise the rent, too many credit cards, all at their limit, loans, and illegality to stay afloat that can’t be paid. The Transition offers a way to avoid jail, get out of debt, and start over. It offers a mentorship in which the couple lives with a Transition couple for six months, supposedly learning how to live differently. It turns out to be just a different dystopia leading to more complete control.
U.S. ed. New York: Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2018
Keywords: English author; Male author