“The Great Dividuation” - Joel E. Mason; Michael Hornblow; anique yael vered (b. 1984) (CR: The New Centennial Review, 2019)
A dystopia about the breakdown of capitalist accumulation and its effects on individuals and social interaction. For details about dividuation, see https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Dividuation.
Keywords: Australian author; Austrian author; Canadian author; Female author; German author; Male author

“The Great Wall of America” - Hewitt, David A. (Mithila Review: The Journal of International Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2019)
Dystopia created by using forced labor to build a wall between Mexico and the U.S.
Rpt. without the illus. Np: Mithila Review, 2019. 40 pp

“Green Glass: A Love Story” - E. Lily Yu (If This Goes On, 2019)
The story is set in a climate-change future and stresses the extremely different situations of the rich and poor.
pt. in The Year’s Best Science Fiction Volume 1. Ed. Jonathan Strahan (New York: Saga Press, 2020), 453-63, with an editor’s note on 453; and in her Jewel Box: Stories (New York Erewhon Books/Kensington Publishing, 2023), 59-70.
Keywords: Female author; US author

Green Valley - Louis Greenberg (Titan Books, 2019)
The novel is part dystopia and part mystery novel involving the search for missing children from Green Valley, the only remaining community that uses invasive digital technology.
Keywords: Male author; South African 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

Guava - Vera Kurian (Futures A Science Fiction Series, 2019)
Authoritarian dystopian set on a planet with one continent, presidents chosen through rigged elections, and one Supreme Leader. People are kept on short rations, bread has sand added, people are required to buy any food in surplus. Television must be left on a minimum of three hours a day and has a camera that can record activities. People simply disappear. AAs a population control mechanism, all women sixteen to thirty are drafted into the military and never seen again, which raises the level of harassment and violence directed at women.
Keywords: Female author; US author

Hard Mother, Spider Mother, Soft Mother - Hal Y. Zhang (Futures A Science Fiction Series [, 2019)
The story is set in thoroughly surveilled society with much of the surveillance “personalized,” or worn or accepted by individuals. In the story, the surveillance is used positively, and the society has rules that restrict its use, although businesses push the borders of legality.
Keywords: Chinese-American author; Female author

"Harmony" - Seanan McGuire (b. 1978) (A People’s Future of the United States: Speculative Fiction from 25 Extraordinary Writers, 2019)
The creation of a eutopian town for those who don’t fit elsewhere.
Keywords: Female author; US author

"Haven" - Karen [Antoinette Roberta] Lord (b. 1968) (Ocean Stories. Current Futures: A Sci-Fic Ocean Anthology, 2019)
Complex story with both eutopian and dystopian elements set in a future Caribbean that is trying to protect itself from climate change and the machinations of governments trying to limit the political power of island nations, and to illustrate the issues the story takes the reader to different points in the future.
Keywords: Barbadian author; Female author

“He Are the People” - Elif Shafak (b. 1971) (McSweeney’s 58. 2040 A.D., 2019)
The story is set in an Istanbul by climate change with most birds, insects, and plants dead. The wealthiest of all countries had formed an alliance and were planning to escape to another planet. Authoritarian dystopia in Turkey. Parliament dissolved itself giving all power to the President, who has renamed himself “WeAreThePeople” with the people now known as “ThePresident”. Voting based on education (the more educated get fewer votes), and age, with the elderly getting more votes and ethnic and sexual minorities getting the fewest votes. Refugees get no votes.
Keywords: Female author; Turkish author; UK author

"Hey Alexa" - Meg Elison (b. 1982) (Do Not Go Quietly: An Anthology of Victory in Defiance, 2019)
Brief story set in a future where same sex relations are illegal in California and smart speakers are used as surveillance devices.
Keywords: Female author; US author

“A History of Barbed Wire” - Daniel H[oward] Wilson (b. 1978) (A People’s Future of the United States: Speculative Fiction from 25 Extraordinary Writers, 2019)
The U.S. has become corporate controlled with no safety net, and people try to escape to the walled-off nation of the Cherokee.
Keywords: Male author; Native American author

“History of the New World.” - Adam Garnet Jones (Love After the End: Two-Spirit Utopias & Dystopias, 2019)
The story is set in a future Canada devastated by climate change and overwhelmed with refugees from areas even worse hit. What appears to be a New Earth has been discovered and one family debates whether to leave, with their child adamant she does not want to go.
Rpt. as Love After the End: An Anthology of Two-Spirit & Indigiqueer Speculative Fiction. Ed. Joshua Whitehead (Vancouver, BC, Canada: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2020), 35-60.
Keywords: Canadian author; First Nations author; Indigiqueer author

The Hive - Barry Lyga (b. 1971); Marion Baden (Kids Can Press, 2019)
A young adult dystopia in which algorithms are used to identify and attack those misusing social media with the parameters growing narrower.
Keywords: Female author; Male author; US author

Hollow Earth - John Kinsella (b. 1963) (Melbourne, Vic, Australia, 2019)
The novel concerns the search for and discovery of the Hollow Earth by a disaffected young man and his return to the surface with two people from their and their adventures while searching for a way back. The Hollow Earth is something of a eutopia, with no violence or persecution, no patriotism, vegetarian, with areas left for foraging, no racism, but do have some bigotries. The author frequently quotes from William R. Bradshaw’s, The Goddess of Atvatabar (1892).
Keywords: Australian author; Male author

“How To Survive the Apocalypse for Native Girls” - Kai Minosh Pyle (Love After the End: Two-Spirit Utopias & Dystopias, 2019)
The story takes place after the collapse of civilization and concerns struggles within First Nations communities over who should be accepted into the community sand who doesn’t belong.
Rpt. as Love After the End: An Anthology of Two-Spirit & Indigiqueer Speculative Fiction. Ed. Joshua Whitehead (Vancouver, BC, Canada: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2020), 77-94.
Keywords: Native American author; Two-Spirits 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

"In the Teeth of the Gale" - Ramez Yoakeim (Little Blue Marble, 2019)
The story depicts a climate change future in which the water has risen so much that the oceans have merged. Except for the very rich who live on their mountaintops, everyone lives on rafts in the oceans facing regular strong storms.
Rpt. without the illus. in Little Blue Marble 2019: Climate in Crisis. Ed. Katrina Archer (Vancouver, BC, Canada: Ganache Media Books, 2020), 54-62.
Keywords: Male author

Infinite Detail - Tim Maughan (b. 1973) (MCD x FSG Originals/Farrar Straus & Giroux, 2019)
The novel is divided in alternate sections, Before and After the end of the internet, all connectivity, and civilization as we know it with a focus on the Croft. In the Before, the Croft, an area of Bristol, had cut itself off from the pervasive surveillance of modern life. In the After, with all authority gone, competing militias control different areas and use forced labor to raise food, and the Croft is a walled compound.
Keywords: Canadian author; Male author; Scottish author

Internment - Samira Ahmed (Little, Brown, 2019)
A young adult dystopia in which American Muslims are being forced into internment camps as Japanese Americans were in World War 2.
Keywords: Female author; Indian author; US author

“It’s 2039, and Your Beloved Books Are Dead” - Alix E. Harrow (b. 1989) (The New York Times, 2019)
Keywords: Female author; US author

“It’s 2040. We Need to Keep Abortion Legal in New York” - Lucy Ferriss (b. 1954) (The New York Times, 2019)
With Roe v. Wade only two states offer abortion. States that prohibit abortion prosecute women who move out of state to have an abortion so many move permanently to the New York and Hawaii, the only two that permit it.
Keywords: Female author; US author

“It’s 2043. We Need a New American Dream for the A.I. Revolution” - Baobao Zhang (The New York Times, 2019)
The Op-Ed proposes that given the unemployment brought about by technology and the fact that the wealth earned is going to already wealthy capitalists, a bill, the Renew American Dreams Act, establishing a negative income tax should be passed.
Keywords: Female author; US author

“It’s 2059, and the Rich Kids Are Still Winning: DNA tweaks won’t fix our problems” - Ted Chiang (b. 1967) (The New York Times, 2019)
The story reflects on a future experiment to improve the intelligence of poor children by modifying their DNA. While it is successful in that IQ is raised, it fails to make substantive difference because the entire U.S. social order favors the wealthy.
Rpt. in The Year’s Best Science Fiction Volume 1. Ed. Jonathan Strahan (New York: Saga Press, 2020), 123-26, with an editor’s note on 123.
Keywords: Chinese-American author; Male author

“It’s 2071, and We Bioengineered Our Own Extinction” - Jeff[rey Scott] VanderMeer (b. 1968) (The New York Times, 2019)
The bioengineering that saved humanity from the climate-crisis produced a dystopia in which the bioengineered species are eliminating the human race.
Keywords: Male author; US author

"It Was Saturday Night, I Guess That Makes It All Right” - Sam J[oshua] Miller (b. 1979) (A People’s Future of the United States: Speculative Fiction from 25 Extraordinary Writers, 2019)
Dystopia set in a largely abandoned Albany, New York that all government workers left after being replaced by AI. The United States is an authoritarian surveillance state and deeply anti-gay, which is a major focus of the story.
Keywords: Male author; US 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

King Harvest (Will Surely Come)” - Nisi [Denise Angela] Shawl (b. 1955) (If This Goes On, 2019)
A dystopia in which the U.S. Heartland has walled itself off from the rest of the country and expelled all those who don’t fit, such as everyone who is not white. Religious fundamentalism has evolved into a politico-religious system with a hereditary monarch who must be ritually killed at regular intervals.
Keywords: African American author; Female author

The Last Conversation - Paul G. Tremblay (b. 1971) (Amazon Original Stories, 2019)
Pandemic/last people dystopia.
Keywords: Male author; US author

“The Last Stand” - Christoph Weber (Little Blue Marble, 2019)
Climate change dystopia about the destruction of the last Redwoods.
Rpt. without the illus. in Little Blue Marble 2019: Climate in Crisis. Ed. Katrina Archer (Vancouver, BC, Canada: Ganache Media Books, 2020), 171-75.
Keywords: Male 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

“Let’s Make this City and Urban Project Everybody Wants” - Shannon Mattern (How to Run a City Like Amazon, and Other Fables, 2019)
Baltimore is taken over by the seed accelerator Y Combinator. 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: Female author; US 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

"Life Sentence" - Matthew Baker (b. 1985) (Lightspeed, 2019)
In this future, criminals are punished by having much of their memory wiped with the story told from the point-of-view of a such a man and narrowly focused on the experiences of the man and his family.
Rpt. in the author's Why Visit America. Stories (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2020), 62-90; and in The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2020. Ed. Diana Gabaldon (Boston, MA: Mariner Books/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2020), 1-25, with a note on the author together with the author’s note on the story on 392.
Keywords: Male author; US 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

The Lightest Object in the Universe - Kimi Eisele (Algonquin Books, 2019)
Post-apocalyptic novel with one member of a couple on the East Coast of the United States and the other on the West Coast. The novel follows the man across the country to find the woman and the woman’s search for a community that is being established in northern California.
Keywords: Female author; US author

"Luna 6000" - Stephanie Andrea Allen (Black From the Future: A Collection of Black Speculative Fiction, 2019)
Dystopia in which advanced monitoring technology makes life and death decisions.
Keywords: African American author; Female author

"The Machine" - Chris[topher James] Kluwe (b. 1981) (If This Goes On, 2019)
The dystopia of the current system in the U.S. for employing undocumented individuals in manufacturing, where they are forced to work in unsafe conditions, and, even if they have a temporary permit, are constantly threatened with deportation and harassed by the authorities.
Keywords: Male author; US author

“Making Happy” - [Alexandra] Renwick (If This Goes On, 2019)
Corporate dystopia in which areas of the city are bought by corporations and filled with unescapable digital ads.
Keywords: Canadian author; Female author; US author

MALL - Pattie Palmer-Baker (Del Sol Press, 2019)
A woman shopping in a twenty-first century mall accidentally enters a mall in an alternative reality, where the Mall Code rules everything. She is initially sent to a Mental Health Practitioner, and the novel presents how both understand and deal with the situation.
Keywords: Female author; US author

“Manna from Heaven” - ECO [pseud.] (Nourishment: A One-Shot Anthology of Science Fiction, 2019)
Dystopia in which the usual men with power, corporate, political and religious, worried about a growing independence in the people, take over an invention that provides food from clouds with disastrous results.
Keywords: Canadian author; Male 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

“Me, I’m Like Legend, I Am. Novella Extract” - Dewi Heald (New Welsh Reader, 2019)
The future Wales has largely disintegrated into separate regions held loosely together by scribes moving through the regions collecting information that they then bring together and what is nominally a national center.
Keywords: Male author; Welsh author

Melt - Jeff Murray (b. 1966) (Mary Egan Publishing., 2019)
Climate change dystopia set in New Zealand in 2048 as it serves as the gateway to the new land of Antarctica. Focuses on the struggle for the inhabitants of a small island nation disappearing under the waves to find a new home.
Keywords: Aotearoa New Zealand author; Male 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

“Monsters Come Howling in Their Season” - Cadwell Turnbull (The Verge Better Worlds, 2019)
The story is set on St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands in the aftermath of a Category 5 hurricane (Wind speed of 137 knots; 254 km/h; 158 mph). In response to previous devastating storms, St. Thomas has become part of the world cooperative movement with “grassroots consensus politics, direct democracy, and cooperative institutions that make up any good solidarity economy” plus housing, consumer, and producer cooperatives. And it has established a strong AI, known as Common, as a public resource.
Keywords: African American author; Male author; US Virgin Islands author

"The Most Magical Place” - Anthony Vanky (How to Run a City Like Amazon, and Other Fables, 2019)
Satire on planned cities run by AIs programmed by companies like Disney. 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: Male author; US author

"Mother Ocean" - Vandana Singh (b. 1950) (Ocean Stories. Current Futures: A Sci-Fic Ocean Anthology, 2019)
The background of the story is a dystopia showing the effects of climate-change on South Asia, but most of the story takes places in the Indian Ocean, which also shows the effects of climate-change, and is about the interactions between one young woman and a blue whale.
Rpt., without the illustration, in The Best Science Fiction of the Year. Volume 5. Ed. Neil Clarke (New York: Night Shade Books, 2020), 367-79.

"Move the World" - Carla Speed McNeil (The Verge Better Worlds, 2019)
The story is told in a series of vignette depicting “perfect,” but deeply flawed worlds as a commentary on the notion of perfection.
Keywords: Female author; US author

“Mr. Percy’s Shortcut” - Andy [Andrew Robert] Duncan (b. 1964) (If This Goes On, 2019)
The story is set in the Appalachian mountains in the near future where coal mining has been replaced by data mining and focuses on a retired miner digging in tunnel through a mountain.
Keywords: Male author; US author

The Municipalists. A Novel - Seth Fried (Penguin Books, 2019)
The story is set in a high-tech future United States under attack by unknown terrorists and focuses on the resistance by a by-the-rules bureaucrat and an anything but by-the-rules Artificial Intelligence.
Keywords: Male author; US author

“Must Earth Intervene in Company Towns: In the Asteroid Belt, exploited workers are working in dangerous conditions” - Patrick S. Tomlinson (The New York Times, 2019)
The sub-title tells the story. With Earth law not extending into space, workers are both directly exploited by being required to live in company housing and buy from company stores and treated as expendable parts.
Keywords: Male author; US author

"Nameless" - Tom, Nazbah (Love After the End: Two-Spirit Utopias & Dystopias, 2019)
The story takes place after a future World War in which many Diné were forced to serve while whole tribes moved underground to avoid the war. At the time of the story the Diné are beginning to lave their underground refuges, and the central characters are Diné calling others back home and one woman who is being called.
Rpt. as Love After the End: An Anthology of Two-Spirit & Indigiqueer Speculative Fiction. Ed. Joshua Whitehead (Vancouver, BC, Canada: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2020), 147-165.
Keywords: Canadian author; Native American author; Two-Spirits author

“The Narrative of Nausirwan Shavaksha Sheikh Chilli” - Keki N. Daruwalla (b. 1937) (The Gollancz Book of South Asian Science Fiction, 2019)
Satire on Indian politics and corruption that begins with the disappearance of all but one Parsi, who then decides to join the exodus to the moon to escape his gambling debts and India’s pollution.
Keywords: Indian author; Male author

Neon Empire - Drew Minh (Rare Bird Books/California Coldblood Books, 2019)
The novel is set in Eutopia in the near future. Eutopia is not eutopian, but a dystopian city where social media drives the economy.
Keywords: French author; Male author; Spanish author; US author

"New Jesus" - Tommy Orange (b. 1982) (McSweeney’s 58. 2040 A.D., 2019)
The story is set in Oakland, California, which is now at sea level and most of the time Oaklanders are walking through water and most people had left for higher ground or moved onto a boat. The story concerns the impact of stories of a New Jesus is not the Second Coming but “lives in each of us and in our action. . . . New Jesus is our cooperation with each other and with the earth” (69). The protagonist rejects and makes fun of his niece, who is telling him and his wife about the New Jesus.
Keywords: Male author; Native American author

“The Night Drinker” - Luis Alberto Urrea (b. 1955) (McSweeney’s 58. 2040 A.D., 2019)
The story is set in Mexico City and is described as “A Chronicle of the last days of Tenochtitlan, Built on Lake Texcoco, known now as Mexico City, Home of the Ancient Gods. 2040 A.D. (From the Notebooks of Joaquin Hernandez III, Historian, Found in the Ruins of Iztapalpa, 2045). Mexico City is one of the last place standing after multiple climate change disasters that destroy both land and sea and produce huge shifts in population.
Keywords: Male author; US 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

"No Algorithms in the World” - Hugh [Crocker] Howey (b. 1975) (A People’s Future of the United States: Speculative Fiction from 25 Extraordinary Writers, 2019)
The story depicts a future with a guaranteed income and most jobs taken over by AIs. A father sees it as dystopia; a son sees it as providing a good life.
Keywords: Male author; US author

Nobody People - Bob Proehl (Del Rey, 2019)
Dystopia with fantasy elements in which the government and, with the encouragement of the government, bigoted people attack people with special talents, Muslims, and others.
Keywords: Male author; US author

“Not Only Who You Know” - Jay O'Connell (Asimov’s Science Fiction, 2019)
The story is set in a future where bots have replaced almost all jobs, producing extreme inequality and focuses on a woman who will go to any length to succeed.
Keywords: Male author; US author

"Notes on the Plague" - Shamar Harriott (Fiyah: Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction, 2019)
Dystopia set during a plague that mostly impacts African Americans.
Keywords: Jamaican author; Male author; US 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

The Old Drift. A Novel - Namwali Serpell (b. 1980) (Hogarth, 2019)
Much of the novel traces the lives of three African families (black, brown, and white) over four generations from the colonial era into the future, with the fourth generation living in a totalitarian dystopia.
Keywords: Female author; US author; Zambian author

"Old Media" - Annalee Newitz (b. 1969) (Tor.com, 2019)
The story is set in 2145 and the protagonist is a gay Chinese man sent to Canada as part of a contract. In the future Canada, each city requires an individual to purchase a franchise that allows them to live and work in the city. Without the franchise, they are slaves, and, when the contract fell through, he is enslaved.
Rpt., without the illustration, in The Best Science Fiction of the Year. Volume 5. Ed. Neil Clarke (New York: Night Shade Books, 2020), 417-29.
Keywords: Transgender author; US 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

“One Day Only” - Tananarive [Priscilla] Due (b. 1966) (Wastelands: The New Apocalypse, 2019)
A Nayima story in the series se in a post-plague dystopia with 2014 Due, “Removal Order,” 2014 Due, “Herd Immunity,” 2015 Due, “Carriers,” and 2019 Due, “Attachment Disorder.” In this story Nayima has temporary settled with an older woman in an abandoned beachfront house and puts on a comedy show for the few other Natural Immune/Carriers and survivors who have not yet gotten vaccinated and settled in one of the few remaining cities.
Rpt. in the author’s The Wishing Pool and Other Stories (Brooklyn, NY: Akashic Books, 2023), 205-226.
Keywords: African American author; Female author

"One Shot" - Tiffany E. Wilson (IF This Goes On, 2019)
The dystopia of privatized medical care in the future.
Keywords: Female author; US author

“One Thousand Beetles in a Jumpsuit” - Dominica Phetteplace (Lightspeed Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2019)
The first story in a sequence given the general title Robot Country. The story is set in a climate-change dystopia controlled by corporations in which “Corporate treason was punishable by death.” The protagonist is supposedly testing procedures for surviving on Mars and ends up cooperating with the AIs rather than her corporate minders. In “Her Appetite, His Heart.” Lightspeed, no. 114 (November 2019). https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/her-appetite-his-heart/, the second story, the AIs have revolted and excluded their makers from their country. In The Dystopia Triptych sequence, the first story is followed by two different stories, which begin after the successful revolt of the AIs and the establishment of Robot Country. In “Paradise Requires a Wall. Robot Country: Part II.” Burn the Ashes: The Dystopia Triptych 2. Ed. John Joseph Adams, Hugh Howey, and Christine Yant (New York/London: Broad Reach Publishing + Adamant Press, 2020), 169-90, Robot Country has been established and is under constant attack from what remains of the United States, with the focus on the personal relations between a woman working with the AIs and a U.S. Forest Ranger trying to protect the little that remains of the forest. Followed by “Human Country. Robot Country: Part III.” or Else the Light: The Dystopia Triptych 3. Ed. John Joseph Adams, Hugh Howey, and Christine Yant (New York/London: Broad Reach Publishing + Adamant Press, 2020), 289-207, which develops those relations as he and other humans move into Robot Country.
Rpt. in The Best Science Fiction of the Year. Volume 5. Ed. Neil Clarke (New York: Night Shade Books, 2020), 189-210.
Keywords: Female author; US author

"The Other Side" - Payal Dhar (The Gollancz Book of South Asian Science Fiction, 2019)
Refugee dystopia told from the point of view of escaping refugees.
Keywords: Female author; Indian author

“Our Aim Is Not to Die” - A. Merc Rustad (A People’s Future of the United States: Speculative Fiction from 25 Extraordinary Writers, 2019)
A white supremacist, patriarchal dystopia in which everyone is under constant surveillance, and there are required medical/mental checks to ensure that everyone is straight. Lobotomies, now called neural reformatting therapy, are used to “cure” the non-conforming.
Keywords: Non-binary author; Queer author

“The Painter of Trees” - Suzanne Palmer (b. 1968) (Clarkesworld, 2019)
Dystopia in which humans, set on terraforming a planet, destroy all the food the indigenous inhabitants eat. Few of the humans are at all bothered.
Rpt. in The Year’s Best Science Fiction Volume 1. Ed. Jonathan Strahan (New York: Saga Press, 2020), 77-89, with an editor’s note on 77; and in The Best Science Fiction of the Year. Volume 5. Ed. Neil Clarke (New York: Night Shade Books, 2020), 1-10.
Keywords: Female author; US author

The Parade. A Novel - Dave Eggers (b. 1970) (Alfred A. Knopf, 2019)
The novel is set in a divided country at the supposed end of a long war and focuses on two men, Four and Nine, paving a road that is to symbolically unify the country.
Keywords: Male author; US author

"Parenting License" - Leah Cypess (b. 1977) (Analog Science Fiction and Fact, 2019)
The story, which has satirical elements, is set in a future society that requires a license to have children, reinforced by no insurance and pediatricians unwilling to take patients without the license.
Keywords: Female author; US author

Pet - Akwaeke Emezi (b. 1982) (Make Me a World/Random House Children’s Books, 2019)
Young adult novel set in the city of Lucille, which had become a eutopia by, as they believed, eliminating all the “monsters,” such as politicians, businesspeople, lawyers, and religious leaders, who had exploited the people. The story is told from the point-of-view of a young girl who discovers that at least one monster remains. Much fantasy.
Keywords: African author; Transgender author; US 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 Plague Doctors" - Karen [Antoinette Roberta] Lord (b. 1968) (Take Us to a Better Place, Stories, 2019)
A post-apocalypse dystopia (plague) and the struggle get the resources to limit its spread and find a cure.
Rpt. in The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy™ 2021. Ed Veronica Roth (Boston, MA: Mariner Books/HarperCollins, 2021), 300-322.
Keywords: Barbadian author; Female author

“Playmentalities” - Alberto Vanolo (How to Run a City Like Amazon, and Other Fables, 2019)
The first part is fiction about a boy in a city that uses “civic games” through Playstation to teach good citizenship and uses the scores attained throughout life to award or punish its citizens. The second part is an essay on the current status of such programs.
Keywords: Italian author; Male author

“The Plazas of Madness” - Luis Nazario (The Ashes of the Cities. Eldorado. Liber Tertius, 2019)
Surrealistic dystopia of an African leader who builds many very odd plazas.
Keywords: Male author

“Please, Stop Printing Unicorns” - Fran Wilde (b. 1972) (The New York Times, 2019)
Satire on the ability for individuals using 3-D Bioprinters to create body parts and entire animals.
Keywords: Female author; US author

“A Pocketful of Dolphins” - Judy Helfrich (If This Goes On, 2019)
A dystopia in which people are controlled by implants that release chemicals into their bodies in response to established metrics that are monitored by the implants. The story focuses on controlling fantasies.
Keywords: Canadian author; Female author

Point of Honor - Aeryn Rudel (Futures A Science Fiction Series, 2019)
Dystopia in which duel has been reinstated and is run by a Bureau of Honorable Affairs.
Keywords: Male author; US author

"Polaris" - Wole Talabi (b. 1986) (Incomplete Solutions, 2019)
The story is set mostly on Mars, which is being used as a dumping ground for prisoners and opponents of those in power on Earth. After a difficult start, the people form a government and begin terraforming the planet.
Keywords: Malaysian author; Male author; Nigerian author

“Potholes and Pumpkin Spice” - Kalpana Shankar; Glenn Kaufmann (How to Run a City Like Amazon, and Other Fables, 2019)
Satire describing a city run by Starbucks. 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. Female co-author. Shankar is a Professor of Information and Communication Studies at University College, Dublin. Kaufmann is a freelance writer from the United States to Dublin, Ireland in 2011 and now has dual citizenship.
Keywords: Female author; Irish author; Male author; US author

"Premium Places" - Dietmar Offenhuber (How to Run a City Like Amazon, and Other Fables, 2019)
The story is in the form of an academic article on a city designed and run by Pornhub. 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: Male author; US author

“The Propagator” - Simone Kern (Metamorphosis, 2019)
The story is set in a future Texas which is badly polluted, and almost all good soil is owned and strictly controlled by a single corporation. The protagonist is using stolen good soil to grow crops illegally. A second focus of the story is the extreme restrictions on whatever Texas has called a reproduction crime and the harsh punishments imposed on anyone deemed to have committed such a crime.
Rpt. in Best Vegan Science Fiction & Fantasy 2019. Ed. B. Morris Allen (Np: Metamorphosis Books, 2020), 75-97; and in their Real Sugar Is Hard to Find: A Collection of Stories (Eugene, OR: Android Press, 2022), 43-62, which is published as by Sim Kern.
Keywords: Genderqueer author; US author

“The Rat King of Spanish Harlem” - Nicky Drayden (Fiyah: Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction, 2019)
The dystopia brought about by a plague and the way people respond as seen by a woman who is not infected.
Keywords: African American author; Female author

Rated - Melissa Grey (Scholastic Press, 2019)
Young adult dystopia in which every individual is being constantly rated and their worth moves up and down with their rating.
Keywords: Female author; US author

“Read After Burning” - Maria Dahvana Headley (b. 1977) (A People’s Future of the United States: Speculative Fiction from 25 Extraordinary Writers, 2019)
Dystopia set in a future in which it is prohibited to teach children to read or even to speak except in approved slogans. The story is told from the viewpoint of a child of librarians who are secretly keeping books alive.
Keywords: Female author; US author

The Record Keeper - Agnes Gomillion (Titan Books, 2019)
The novel is set in a post-World War III future in which the truce requires that all laws be obeyed completely, but the female protagonist discovers that the laws are being used against her people. First of volume of a series. The second volume is The Seed of Cain: Book Two of The Record Keeper Series. London: Titan Books, 2020.
Keywords: African American author; Female author

The Red Sunset - Ira Tabankin (b. 1949) (Np, 2019)
After the assassination of the President, Vice-President, and the Cabinet are assassinated, the Speaker of the House (obviously Nancy Pelosi b. 1940) becomes President, and imposes an extreme left-wing agenda on the country and invites United Nations troops into the control to disarm all U.S. citizens, which leads to Civil War.
Keywords: Male author; US 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

. Resistant: A World Divided - Erika Modrak (Black Rose Writing, 2019)
The novel is set in a future where antibiotics have failed, and a pandemic has decimated the human race. Those left are divided between some who life in quarantine within a walled city and those who survive outside.
Keywords: Female author; US author

"Reunion" - Vandana Singh (b. 1950) (The Gollancz Book of South Asian Science Fiction, 2019)
The story takes place in a future India that has been battered by climate change creating storms strong enough to destroy cities. The protagonist is an Indian woman scientist who had developed the basis for settlements that integrated advanced technology with the natural world and made it possible for people to thrive in the new conditions.
Rpt. in The Year’s Best Science Fiction Volume 1. Ed. Jonathan Strahan (New York: Saga Press, 2020), 422-62, with an editor’s note on 422.
Keywords: Female author; Indian author; US author

“(R)evolution” - Sam Agro (Nourishment: A One-Shot Anthology of Science Fiction, 2019)
The story is set in a future where all a cities rubbish, toxic chemicals, and so forth have been dumped outside it where the poor live, and those living in the area begin to become mutants.
Keywords: Canadian author; Male author

"Riverbed" - Omar El Akkad (b. 1982) (A People’s Future of the United States: Speculative Fiction from 25 Extraordinary Writers, 2019)
The story’s protagonist is an American-born woman who, as a young woman, was incarcerated in camps holding the U.S. Islamic population.
Keywords: Canadian author; Egyptian author; Male author; Qatari author; US author

“The Robots of Eden” - Anil [Ravindran] Menon (b. 1964) (New Suns: Original Speculative Fiction by People of Colour, 2019)
Much of the story seems to be about the relationships within and Indian family. Then, it is gradually revealed that some of the people have been “enhanced” through an implant that counters negative emotions. From the viewpoint of the protagonist, the results are entirely positive, but what happens within the story suggests the opposite.
Rpt. in The Year’s Best Science Fiction Volume 1. Ed. Jonathan Strahan (New York: Saga Press, 2020), 193-211, with an editor’s note on 193; and in The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2020. Ed. Diana Gabaldon (Boston, MA: Mariner Books/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2020), 306-22, with a note on the author together with the author’s note on the story on 399.
Keywords: Indian author; Male author

"ROME" - G[wendolyn] Willow Wilson (b. 1982) (A People’s Future of the United States: Speculative Fiction from 25 Extraordinary Writers, 2019)
A dystopia set in a United States devastated by climate-change that has privatized all first responders, and a poor district in Seattle had no protection from the regular fires as seen through the eyes of students taking an English-language test required for them to stay in the country.
Keywords: Female author; US author

Rule of Capture - Christopher [Tracy] Brown (b. 1964) (Harper Voyager, 2019)
The first volume of a series set in the same future as 2017 Brown. See also 2020 Brown. In this volume, the U.S. has lost a war with China and is becoming a dictatorship bent on eliminating any opposition.
Keywords: Male author; US author

“Safe and Secure Living in Camden” - Alan Wiig (How to Run a City Like Amazon, and Other Fables, 2019)
The story is designed as a report of a couple searching for a safe place to live, work, and raise their family. They settle on Camden, New Jersey, a formerly notoriously dangerous city that has partnered with corporations, such as Shotspotter, to install comprehensive surveillance. 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 teaches urban planning and community development at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, who has also published a critique of the actual program in “Secure the City, Revitalize the Zone: Smart Urbanization in Camden, New Jersey.” Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space 36.3 (2018): 403-23.
Keywords: Male author; US author

"Salvation" - Claudia De Bella (1958-2018) (Sunspot Jungle: The Ever-Expanding Universe of Science Fiction and Fantasy, 2019)
Religious dystopia in which a psychopath finds a role as the executioner.
Keywords: Argentinian author; Female 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

Sanctuary - Karen East (Archway Publishers, 2019)
Dystopia in which corporations control government and the economy, the Department of Homeland Security controls education and the media, environmental laws are no longer enforced, the U.S. borders are closed, and any travel even within the borders is considered suspicious and is frowned upon. Mandatory age in which everyone is placed in a retirement home. The protagonist is a reporter who travels to northern Wisconsin where she learns a better, simpler way of life based on Native American (Anishinaabe) traditions that exclude technology and competition.
Keywords: Female author; US 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

"Save Yourself" - Abbey Mei Otis (b. 1989) (McSweeney’s 58. 2040 A.D., 2019)
The story is set in the state of Ohio in the U.S. where US climate change immigrants from the coasts are being shipped with hundreds arriving every day and the settlements set up to receive them are unable to provide for such numbers. The resettlement companies bought more and more land, cities became gated communities for the well off, many foods were no longer available, and water was rationed.
Keywords: Asian American author; US author

Scotland Before the Bomb - M. J. Nicholls ed. [written by] (Sagging Meniscus Press, 2019)
Satire on a Scotland that has disintegrated into independent counties and even cities and towns within counties.
Keywords: Male author; Scottish 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

Seedless - D. A. Xiaolin Spires (Little Blue Marble, 2019)
The story extrapolates the popularity of seedless fruit to a world where nothing is reproduced naturally.
Rpt. without the illus. in Little Blue Marble 2019: Climate in Crisis. Ed. Katrina Archer (Vancouver, BC, Canada: Ganache Media Books, 2020), 112-19.
Keywords: Female author; US 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 Semantic City” - Andrew Iliadis (How to Run a City Like Amazon, and Other Fables, 2019)
The story is set in a future where Philadelphia has contract with Apple for its citizens, including teenagers, to have a Siri implant that provides them with a constant flow of information, including ads. 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: Male author; US author

The Shining Wall - Melissa [Jane] Ferguson (Transit Lounge, 2019)
Dystopia with a deep rich/poor divide with the rich who stress their own health and longevity living behind a metal wall and the rest struggling for survival outside the wall.
Keywords: Australian author; Female author

“Should You Add a Microchip to Your Brain?” - Susan Schneider (The New York Times, 2019)
The Op-Ed considers the ethical ramifications in a future where AI has advanced so much and eliminated so many jobs that people are adding microchips to their brain to avoid unemployment.
Keywords: Female author; US author

"Sibling Rivalry" - Michael Byers (Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, 2019)
The story is set in a future with a one-child policy where synthetic children are produced and become second children.
Keywords: Male author; US author

“The Significance of Swans” - Rhiannon Lewis (New Welsh Reader, 2019)
A post-apocalyptic story told from the point-of-view of a woman who is one of the few survivors. On returning to her old home, she finds a man in the process of destroying everything in it.
Keywords: Female author; Welsh 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

“The Sinners and the Sea” - Kameron Hurley (b. 1980) (Meet Me in the Future. Stories, 2019)
Authoritarian dystopia set in a world constructed over a drowned Earth.
Keywords: Female author; US 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

"Skin City" - Kelly Robson (b. 1967) (The Verge Better Worlds, 2019)
The story is set in a future that has adapted to climate change by building domes over cities and extensive rewilding, but the story focuses on the issue of privacy and those who choose a radical version of privacy. Part of a series based on the author’s Toronto friends in the theatre and burlesque that includes “The Desperate Flesh.” Nasty: Fetish Fights Back: An Erotic Short Story Collection. Ed. Anna Yeatts and Chris Phillips. Np: Flash Fiction online LLC, 2017. Rpt. in her Alias Space and Other Stories (Burton, MI: Subterranean Press, 2021), 175-85, with “Notes about ‘The Desperate Flesh’” on 186, which is realist fiction about an old folks’ home for lesbians, and “Alias Space.” Alias Space and Other Stories (Burton, MI: Subterranean Press, 2021), 187-224, with “Notes about ‘Alias Space’” on 225, which is non-utopian science fiction.
Rpt. in her Alias Space and Other Stories (Burton, MI: Subterranean Press, 2021), 227-41, with “Notes about ‘Skin City’” on 242.
Keywords: Canadian author; Lesbian author

“So You Want to Live in a Pivot City” - Sarah Barns (How to Run a City Like Amazon, and Other Fables, 2019)
The story takes place in Sydney, Australia, which, due to climate change and environmental degradation had lost its tax base and agreed to cooperate with Sidewalk Labs, owned by Google, to create an experimental surveilled city that would focus on reducing the cities carbon footprint. This requires that every action by every resident be tracked an evaluated positively or negatively. Those who fall below the threshold determined by the city can be expelled, losing not merely the right to live in the city but their property in 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. The Australian female author is a digital strategy consultant, producer, and researcher.
Keywords: Australian author; Female author

“Sometimes you end up where you are: A trip back home for Christmas” - Beth Cato (b. 1980) (Nature, 2019)
The story involves a trip back in time which allows a child to experience our environmentally damaged world, which is almost eutopian from the perspective of the one she lives in.
Keywords: Female author; US author

A Song for a New Day - Sarah Pinsker (b. 1977) (Berkley, 2019)
After a series of bombings, the government prohibits all public meetings. The two main protagonists are a musician who performed in large venues and a woman, who had been working entirely online, with both involved in locating illegal performances and streaming them. Three of her stories are set in the same future beginning with 2015 Pinsker, “Our Lady of the Open Road;” followed by “A Song Transmuted.” Illus. Aaron Lovett and Joshua Viola. Cyber World: Tales of Humanity’s Tomorrow. Ed. Jason Heller and Joshua Viola (Erie, CO: Hex Publishers 2016), 151-60; and “Everything Is Closed Today.” Do Not Go Quietly: An Anthology of Defiance in Victory. Ed. Lesley Conner and Jason Sizemore (Lexington, KY: Apex Publications, 2019), 149-74; rpt. in her Lost Places. Stories (Easthampton, MA: Small Beer Press, 2023), 79-102.
Keywords: Female author; US author

“Space Traitors” - Walidah Imarisha (Buckman Journal, 2019)
The story is headed by the statement “In conversation with Derrick Bell’s short story ‘Space Traders’” (See Bell 1992). In this story, the aliens offer to improve the lives of all the “scarred people” of Earth.
Rpt. in Black Sci-Fi Short Stories: An Anthology of New & Classic Stories (London: Flame Tree Publishing, 2021), 324-28.
Keywords: African American author; Female author

Split By the Sun - Tom [Thomas Alured] Faunce (b. 1958) (World Scientific Publishing, 2019)
The premise of the novel is that synthetic photosynthesis has been developed and applied so that almost any surface can be used to produce clean food and fuel. Set in a deeply conflicted future so that there are both eutopian and dystopian elements to the novel. Aboriginal themes.
Keywords: Australian 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

Stealing Worlds - Karl Schroeder (b. 1962) (Tor, 2019)
The novel begins in a surveillance dystopia in which a woman finds that it is extremely hard to hide. She then discovers people creating cyber worlds and taking on new identities in these worlds and forming communities, something that otherwise no longer exists.
Keywords: Canadian author; Male author

Stillicide - Cynan Jones (Granta, 2019)
The novel is set in a future where water is scarce and tightly controlled. Stillicide refers to the continual dripping of a liquid.
Keywords: Male author; Welsh author

“Story for a Bottle” - Darcie Little Badger (b. 1987) (Love After the End: Two-Spirit Utopias & Dystopias, 2019)
The story is set in a future New Houston that is near the new coast and on the remains of a doomsday city (a huge ocean liner) built by the wealthy to escape the apocalypse and live the good life at sea.
Rpt. as Love After the End: An Anthology of Two-Spirit & Indigiqueer Speculative Fiction. Ed. Joshua Whitehead (Vancouver, BC, Canada: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2020), 113-133.
Keywords: Female author; Native American author

"Streamers" - Cian O’Callaghan (How to Run a City Like Amazon, and Other Fables, 2019)
The story is set in a city that has replaced almost all work with temporary jobs offered through streaming, modeled on Spotify. 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: Irish author; Male 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

“Subprime Language and the Crash” - Pip Thornton (How to Run a City Like Amazon, and Other Fables, 2019)
In search of larger and larger profits, Google’s complete control of the internet led to it buy up much of the world’s real estate, and to monetizing words. This led to the Global Linguistic Crash of 2041 and the loss of all information that had been stored on the internet, paper records having been outlawed.
Keywords: Female author; Scottish author

“Such Thoughts are Unproductive” - Rebecca Campbell (b. 1975) (Clarkesworld, 2019)
The story is set in a climate-change and surveillance dystopia.
Rpt. in The Best Science Fiction of the Year. Volume 5. Ed. Neil Clarke (New York: Night Shade Books, 2020), 155-70.
Keywords: Canadian author; Female author

“Summanus” - A. E. Bower (Nourishment: A One-Shot Anthology of Science Fiction, 2019)
The story is set on a planet that is being explored for edible plants in the hopes that plants from Earth can be grown there, Earth having lost all plant life and humans surviving on chemically produced food.
Keywords: Canadian author; Male author

Summit at Eagle Nest - Dave Borland (Author, 2019)
The novel follows four people, two from the left and two from the right who try to see if they can come to an agreement on what needs to be done to save the United States. For half the book, they simply fail, but they are introduced to a Native American elder who teaches them the road to reconciliation. They conclude that a new Constitutional Convention is needed and develop a set of proposals reflecting a combination of their views.
Keywords: Male author; US author

“The Sun in Exile” - Catherynne M[organ] Valente (b. 1979) (A People’s Future of the United States: Speculative Fiction from 25 Extraordinary Writers, 2019)
Satire on climate change deniers.
Keywords: Female author; US author

“The Sun Will Always Sing” - Karin Lowachee (b. 1973) (The Verge Better Worlds, 2019)
The story is set in a future in which humans and seimei (immortal AI who have their own language) have cooperated to mitigate the damage to Earth and plan to populate another planet with the focus on carrying out that plan told through the eyes of a seimei.
Keywords: Canadian author; Female author; Guyanese author

Sung Home - Laura Ramnarace (Author, 2019)
First volume of a trilogy. In this volume a plague has killed most people, and control most of those left in the hands of different competing warlords. The protagonist, sixteen-year-old girl, escapes from one such warlord to search for her grandmother. The title refers the girl following song lyrics taught her by her mother in her search. In the second volume, Growing Home. Np: Author. 2020. 308 pp., communities of survivors both work together and compete. In the third volume, Rising Home. Np: Author, 2020. 260 pp., civilization is rebuilding with a varied cultures cooperating. Native American themes throughout all three volumes. Female author.
Keywords: Female author; US 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

“The Synapse Will Free Us from Ourselves” - Violet Allen (A People’s Future of the United States: Speculative Fiction from 25 Extraordinary Writers, 2019)
Dystopian in which technology is supposedly curing homosexuality.
Keywords: African American author; Female author

“Talk to a Real Live Girl” - Paul Clayton (Talk to a Real Live Girl and Other Stories, 2019)
Earth is dominated by women who have taken away all men’s rights. The protagonist, after losing the right to any contact with his daughter, chooses to leave Earth to a mining colony colloquially known as Boyz Wurld that is inhabited by men and sexbots. There are, though, “three live girls” available for talk and only talk.
Keywords: Male author; US author

“Tasting Bleach and Decay in the City of Dust” - Beth Dawkins (If This Goes On, 2019)
Pollution dystopia.
Keywords: Female author; US author

The Testaments - Margaret [Eleanor] Atwood (b. 1939) (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 2019)
Sequel to 1985 Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale that begins during the establishment of Gilead but the shifts to the internal and external opposition to it, and it ends with a lecture at “The Thirteenth Symposium on Gilead Studies” from the same professor whose lecture ended The Handmaid’s Tale. The novel was serialized on BBC Radio 4 in fifteen installments between September 16 and October 4, 2019.
Canadian ed. Toronto, ON, Canada: McClelland and Stewart, 2019. U.K. ed. London: Chatto & Windus, 2019. An audiobook was released simultaneously with the print version.
Keywords: Canadian author; Female author

“That Our Flag Was Still There” - Sarah Pinsker (b. 1977) (If This Goes On, 2019)
A dystopia of extreme patriotism, where, for example, a permit is needed to criticize the president.
Rpt. in her Lost Places. Stories (Easthampton, MA: Small Beer Press, 2023), 36-50.
Keywords: Female author; US author

"A Theory of Flight” - Justina Ireland (b. 1985) (The Verge Better Worlds, 2019)
The story is set in a poor neighborhood in a lethally polluted future where Mars and Europa have been settled and Europa welcomes everyone who arrives but only the very rich can afford the fare.
Keywords: African American author; Female author

“Therapies for World’s End” - Stefani Cox (Black From the Future: A Collection of Black Speculative Writing, 2019)
The story is set in a post-apocalypse dystopia that has divided the rich and poor even more, with the rich closing themselves off and the poor, known as Dusties left to try to survive.
Keywords: African American author; Female author

They Don’t Make Plus Size Space Suits - Ali Thompson (Author, 2019)
A collection of five brief stories, none of which appear to have been previously published. All are set in future societies that are dystopias for fat people and told from the perspective of a fat person struggling with and resisting the rules and restrictions of their life.
Keywords: Bisexual author; Queer author; US author

“Thirteen Year Long Song” - Sheree Renée Thomas (b. 1972) (Do Not Go Quietly: An Anthology of Victory in Defiance, 2019)
The story is set in a world being destroyed by the release of poison chemicals as seen through the eyes of an old man poisoned by them who sees his family farm being destroyed by them.
Rpt. in her Nine Bar Blues: Stories from an Ancient Future (Nashville, TN: Third Man Books, 2020), 17-34. 978-0997457896
Keywords: African American author; Female author

“Thirty-Three Wicked Daughters” - Kelly [Regan] Barnhill (b. 1973) (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 2019)
Satirical story based on the story of Albina from the 12th century in which thirty-three sisters behead their husband and are exiled to Albion. In the story the thirty-three daughters of the king completely reform the kingdom, turning it into an egalitarian eutopia before they are captured and forced to marry wealthy Barons, from which point it gets complicated.
Rpt. in The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2020. Ed. Diana Gabaldon (Boston, MA: Mariner Books/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2020), 97-124, with a note on the author together with the author’s note on the story on 392-93.
Keywords: Female author; US 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

“To Breathe the Air” - Brian [Keith] Evenson (b. 1966) (Cliffhangers (Part I of II). McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, 2019)
The story, which is in two parts with a cliffhanger ending to the first part, is set in a future divided between citizens who live in the high city, which is actually a spaceship, and the descendants of the people who came from the ship and live in the low city. The citizens want to learn how to run the ship so that they can spread their domination to other planets.
Keywords: Male author; US author

​“To Everything, Tern Tern Tern” - Birna Anna Björnsdóttir (b. 1974) (McSweeney’s 58. 2040 A.D., 2019)
The story is set in Seltjarnarnes, Iceland. In about 2030, due to the changing climate, the Gulf Stream had moved away from Iceland while warming Greenland. As a result, Iceland has much, much colder winters and the iconic bird the tern or kría no longer nested there.
Keywords: Female author; Icelandic author; US author

To Slip to the Surly Bonds of Earth - Hugh Cameron (Xlibris, 2019)
Western civilization is coming to an end, but one man hopes to reestablish it in space colonies. In the second volume, the struggle is to increase the population of the colonies on the moon and Mars to sustainable levels while supporting America and trying to keep it out of the problems of Europe. The ending suggests that there might be more volumes to come.
Keywords: Canadian author; Male 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

"The Touches" - Brenda Peynado (b. 1985) (tor.com, 2019)
The story is set in a future where disease means that the world is divided between the clean and the dirty, and humans live in the clean never touching another human. The protagonist details the four times in her life that she has been touched.
Rpt. without the illus. in her The Rock Eaters: Stories (New York: Penguin Books, 2021), 167-90.
Keywords: Dominican American author; Female author

Trapped in the R.A.W.: A Journal of My Experiences during the Great Invasion by Kaylee Bearovna With an Afterword by Pearl Larken and Appendices by the “We Survive” Group - Kate Boyes (Aqueduct Press, 2019)
Post-apocalyptic (alien invasion) dystopia that wipes out over 80% of the world’s population told initially through the diary of a young *woman trapped in a Special Collections Library. This is then followed by an “Afterword” by the editor of the diary and reports on the search by survivors for her and her daughter.
Keywords: Female author; US author

Triangulum - Masande Ntshanga (Umuzi/Penguin Random House South Africa, 2019)
A complex novel that is historical fiction, mystery novel, coming-of-age story, and dystopia. About two-thirds of the book are set in the past and the present and a third in a future that emerges from South Africa’s dystopic past with the “homelands” created by apartheid become corporate controlled domains designed to exploit both raw materials and labor.
U.K. ed. London: Jacaranda Books Art Music, 2019. 377 pp. U.S. ed as Tiangulum. A Novel. Columbus, OH: Two Dollar Radio, 2019. 365 pp. An excerpt was published in The Johannesburg Review of Books 3. 6 (June 2019). Monuments, ‘the remains of an alien civilisation which had now fled’—Read an excerpt from Masande Ntshanga’s new novel Triangulum – The Johannesburg Review of Books.
Keywords: Male author; South African author

Trouble No Man. A Novel - Brian Hart (b. 1976) (Harper Perennial, 2019)
The novel takes place in a future where California and the Northwest are controlled by competing separatist militias fighting over water and fuel. The protagonist is a flawed man, depicted at various stages of his life who struggles to protect his extended family.
Keywords: Male author; US author

Trump Sky Alpha - Mark Doten (b. 1978) (Graywolf Press, 2019)
Satire on Trump, who is depicted as sailing on a blimp, just after starting World War 3, while denying that anything is wrong. A parallel story is about the failure of the internet, and there is a novel within the novel that also comments on the situation.
Keywords: Male author; US author

Truth - [Treichler, David H.] (Publisher Services, 2019)
The novel is set in a future where the government has established rules for what is truth, and analysts remove anything that does not meet these standards.
Keywords: Male author; US author

“Twelve Histories Scrawled in the Sky” - Aimee Ogden (If This Goes On, 2019)
Brief dystopia in which the official history is being constantly changed and all cities must keep up with the changes.
Keywords: Female author; US 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

“Under This Rock” - Andrew Dana Hudson (Little Blue Marble 2019, 2019)
An anti-fracking story set in a future climate change dystopia.
Rpt. without the illus. in Little Blue Marble 2019: Climate in Crisis. Ed. Katrina Archer (Vancouver, BC, Canada: Ganache Media Books, 2020), 11-18.
Keywords: Male author; US author

Un-Girls - Lauren [Ann] Beukes (b. 1976) (Amazon Original Stories, 2019)
Set in a future South Africa, the novella follows a number of individuals, men and women, gay and straight, black and white. In one story line, laboratory grown meat is fashioned into extremely beautiful women, designed to the purchaser’s preference, and programmed to provide pleasure. Another story line focuses on a popular lecturer pushing the line that empowered women are undermining masculinity. Others follow female and male sex workers.
An excerpt was published in The Johannesburg Review of Books 3.7 (July 2019). <a href="https://johannesburgreviewofbooks.com/2019/07/01/the-jrb-exclusive-read-an-excerpt-from-ungirls-a-new-disturbing-and-provocative-story-by-lauren-beukes-plus-sample-the-audiobook/" style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif; color:blue; text-decoration:underline">[The JRB exclusive] Read an excerpt from Ungirls, a new disturbing and provocative story by Lauren Beukes [Plus: Sample the audiobook] – The Johannesburg Review of Books.
Keywords: Female author; South African 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 United States Should Welcome a Strong, United Latin America” - Malka [Ann] Older (b. 1977) (2019)
Reflections on the formation of a united Latin America, following on from the European Union and an African Union that the United States is vigorously opposing.
Keywords: Female author; Latinx author; US author

Unnatural Disasters - Jeff Hirsch (Clarion Books/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2019)
Young adult dystopia in which, as the country breaks down, the young woman the protagonist tries to live a normal life.
Keywords: Male author; US 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

Ursa - Tina Shaw (b. 1961) (Walker Books Australia, 2019)
A young adult dystopia set in a future city divided between the powerful and wealthy Travesters and the poor and enslaved Cerels who are prohibited to have children.
Keywords: Aotearoa New Zealand author; Female author

Verify - Joelle Charbonneau (b. 1974) (HarperTeen, 2019)
First of two volumes set in a future with extreme censorship, with all physical books removed, removing words from use, and revising history. In the second volume, Disclose. New York: HarperTeen, 2020, the protagonist of the first volume leads a band of truth-seekers who hope to overthrow the system.
Keywords: Female author; US author

“Voice Lessons: Wishes to the Outside” - Davidson, Cesi [Cecelia] (Articulation: Short Plays to Nourish the Mind & Soul, 2019)
In the play “two celestial beings” living in a “Caribbean utopia somewhere between heaven and earth” (103) are tasked with visiting Africans of the diaspora to learn lessons from them and pass them on to others. The becomes slaves, children in a school with little equipment, and so forth.
Keywords: African American author; Female author

"The Wall" - Lizz Huerta (A People’s Future of the United States: Speculative Fiction from 25 Extraordinary Writers, 2019)
Dystopia in which the United States has collapsed and disappeared with refugees desperate to escape to Mexico.
Keywords: Female 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

Wanderers - Chuck [Charles David] Wendig (b. 1976) (Del Rey, 2019)
First of two volumes. Post-apocalyptic dystopia in which average people simply appear to start sleep walking in the midst of a pandemic. They are gradually surrounded by family and friends, known as shepherds,  trying to protect them from the religious zealots, armed vigilantes, and the like The second volume is Wayward. A Novel. New York: Del Rey, 2022. 805 pp. In this novel the survivors, both the sleepwalkers and the shepherds, search for and find a small town in Colorado that appears to be what remains civilization and try to build a new society there, but as in the first novel, there are others with different ideas.
Keywords: Male author; US author

The Waning Age - S[ylvia] E. Grove (Viking, 2019)
Young adult dystopia in which only children have emotions.
Keywords: Female author; US author

The Warehouse. A Novel - Rob Hart (b. 1982) (Crown, 2019)
Dystopia in which one large corporation employs most people and has established prison-like company towns where the people were long hours in warehouses packaging goods to be delivered by drones to people who are afraid to leave their homes.
Keywords: Male author; US author

“Water, Water, Nowhere. Novella Extract” - Heledd Williams (New Welsh Reader, 2019)
Extract from a dystopia brought on by drought and the control of the water supply by corporations.
Keywords: Female author; Hong Kong author; Welsh author

We Cast a Shadow. A Novel - Maurice Carlos Ruffin (One World, 2019)
Dystopian set in a near future, racist United States where it is possible to have one’s skin colored changed to white. The novel focuses on a father’s struggle to decide what is best for his son.
Keywords: African American author; Male author

We Set the Dark on Fire - Tehlor Kay Mejia (Katharine Tegen Books/HarperCollins, 2019)
Dystopia in which women of the upper classes are assigned specific roles supporting the husband. The novel focusing on a girl from the lower classes who has managed to be accepted into the upper class.
Keywords: Female author; Latinx author

“Welcome to Gray” - Cyd Athens (If This Goes On, 2019)
The story is set in an extremely polluted future where clean water is the main medium of exchange.
Keywords: Canadian author; Male author; US author

“Welcome to Jobstown” - Sophia Maalsen; Kurt Ivensen (How to Run a City Like Amazon, and Other Fables, 2019)
Written as a Time Magazine report from 2029 on the development of Jobstown, a “smart city,” by Apple, with everything provided by Apple and accessed through Apple products, and every action is recorded and stored. 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: Australian author; Female author; Male author

“What Maya Found There” - Daniel José Older (b. 1980) (A People’s Future of the United States: Speculative Fiction from 25 Extraordinary Writers, 2019)
A future surveillance society in which biotechnology is being used as a means of control.
Keywords: Latinx author; Male author; US author

“What the Dead Man Said” - Chinelo Onwualu (Slate, 2019)
The story is set in New Biafra after rising seas obliterated much of Nigeria. The protagonist is a woman returning for her father’s funeral from what is left of Canada, where she and her mother, had moved.
Rpt. in The Year’s Best Science Fiction Volume 1. Ed. Jonathan Strahan (New York: Saga Press, 2020), 507-22, with an editor’s note on 507; and in The Best of World SF: Volume 1. Ed. Lavie Tidhar (London: Ad Astra/Head of Zeus, 2021), 107-24.
Keywords: Canadian author; Female author; Nigerian author

What Went Wrong, or Was It Right? - Jackson Phillips, III [pseud.] (AuthorHouse, 2019)
Mostly a critique of the current situation in the United States comparing it to the situation in 2095, which appears, on the surface, to be eutopian, but it turned out to be a flawed utopia.
Keywords: Male author; US author

What You Call - Germ Lynn (Futures A Science Fiction Series, 2019)
Dystopia of a supposedly supportive society that provides android caregivers to all those needing then, but then requires them all to be returned so that they can be weaponized for war. Robots had replaced people in most jobs, and the story includes a small community that is trying to become self-sufficient.
Keywords: Transgender author; US author

“What You Sow” - Kai Cheng Thom (A People’s Future of the United States: Speculative Fiction from 25 Extraordinary Writers, 2019)
A fantasy story set in a future where many have succumbed to a disease that gradually wastes them away with the only relief provided by the “ichor” from a Celestial told from the point-of-view of a Celestial, who has been trying to fit in.
Keywords: Canadian author; Transgender 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

“Who Should Live in Flooded Old New York?” - Brooke Bolander (The New York Times, 2019)
The Op-Ed piece is concerned with the divide between the rich and poor in a future flooded new work, with the authorities, as usual, supporting the rich.
Keywords: Female author; US author

“Why Visit America” - Matthew Baker (b. 1985) (Paris Review, 2019)
Deciding that the United States no longer represents the people but only the interests of corporations and politicians, a small town in Texas votes to secede and renames itself America. The story recounts conflicts within the town after the secession with references to a guidebook for tourists.
Rpt. in his Why Visit America. Stories (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2020), 290-326.
Keywords: Male author; US author

"Wishbone" - K[aren] G. Anderson (Infinite Lives: Short Tales of Infinity. Third Flatiron Anthologies, 2019)
Dystopia in which the Age Equity Act gives everyone health care, housing, and other essentials from 72 until they reach 80, when they must report to an End of Life Center and be euthanized.
Keywords: Female author; US 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