“The Black Box: These Memories are Made to Last Forever”

2017 Older, Malka [Ann] (b. 1977). “The Black Box: These Memories are Made to Last Forever.” Illus. Yuko Shimizu. WIRED 25.1 (January 2017). https://www.wired.com/2016/12/malka-older-the-black-box/ Rpt. without the subtitle in Sunspot Jungle: The Ever-Expanding Universe of Science Fiction and Fantasy [the cover adds Volume One]. Ed. Bill Campbell (Greenbelt, MD: Rosarium, 2018), 29-34; and in her . . . and Other Disasters (Baltimore, MD: Mason Jar Press, 2019), 1-13. PSt

The story is set in a future in which at an early age a child has a device implanted that records all their experience, which the child or her parents can replay. Later in life, adults can choose who has access to their memories. Whether this is eutopian or dystopian is left up to the reader. The Latinx female author has a doctorate from the Centre de Sociologie des Organisations in Paris and has been a Senior Fellow for Technology and Risk Management at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs. See her brief statement “Thirsty for New” in People of Colo(u)r Destroy Science Fiction! Ed. Nalo Hopkinson and Kristine Ong Muslim. Special Issue of Lightspeed, no. 73 (June 2016): 396-97.