“Where Giants Will Stand” - Spencer R. Scott (XR WORDSMITHS’ Solarpunk Storytelling Contest, 2021)
The story is set in California in a far future in a community devoted to restoring the environment, and the redwoods in particular, and the rituals they use to pass their devotion on to the next generation.
Rpt. Solarpunk Magazine, no. 2 (March/April 2022): 67-71
Keywords: Male author; US author

“The Wild Inside” - Angela Penrose (Reckoning 5: Creative Writing on Environmental Justice, 2021)
In the story, a community is set on destroying everything natural.
Also published online at https://reckoning.press/the-wild-inside/ (February 6, 2021).
Keywords: Female author; US author

The Wipe - [Nicola] [Vincent-Abnett] (b. 1964) (NewCon Press, 2021)
The novel is set in a posy-pandemic future where everyone has to go through a disinfectant space entering and leaving all buildings and even some rooms, where workspaces are all sealed, and all small spaces like elevators have been eliminated. The protagonist is a woman searching and finding connection.
Keywords: Female author; UK author

“Without a password: Making connections” - Marissa [Kristine] Lingen (b. 1978) (Nature, 2021)
A brief story exploring a change to a future in which community is normal and conflict disappears.
Keywords: Female author; US author

“Wives at the End of the World” - Avra Margariti (b. 1998) (The Future Fire: Social Political & Speculative Cyber-Fiction, 2021)
The title describes the story. Two women trying to survive when everything has fallen apart.
Keywords: Female author; Greek author

“The Woman Who Spoke for the Sea: An Element of Regret” - Steven [B.] Fischer (Nature, 2021)
A very brief story set in a future dystopia where the oceans have disappeared.
Keywords: Male author; US author

The Word - J[essica] L. George (New Welsh Rarebyte, 2021)
In a Britain at war with Europe, four children who have the power to make people fear them are being experiment on in the Centre to make them into weapons of war. Disobedient children are simply killed. The children, learning what is being done to them, escape, and the novel follows them, some people who help them, and others trying to capture or eliminate them.
The first iteration was “The Word. Novella Extract.” New Welsh Reader, no. 122 (Winter 2019): 4-11.
Keywords: Female author; Welsh author

The World Gives Way. A Novel - Marissa Levien (Redhook Books/Orbit/Hachette, 2021)
The novel is set on a huge multi-generation spaceship where from age five a girl has lived as contract labor until the death of her current employers. The novel focuses on the girl’s attempt to stay free while burdened with her employer’s baby daughter and the knowledge that the ship’s hull is failing.
Keywords: Female author; US author

“A Worm to the Wise” - Marissa [Kristine] Lingen (b. 1978) (Imagine 2200: Climate Fiction for Future Ancestors, 2021)
The story is set in a future San Francisco Bay area that has been ravaged by fires with most of the suburbs gone and focus on a group of people working to reclaim the land.
Keywords: Female author; US author

"Yahweh's Hour" - Michael [Lawson] Bishop (1945-2023) (A Few Last Words for the Immortals, 2021)
Brief fundamentalist religious dystopia based, as the author says on 242, on the beliefs of the supporters of Donald Trump.
Keywords: Male author; US author

The 2084 Report: An Oral History of the Great Warming - James Lawrence Powell (Atria Books/Simon & Schuster, 2020)
Pretty much what the title says: an account of global warming from today to 2084.
Keywords: Male author; US author

"Abortion Diary" - KL Pereira (The Dystopian States of America: A Charity Anthology Benefiting the ACLU Foundation, 2020)
A diary set in a near-future United States detailing the treatment of women as they negotiate the possibility that they are pregnant and the choices they are able to make.
Keywords: Female author; US author

"African Twilight" - Michelle Renee Lane (The Dystopian States of America: A Charity Anthology Benefiting the ACLU Foundation, 2020)
The story is about a scheme to reestablish slavery in the United States.
Keywords: African American author; Female author

Afterland - Lauren [Ann] Beukes (b. 1976) (Mulholland Books, 2020)
The novel is set in a future in which very few males are born and a mother and her young son, disguised as her daughter, travel across America, fleeing all those who would use him for their own purposes.
An excerpt was published in The Johannesburg Review of Books 4.4 (April 2020). [The JRB Daily] [Exclusive] ‘A notice at the cash register with a sad-face emoji reads, “Sorry! Hand Sanitizer Sold Out!”’—Read an excerpt from Lauren Beukes’s prescient new novel Afterland – The Johannesburg Review of Books.
Keywords: Female author; South African author

Agnes at the End of the World - Kelly McWilliams (Little, Brown and Co., 2020)
Young adult dystopia. The novel begins in a rural authoritarian religious intentional community within a world facing a pandemic. The protagonist is a young woman who follows all the rules except one that involves sneaking out of the community to get prohibited medicine needed by her brother.
Keywords: Female author; Mixed race author; US 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

“All That Remains” - Michael Gardner (Metaphorosis, 2020)
The story is about a boy growing up underground where his father had taken his family to avoid a pandemic that he believed had killed all sinners and the problems the boy has when he accidentally discovers a flourishing civilization above ground.
Rpt. in Metaphorosis 2020. The Complete Stories. Ed. B. Morris Allen (Neskowin, OR: Metaphorosis, [2021]), 539-558.
Keywords: Australian author; Male author

“Ambient and Isolated Effects of Fine Particulate Matter” - Emery Robin (Reckoning 4: Creative Writing on Environmental Justice, 2020)
The story is told from the point-of-view of a school teacher in Oakland, California, that enveloped in “fine particulate matter” from forest fires.
Also published online at https://reckoning.press/ambient-and-isolated-effects-of-fine-particulate-matter/ (April 15, 2020).
Keywords: Female author; US author

Analog/Virtual and Other Simulations of Your Future - Lavanya Lakshminarayan (Hachette India, 2020)
The novel is set in a future where the nations of the world have fragmented into a few city-states. In what was India, Bangalore is now Apex City under the control of a corporation and the people are divided between the elite Virtual, who have to technology, and the outcast Analog, who do not.
Rpt. as The Ten-Percent Thief. New York: Solaris, 2023. 368 pp. One story, “The Ten-Percent Thief” has been rpt. in The Best of World Science Fiction Volume 2. Ed. Lavie Tidhar (London: Head of Zeus, 2022), 35-40.
Keywords: Female author; Indian author

And the Last Trump Shall Sound: A Future History of America - Harry [Norman] Turtledove (b. 1949); James [Kenneth] Morrow (b. 1947); Cat[herine Tigerlily] Rambo (b. 1963) (Caezik SF & Fantasy/Arc Manor, 2020)
The work contains three connected stories about the secession of Pacifica (California, Oregon, and Washington) from the United States, which is suffering under the permanent presidency of Mike (Michael Richard) Pence. The stories are Turtledove’s “The Breaking of Nations” (1-81), Morrow’s, “The Purloined Republic” (83-180), and Rambo’s “Because it is Bitter” (181-255).
Keywords: Female author; Male author; US author

“Animals Like Me. Deep/Fake I” - Rich[ard William] Larson (b. 1992) (Ignorance is Strength: The Dystopia Triptych 1, 2020)
A dystopia in three parts with the protagonist in the first part the viewpoint character in the second part and a minor figure in the third part, with the parts apparently in chronological order. The first part depicts a society entirely dependent on artificial intelligence, the only employment seems to be in the gig economy, and drug addiction is normal and fostered by pharmaceutical companies. In the second part, hordes of children are running wild and killing people and body parts are removed without consent. In the third part, the protagonist is a goat herder in the mountains, where he went to escape his own addiction, and individuals start showing up announcing that the bot had been overthrown.
Keywords: Canadian author; Male author; Nigerien author; Spanish author; US 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

"Antibodies" - Justine Graykin (The Dystopian States of America: A Charity Anthology Benefiting the ACLU Foundation, 2020)
The story is set in a future of corporate control of government, the press, and the internet.
Keywords: Female author; US author

Antlands - Genevieve Morrissey (Author, 2020)
The novel is set in 3522 A.D. when the human race has divided into three breeds, Men or urbanites hoping to recreate technology, Foresters or those who choose to live in the remaining natural areas of Earth, and Ants, genetically modified workers who kill any of the other two they can. First volume of a series, and in this volume Men and Foresters try to cooperate to defeat the Ants. The second volume is Annasland. The Antlands Series Book 2. Np: Author, 2020. In this volume The some from the two groups of humans leave to establish a colony, and twenty years later another group leave to search for them.
Keywords: Female author

“An Apology from the Natives of Earth” - Joe Lasser (Little Blue Marble, 2020)
The people of Earth are apologizing to the inhabitants of other planets for damaging their own planet, which was then cleaned up and repaired as much as possible. But when it became possible, the people of Earth colonized other planets, eliminated species, and destroyed ecosystems. They are now asking not to be eliminated themselves.
Rpt. without the illustration in Little Blue Marble 2020: Greener Futures. Ed. Katrina Archer (Vancouver, BC, Canada: Ganache Media, 2020), 129-32, with a note on the author on 132.
Keywords: Male author; US author

“Are We Ourselves?” - Michelle Mellon (b. 1971) (Augur Magazine, 2020)
The excerpt is a brief vignette in which the 2119 United States Reparation Act using a complex formula paid reparations to proven descendants of slaves but included a clause “requiring unwavering loyalty to the principles and administrative actions deemed necessary by the government” (186) that was later used to re-enslave African Americans. The full text then shifts to the history that led to this result and life under the new regime.
An excerpt is available at https://www.augurmag.com/are-we-ourselves/ Rpt. in Dark Dispatch, no. 3 (Winter 2022) https://darkdispatch.com/news-features/onsite-issues/article-are-we-ourselves-by-michelle-mellon/. The excerpt was reprinted in The Year’s Best African Speculative Fiction 2021. Ed. Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki (Np: Caezik SF & Fantasy in partnership with O.D. Ekpeki Presents/Jembefola Press, 2023), 185-187.
Keywords: African American author; Female author

The Arrest. A Novel - Jonathan [Allen] Lethem (b. 1964) (Ecco/HarperCollins, 2020)
Although the dust jacket says is not postapocalyptic, a dystopia, or a utopia. After almost all forms of power stop working with no explanation give, it is certainly the first two, and there are elements of a utopia in a farming cooperative, but it is equally a commentary on such fictions. The three main protagonists appeared in his “The Starlet Apartments.” Illus. Ana Galvañ. The New Yorker (March 4, 2019). https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/03/04/the-starlet-apartments which provides background to the novel.
Keywords: Male author; US author

“As the Earth Intended” - P. J. Higham (Again, Hazardous Imaginings: More Politically Incorrect Science Fiction. An International Anthology, 2020)
The story is set in a future Australia experiencing a long drought and focuses on the extreme measures that the state bureaucracy puts in place to deal which includes capital punishment for breaking the rules.
Keywords: Australian author; Male author

“Asymptomatic Sunset: A Ray of Hope” - Lauren Ring (Nature, 2020)
In the story, the protagonist is sorting through pictures of sunsets as the sun swells and swells. The pictures are popular for those left, all of whom have been living underground for a hundred years.
Keywords: Female author; US 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

Automation Nation - Cynthia Kumanchik (AuthorHouse™, 2020)
In the future, a conflict develops between robots and humans, with most of the novel on the conflict, but love between a robot and a human brings about a far-reaching revolution.
Keywords: Female author; US author

Barn 8. A Novel - Deb Olin Unferth (b. 1968) (Graywolf Press, 2020)
The novel depicts the horrors of the way chickens are raised today while also teaching about the complexity and intelligence of chickens. The novel concerns the plan to free a million cage-raised chickens. It ends with an Epilogue (279-282) from the point-of-view of highly evolved chickens thousands of years in the future on the devastated Earth that human created.
Keywords: Female author; US author

“Beasts of Bataranam” - Elly Blue (Dragon Bike: Fantastical Stories of Bicycling, Feminism, and Dragons, 2020)
Dystopia set on a slave plantation in Latin America. Elements of fantasy.
Keywords: Finnish author; Transgender author

“Before I Formed You In the Womb I Knew You” - Michael Rowe (The Dystopian States of America: A Charity Anthology Benefiting the ACLU Foundation, 2020)
The story is set in a dystopian future where Donald Trump is President for Life. Significant elements of fantasy.
Keywords: Canadian author; Male author

A Beginning at the End - Mike Chen (Harlequin/MIRA Books, 2020)
Postapocalyptic (pandemic) dystopia in which the United States is fragmented seen through the eyes of four individuals from different areas struggling to survive and bring about whatever improvement they can.
Keywords: Male author; US author

“Behind Our Irises” - Tlotlo Tsamaase (b. 1989) (Africanfuturism: An Anthology, 2020)
Technological dystopia in which a corporation uses an implant in its employees to control them.
Keywords: Female author; Motswanan author

“Benjamin 2073” - Rjurik Davidson (Tor.com, 2020)
The story is set in Tasmania in a future that has had some success in combating climate change and concerns the attempt to bring back the Thylacine or Tasmanian tiger that is presumed to have become extinct in 1936.
Keywords: Australian author; Male author

"Black Ice City" - Andrew Dana Hudson (Glass and Gardens: Solarpunk Winters. An Anthology, 2020)
The story is set in a future in which people scavenge for ice to build a huge city in the far North where they hold a long winter party.
Keywords: Male author; US author

"Bloom" - Vicki Jarrett (Biopolis: Tales of Urban Biology, 2020)
Three scenarios depicting climate change dystopias.
Keywords: Female author; Scottish author

“Blue Eyes: The Right Look” - Marie [Lillian] Vibbert (b. 1974) (Nature, 2020)
The story depicts a dystopian society with strict border/immigration controls.
Keywords: Female author; US author

"Blue & Red" - Wrath James White (b. 1970) (The Dystopian States of America: A Charity Anthology Benefiting the ACLU Foundation, 2020)
The story is set in a future in which President Trump’s administration has dropped nuclear weapons on North Korea, which has retaliated with biological and chemical weapons.
Keywords: African American author; Male 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

“Bu Liao Qing” - Michelle Law (After Australia, 2020)
The story is set in a climate change dystopia and concerns a young, pregnant, Aboriginal-Asian Australian girl trying to function in a world that rejects her.
Keywords: Australian author; Female author

Busted Synapses - Erica L. Satifka (Broken Eye Books, 2020)
Cyberpunk dystopia. Set in the same future is her “Act of Providence.” In her How to Get to Apocalypse and Other Disasters (Bonney Lake, WA: Fairwood Press, 2021), 219-235, with a note on the story on 328.
Keywords: Female author; US author

"Carnival" - Milton [John] Davis (Hadithi & The State of Black Speculative Fiction, 2020)
The story is set in a high-tech future in which everyone lives inside enclosed communities so that the natural world can regenerate, but it is focused on a celebrated DJ who is preparing a special show for Carnival.
Keywords: African American author; Male author

"Carving Out the Other" - William D. Carl (The Dystopian States of America: A Charity Anthology Benefiting the ACLU Foundation, 2020)
Dystopia in which only blonde, blue-eyed heterosexuals are truly accepted, with various forms of surgery and therapy making it possible to meet that standard. The story focuses on a young, gay man desperate to be accepted.
Keywords: Male author; US author

“Catcher in the Sky” - Paul A. Freeman (Gotta Wear Eclipse Glasses. Third Flatiron Anthologies Volume 9, Book 28 (Summer 2020), 2020)
Due to pollution and the need to control population, life must end at sixty-five.
Keywords: Abu Dhabi author; Male author

“Champions of Water War” - Elly Bangs (b. 1986) (Glitter + Ashes: Queer Tales of a World that Wouldn’t Die, 2020)
The story is set in a future in which water is controlled by one man who distributes to parts of the city based on competitions among champions of each sector.
Keywords: Female author; Queer author; Transgender author; US author

“Chelsea’s Rescue” - J. L. Hagen (Again, Hazardous Imaginings: More Politically Incorrect Science Fiction. An International Anthology, 2020)
The brief story is set in a future conditioned by the Homeless Rescue, Economic Transformation, and Immigrant Containment Act in which human rescues are available for adoption for whatever purposes the adopter has in mind.
Keywords: Male author; US 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

Chosen Spirits - Samit Basu (b. 1979) (Simon & Schuster India, 2020)
The novel is set in Delhi in the late 2020s, a city that is dangerous, badly polluted, short of water, and experiencing ethnic conflict, and constantly on the edge of revolution. The protagonist is a Reality Controller working for a celebrity.
Rpt. New York: Tordotcom, 2022
Keywords: Indian 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

“The Chrysalis” - Laura Scotland (Shoreline of Infinity, 2020)
The story is set in a future Scotland in a world with recurring pandemics where babies are supposed to be kept in the “ideal” conditions of a Chrysalis that ensures it is safe from pathogens.
Rpt. in Shoreline of Infinity, no. 35 (Summer 2023): 83-88.
Keywords: Canadian author; Female author; Scottish 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

Cleo Porter and the Body Electric - Jake Burt (Feiwel & Friends, 2020)
Middle grade dystopia in which every family is, as a result of a pandemic, permanently isolated in separate apartments.
Keywords: Male author; US author

“Close Your Eyes in Peace Tonight” - Craig Wolf (The Dystopian States of America: A Charity Anthology Benefiting the ACLU Foundation, 2020)
The story is set in a future in which aliens, having concluded that humans had so damaged the Earth that all over twelve must die to let Earth regenerate. Those twelve and under will be removed to a new place.
Keywords: Male author; US author

“The Coming of the Grey Goose” - Mike Johnson (b. 1947) (Scorchers: A Climate Fiction Anthology, 2020)
The story is set in a future in which Aotearoa New Zealand is disappearing under water. The book includes a Glossary (270-276). The author also wrote an environmental political novel aimed at Monsanto’s herbicide Roundup--Lethal Dose. Onehunga, <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Auckland</st1:city></st1:place>: Hard Echo Press, 1991.
Keywords: Aotearoa New Zealand author; Male author

The Companions. A Novel - Katie M. Flynn (: Scout Press/Simon & Schuster, 2020)
Pandemic dystopia with years long quarantine and “companions” in which individual’s consciousness are uploaded before dying.
Keywords: Female author; US author

"Company Town" - Kiya Nicoll (Recognize Fascism: A Science Fiction and Fantasy Anthology, 2020)
The story is set in a corporation dominated future where there is a strong movement against anyone with augmentations and others who do not fall within a narrow ethnicity, gender, and race range. Ends very abruptly.
Keywords: Neurodivergent author; US author

Complex - A[nno] D. Enderly (Luminary Media, 2020)
The novel is set in a future in which governments have been replaced by corporate Complexes that promise security and everything needful in exchange for personal freedom. The main thread in the novel concerns one young woman searching for her kidnapped sister, which allows the author to explore varied aspects of the future society.
Keywords: Male author; US author

Connor & Seal: a harlem story in 47 poems - Jee Leong Koh (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2020)
The poems follow the lives of two gay men living in the U.S. from their births in Jamaica in 1983 and Nebraska in 1990 to their marriage in 2020 and their deaths in 2064 and 2066. The period after 2020 becomes more violent and dystopia. Some of the poems were previously published, sometimes in earlier versions.
Keywords: Male author; Singaporean author; US author

“On the Contrary, Yes” - Catherine F. King (Glass and Gardens: Solarpunk Winters. An Anthology, 2020)
The story is set in a future in which climate change has produced weather extremes and radically changed how and where people live.
Keywords: Female author; US author

Corporate Gunslinger: Greed Means Debt Means Violence. A Novel - Doug Engstrom (Harper Voyaher, 2020)
In mid-twenty-first century everyone is debt, with loans secured by a “lifetime service contract.” The novel focuses on a young woman who, to avoid defaulting agrees to be a corporate gunfighter in duels that are the final stage in arbitration.
Keywords: Male author; US author

"The Countdown" - Diallo, Amadou (The New York Times Sunday Review, 2020)
Dystopia set in a future where, in order to control the population and create a better society, the moment of everyone’s death is predetermined.
Keywords: African American author; Male author

“A Cracked Teapot” - Sherry Shahan (b. 1949) (Shoreline of Infinity, 2020)
The story is set in a future where, due to climate change, most people live underground. The protagonist is a young woman desperate to get out and find like-minded people.
Keywords: Female author; US author

Cradle and Grave - Anya Ow (Neon Hemlock Press, 2020)
A post-apocalyptic dystopia in which radiation has caused man extreme mutations.
Keywords: Australian author; Female author; Singaporean author

Crosshairs - Catherine Hernandez (Atria/Simon & Schuster, 2020)
Set in a future during the Renovation where Canada has relocated anyone not White, cisgender, straight norm to labor camps. The focus of the novel is on the Resistance.
Keywords: Canadian author; Female author; Queer author

“The Currant Dumas” - L. D. Lewis (Glitter + Ashes: Queer Tales of a World that Wouldn’t Die, 2020)
The story is set on a circus train in a climate change dystopia following a great storm that obliterated the eastern seaboard, including the U.S. capital. Eleven years later there is no government, no financial system, so no currency, and everyone is simply struggling to survive.
Keywords: African American author; Female 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

Deal with the Devil. A Mercenary Librarians Novel - [Donna] [Herren]; [Bree] [Bridges] (Tor, 2020)
Postapocalyptic (solar storm that downed satellites and the power grid) dystopia that fragmented the United States. The Mercenary Libraries are information brokers traveling the country. First volume in a series.
Keywords: Female author; US 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

“The Department of Talent Resources. We Can Take Care of Everything: Part I” - Carrie Vaughn (b. 1973) (Ignorance is Strength: The Dystopia Triptych 1, 2020)
The first part of a three-part story developed over three volumes. In this part, a young woman who is struggling to survive financially after a bad accident is approach by a recruiter for a corporation that promises to take care of everything if she signs on. In the second part, “Keep Your Streak Going! We Can Take Care of Everything: 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), 3-16, she has been working for the corporation for six years, health problems solved, living on its campus, which she never leaves, and appears happy while under constant pressure to fulfill set tasks within specified time periods to gain or lose credits, which are needed for everything. She and a man she just met even conceive a child to gain credit. The man is not a hard worker and falls down in the system. The woman does well, but at the end of the story her now-grown daughter chooses to leave the corporation and strike out on her own. In the third part, “You Have Been Crowdfunded. We Can Take Care of Everything: Part II.” 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), 3-16, she and three friends are looking to retire at one of the corporation’s retirement homes but cannot actually confirm their existence or contact anyone they know who has retired.
Keywords: Female author; US author

“Depth of Simulation” - Gavin Inglis (Biopolis: Tales of Urban Biology, 2020)
The story is set in a future in which people can be enhanced in many different ways, not all of them producing positive results.
Keywords: Male author; Scottish author

“The Desert in Me” - Priya Chand (Little Blue Marble, 2020)
The story is set in a future in which the environment has been severely damaged. At eighteen everyone experiences being an aspect of the natural world through virtual reality, and those who damage the environment are punished in the same way.
Rpt. without the illustration in Little Blue Marble 2020: Greener Futures. Ed. Katrina Archer (Vancouver, BC, Canada: Ganache Media, 2020), 7-19, with a note on the author on 11.
Keywords: Female author; US author

A Diary in the Age of Water. A Novel - Nina Munteanu (b. 1954) (Ianna Publications and Education, 2020)
The novel is in the form of an incomplete diary from 2045 to 2066 describing the depletion of water on Earth, the attempts to control the weather to produce rain, bedeviled by corporal and nationalist disputes, the movement of people, plants, and animals north, and the way Earth revolts. It is framed by, at the beginning, an epilogue from 125 AW (After Water) and a chapter that introduces the blue, four-armed reader of the diary, and, at the end, a chapter of explanation of what happened after the diary ends. See also 2016 Munteanu, The Way of Water/Natura dell'acqua.
Keywords: Canadian author; Female author

“Displaced” - Zoya Patel (After Australia, 2020)
The story is set in a future in which Fiji and many other islands and coasts have been flooded. The protagonist is a Fijian who immigrated to Australia and become a citizen, who is hoping that her relatives will be accepted for immigration. It also notes the racism of the immigration process, and the growing racism directed at people of color.
Keywords: Australian author; Female author; Fijian author

Docile [The dust jacket has the subtitle There Is No Consent Under Capitalism] - K. M. Szpara (Tor.com/Tom Doherty Associates, 2020)
In the future the debts of the parents must be paid by the children, and this is done by selling oneself as a Docile through the Office of Debt Resolution. Normally the period as a Docile is undertaken using the drug Dociline. The novel centers on one man who refuses to take Dociline whose contract is bought by a man from the family who created the drug and the program.
Keywords: Queer author; Transgender author; US author

“Don’t Mind Me” - Suzanne Palmer (b. 1968) (Entanglements: Tomorrow’s Lovers, Families and Friends, 2020)
The story is set in a future where, using technology, parents can control what their children read, even in school. The “Minder” deletes material the parents would not approve, which makes understanding lessons rather difficult.
Rpt. in The Year’s Best Science Fiction Volume 2. Ed Jonathan Strahan (New York: Saga Press, 2021), 379-400, with a note about the author on 379.

“The Double-Cab Club” - Tim Jones (b. 1959) (Stuff, 2020)
The story is set in Aotearoa New Zealand in 2030 as the country cuts its carbon usage in an attempt to reverse climate change. Showers are already limited to three minutes. After secondary school. everyone must spend a period working for the in the Climate Corps. The story is told from the point-of-view of a man who still owns an SUV, although he mostly drives an electric car.
Rpt. without the illus. in Year’s Best Aotearoa New Zealand Science Fiction and Fantasy Volume III. Ed. Marie Hodgkinson ([Wellington, New Zealand]: Paper Road Press, 2021), 114-24.
Keywords: Aotearoa New Zealand author; Male author

“Drones to Plowshares” - Sarah Gailey (Terraform, 2020)
The story is set in a future in which agriculture and farming in strictly regulated by the Department of Agricultural Enforcement using drones to ensure that the rules are being followed. The point-of-view character is a drone that has been captured by a farming settlement that is breaking all the rules.
Rpt. without the illus. in The Year’s Best Science Fiction Volume 2. Ed Jonathan Strahan (New York: Saga Press, 2021), 51-64, with a note on the author on 51; and without the illus. in Terraform Watch Worlds Burn. Ed. Brian Merchant and Claire L. Evans (New York: MCD X FSG Originals/Farrar, Straus and Giroux/Motherboard/Vice, 2022), 239-253.
Keywords: Female author; US author

“On a Dusty Trail” - Cat[herine] Scully (The Dystopian States of America: A Charity Anthology Benefiting the ACLU Foundation, 2020)
The story is set in an environmentally damaged future experiencing a long, severe drought. It is concerned with what is supposed to be a system to take women to freedom in the north where there is still water, but it is being used for a different purpose.
Keywords: Female author; US author

Election 2220: Night of the Voting Dead. Novel in Two Parts - John Pansini ([Roofman The Spy Publishing], 2020)
The 2220 mayoral election in Stars Hollow, Connecticut, pits the liberal African American Russell Limbaugh-Trump against the far-right Mrs. Sarah Palin-Trump. The two sections are “Zombies Saved By Bible” (1-148) and “Swing Vote” (149-317).
Keywords: Male author; US author

Empire City - Matt Gallagher (b. 1983) (Atria Books, 2020)
Alternative history dystopia in which Richard Nixon was not impeached and did not resign, the United States won the war in Vietnam, there are sixties states, including Empire City (New York City), and the Sixties never happened. The United States is embroiled in another long-lasting war, and the military seems to be taking over the U.S. through the electoral process. The ending suggests a sequel.
Keywords: Male author; US author

The End of October - Lawrence Wright (b. 1947) (Alfred A. Knopf, 2020)
Pandemic (virus) dystopia.
Keywords: Male author; US author

"Enemy of the People" - Dan Foley (The Dystopian States of America: A Charity Anthology Benefiting the ACLU Foundation, 2020)
A journalist who believes in telling the truth is being hunted down as a flees to Canada.
Keywords: Male author; US author

e-Pocalypse: The Digital Dystopia Is Coming - Steve Bellinger (Wordwooze Publishing, 2020)
Dystopia in which popular technology such as glasses are engineered to change behavior and comes to control most of the population.
Keywords: African American author; Male author

“Escape from the Future” - Paul Clayton (Escape from the Future and Other Stories, 2020)
About half the novella is a depiction of the protagonist as a teenage boy growing up in a typical middle, working class suburb. The second half is set in 2025 where all the conflicts of the pandemic era continue violently, the suburb has been destroyed and groups protest and kill mindlessly. Government is mostly non-existent or simply incompetent.
Keywords: Male author; US author

“Even God Has a Place Called Home” - Ray Mwihaki (Us in Flux, 2020)
A virus is killing everyone by their early thirties, but one woman, who eats organically and lives in the country, is in her eighties.
Keywords: Female author; Kenyan author

“The Everything Store” - Danyl McLauchlan (b. 1974) (Monsters in the Garden: An Anthology of Aotearoa New Zealand Science Fiction and Fantasy, 2020)
The story depicts a dystopia in which everyone lives in what appears to be one immense store set in the middle of a desert with people trading goods within the store in order to survive.
Keywords: Aotearoa New Zealand 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

The Eyelid - S[ylwia] D[ominika] Chrostowska (Coach House Books, 2020)
The novel takes place in a future where sleep is outlawed, and people are put on uppers to enhance productivity.
Keywords: Canadian author; Female author

Failed State - Christopher [Tracy] Brown (b. 1964) (Harper Voyager, 2020)
A sequel to 2017 Brown and, more directly, 2019 Brown with the same central character as in the latter. After the second American Revolution, even though the old regime is gone, the peace is fragile. The former rebels are trying to build turn what remains of New Orleans into a green utopia but using kidnapping for ransom to pay for it. Climate change, which has destroyed cities and produced food shortages, is a major theme.
Keywords: Male author; US author

False Title - Updated - Andrew Gearhart Jr. (2020)

"Field Trip" - [Alexandra Margaret] [Dellamonica] (b. 1968) (Little Blue Marble, 2020)
The story is set in a future Canada struggling to overcome past environmental damage with considerable success. Based on neighborhoods voting on most issues with children able to vote from age ten.
Rpt. without the illustration in Little Blue Marble 2020: Greener Futures. Ed. Katrina Archer (Vancouver, BC, Canada: Ganache Media, 2020), with a note on the author on 153-54.
Keywords: Canadian author; Genderqueer 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

"Flyover Country" - Julie C. Day (Interzone, 2020)
The story is set in a future facing a virus that gradually or, in some cases, suddenly changes the structure of the human body and mind. In order to escape from it, the protagonist had moved to rural New Hampshire after her closest friend was infected. RAICES is The Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services. Female author.
Rpt. without the illus. in Weird Dream Society: An Anthology in Support of RAICES [The cover adds of the Possible & Unsubstantiated after Anthology. Ed. Julie C. Day with co-editors Carina Bissett and Chip Houser ([Lake Orion, MI]: Weird Dream Society/Reckoning Press, 2020), 74-94.
Keywords: Female author; US author

"For Our Sins . . ." - Andrew Fox (b. 1964) (Hazardous Imaginings: The Mondo Book of Politically Incorrect Science Fiction, 2020)
The story is set in a future that has gone through a number of major changes in social relations, and there are footnotes that explain terms and social practices that the contemporary reader would not understand. The protagonist is an archaeologist who has uncovered precious texts in the “matriarchal-patriarchal dialectic,” Joanna Russ’s The Female Man and John Norman’s Ghost Dance and Slave Girl of Gor
Keywords: Male author; US author

“For Those Who Would Come After” - G. Bear McKenna (Little Blue Marble, 2020)
The brief story is set in a climate change future in which the protagonist transforms an old farm and farmhouse into an ecologically balanced system.
Rpt. without the illustration in Little Blue Marble 2020: Greener Futures. Ed. Katrina Archer (Vancouver, BC, Canada: Ganache Media, 2020), 108-110, with a note on the author on 110.
Keywords: Male author; US author

“For Want of Blue Eyes” - Stephen Lomer (The Dystopian States of America: A Charity Anthology Benefiting the ACLU Foundation, 2020)
The story id set in the near future in which all Muslims, Mexicans, and anyone not white had been deported from the United States. When the remaining people started to complain that no one was doing the essential work, blame was placed on anyone who didn’t have blue eyes.
Keywords: Male author; US author

“For Whom the Bell Curve Tolls” - Xiaodan Liu [pseud.] (Again, Hazardous Imaginings: More Politically Incorrect Science Fiction. An International Anthology, 2020)
The story is set in a future United States that has established American Equity under which those whose families had been disadvantaged in the past due to their race, ethnicity, family poverty, and so forth are rewarded and those whose families were advantaged in the past are now living in poverty in rundown housing, poor schooling, and so forth.
Keywords: Chinese author; Female author; US author

“Forward Momentum and a Parallel Toss” - AnaMaria Curtis (Clarkesworld Magazine, 2020)
The story is set in a future where one powerful corporation is in complete control, and a teacher in a small town fights back.
Rpt. illus. in Little Blue Marble (March 11, 2022. https://littlebluemarble.ca/2022/03/11/forward-momentum-and-a-parallel-toss/; and without the illus. in Little Blue Marble 2022: Warmer Worlds. Ed. Katrina Archer (Np: Genache Media, 2023), 92-111, with a note on the author on 111
Keywords: Female author; US author

“Fourth and Most Important” - Nisi [Denise Angela] Shawl (b. 1955) (Us in Flux, 2020)
The story is set in an authoritarian dystopia that serves the interests of the ultra-rich.
Rpt. in Dreams for a Better Worlds: Book Two in the Dreams Anthology Series. Ed. Ellen Meeropol. Assistant eds. Carina Bissett and Celia Jeffries. Series Ed. Julie C. Day ([Lake Orion, MI: Reckoning Press]/Essential Dreams Press, 2022), 159-165.
Keywords: African American author; Female author

"Frontrunners" - John M. McIlveen (The Dystopian States of America: A Charity Anthology Benefiting the ACLU Foundation, 2020)
The story depicts a future United States in which active shooters are a constant part of daily life.
Keywords: Male author; US author

“The Fugue of Winter” - Steve Toase (Glass and Gardens: Solarpunk Winters. An Anthology, 2020)
In the frozen future, people search for useful valuables and find a violin, something that no one has heard in many, many years.
Keywords: German author; Male author

Future Girl - Asphyxia [pseud.] (Allen & Unwin Australia, 2020)
The setting for the novel is a future Australia is dominated by a corporation that has developed an artificial food and has made the growing and consumption of “wild” food illegal. The point-of-view character is a sixteen-year-old girl who is deaf and whose hearing mother, concerned that she be able to fully integrate into hearing society, sends her to a regular school, go through speech therapy, and fails to realize that even with hearing aids and lipreading she struggles to understand most of what people say or, because she cannot sign or fingerspell, communicate with other deaf people. Her one love is art, and the novel is heavily illustrated in color on every page. The novel has two intertwined threads as the girl comes into her own as she learns Auslan (Australian sign language) and finger spelling, begins to become integrated into the Deaf community, and becomes an advocate for natural food.
Keywords: Australian author; Deaf author; Female author

“The Future in Color” - [Rekka Korol] [Jay] (1980-2023) (Glitter + Ashes: Queer Tales of a World that Wouldn’t Die, 2020)
The story is set in a post-apocalypse future with the protagonist a bicycle courier who is transporting saved artifacts to a community that is trying to collect and save remnants of civilization.
Keywords: Female author; Transgender author; US author

“The Gamecocks” - J. T. Petty (Lightspeed, 2020)
The story is set in the near future where driverless trucks make sio much money for the companies that it is decided it makes no difference how many people they kill.
Keywords: Male author; US author

“The Gardener” - Alexander Forbes (Social Alternatives (Brisbane, Qld, Australia), 2020)
Vignette the describes a social order based entirely on efficiency, personally, socially, and economically.
Keywords: Australian author; Male author

Gathering Evidence - Martin MacInnes (b. 1983) (Atlantic Books, 2020)
The novel begins with a new app that is addictive and then moves back to how and why it was developed.
Keywords: Male author; Scottish author

"Ghost Fishing" - William Delman (Little Blue Marble, 2020)
The story is set in a future where fishing for fish has been replaced by fishing for all the junk dumped in the ocean.
Rpt. without the illustration in Little Blue Marble 2020: Greener Futures. Ed. Katrina Archer (Vancouver, BC, Canada: Ganache Media, 2020), 76-80, with a note on the author on 81.
Keywords: Male author; US author

"Ghoul" - George Saunders (b. 1958) (The New Yorker, 2020)
An odd story taking place in the Hell section of an underground amusement park that the employees never leave. Even the slightest criticism or dissent must be reported and death.
Rpt. in his Liberation Day: Stories (New York: Random House, 2022), 139-170
Keywords: Male author; US author

“Glâcehouse” - R. Jean Mathieu (Glass and Gardens: Solarpunk Winters. An Anthology, 2020)
The story is set in an independent Québec, where English is little understood or spoken outside the major cities. Winter is a thing of the past and immense Glâcehouses have been built in which winter is created, but, as it turns out, the Glâcehouses create other problems.
Keywords: Male author; US author

The Glare - Margot Harrison (Little, Brown and Co., 2020)
Young adult dystopia centered on a computer game that takes over anyone playing it.
Keywords: Female author; US author

“Glass Houses. Letters: Part I” - Cadwell Turnbull (Ignorance is Strength: The Dystopia Triptych 1, 2020)
Dystopia in three parts in which a U. S. President is elected on a Right to Work platform, which turns out to mean that if you don’t contribute to society at an acceptable level as set by the government, such as doing poorly in high school, you will be forced to work on a farm for minimal food, housing, and wages. The second part is set on such a farm with those who refuse to work on the farm, and anyone considered a danger to society including everyone in jail, are frozen in a cyro chamber. The third part illustrates the conflicts taking place within a family where a child is not doing well at school.
Keywords: African American author; Male author; US Virgin Islands author

“Glasslands. Wrack: Part I” - Tim[othy Aaron] Pratt (b. 1976) (Ignorance is Strength: The Dystopia Triptych 1, 2020)
Three-part story set in a future where people from a different reality arrive on Earth intending to set everything straight and create a eutopia for all. The story is told from the point of view of three people from a band All You Need to Change the World is Faith and a Chainsaw who do not want to be Harmonized, as the invaders call it. Chronologically, the invasion is described as seen by the woman who leads the band members and who immediately wants to start a revolution in “Spheres and Harmonies. Wrack: 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), 17-33. In Glasslands. Wrack: Part I.” Ignorance is Strength: The Dystopia Triptych 1. Ed. John Joseph Adams, Hugh Howey, and Christine Yant (New York/London: Broad Reach Publishing + Adamant Press, 2020), 15-28, a woman who is an artist whose desire to burn her creations is sent a reserve for the disaffected. And in “Cacophany. Wrack: 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), 17-32, a man who is an urban explorer and would be happy to be if he could explore other realms is not allowed to, so he joins the woman from Part III to invade the reserve.
Keywords: Male author; US author

Glimpses of Utopia: Real Ideas for a Fairer World - Jess Scully (Pentera Press, 2020)
In one sense this is a straightforward political book, but the author presents her arguments by discussing all the things she thinks need to be done to bring about a good society. A Universal Basic Income and cooperatives are fundamental but in sixty mostly short chapters, she covers a lot of ground.
Keywords: Australian author; Female author

Godshot. A Novel - Chelsea Bieker (b. 1987) (Catapult, 2020)
The novel is set in a climate change dystopia, and focuses on a young woman abandoned by her mother in an authoritarian religious intentional community and her struggle to find both her mother and herself.
Keywords: Female author; US author

Goldilocks - Laura Lam (b. 1988) (Wildfire, 2020)
The novel is initially set on an Earth damaged by climate-change and with women treated as inferior beings. It then moves to an all-female starship on its way to a planet in the Goldilocks zone around a sun where humans should be able to live and deals with the tensions and conflicts that occur on the starship. The ending suggests that there will be a sequel.
U.S. ed. New York: Orbit, 2020
Keywords: Female author; Scottish author; US author

“Green-Up on Aisle 13” - Dorie Sarina (Little Blue Marble, 2020)
The story is set in an extremely polluted future in which breathing masks are necessary anywhere outside.
Rpt. without the illustration in Little Blue Marble 2020: Greener Futures. Ed. Katrina Archer (Vancouver, BC, Canada: Ganache Media, 2020), 19-27, with a note on the author on 27-28.
Keywords: Female author; US author

"Growing Roots" - Alan Bao (Reckoning 4: Creative Writing on Environmental Justice, 2020)
The protagonist of the story is a young Chinese American woman exiled to the moon from a United States who has put all those considered non-American into camps and sent anyone of dissents from current policies to the moon. Constant cold and hot war on Earth means the moon is largely abandoned.
Also published online at https://reckoning.press/growing-roots/ (June 17, 2020)
Keywords: Canadian 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

"Halps' Promise" - Holly Schofield (Glass and Gardens: Solarpunk Winters. An Anthology, 2020)
The story is set in an intentional community that has replaced the town of Banff, Alberta sixteen years after the Climate Collapse. The community is struggling to survive, trying to get failing technology to work or by repurposing it.
Keywords: Canadian author; Female author

"Health Care" - Cannon, Michael F. (Visions of Liberty, 2020)
Presented as if a visitor from the future describes the improved market-based, profit oriented health care of 2050 compared to that in 2020.
Keywords: Male author; US author

The Heap - Sean Adams (William Morrow/HarperCollins, 2020)
Dystopia in which a huge apartment building, known as Los Verticalés, collapses and life for many of the survivors focuses on digging into the remains of the building, call the Heap. Others begin to create a new community called CamperTown. Themes include climate change and corporate and government corruption.
Keywords: Male author; US author

The Hierarchies. A Novel - Ros Anderson (Dutton/Penguin Random House, 2020)
The novel follows the life of Sylv.ie, a synthetic woman, designed to be a “pleasure doll,” as she gains awareness she develops a sense of herself. She must follow the Four Hierarchies: “Love, obey, and delight your Husband [owner]. You exist to serve him. Honor his family above yourself and never come between them. You must not harm your Husband, nor his family, nor any Human. Make no demands, but meet them, and obey every reasonable Human request” (13). A film is in production.
Keywords: Female author

"How All This Ends" - Brad J. Boucher (The Dystopian States of America: A Charity Anthology Benefiting the ACLU Foundation, 2020)
The story is set in a future in while all minorities have sterilized.
Keywords: Male author; US author

“How to Pay Reparations: A Documentary” - Tochi [Joshua] Onyebuchi (b. 1987) (Slate, 2020)
The story is set in the near future in which one town decides to pay its Black residents for the history of racism. .
Rpt. in The Year’s Best Science Fiction Volume 2. Ed Jonathan Strahan (New York: Saga Press, 2021), 525-42, with a note about the author on 525; and in The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy™ 2021. Ed Veronica Roth (Boston, MA: Mariner  Books/HarperCollins, 2021), 78-92.
Keywords: African American author; Male author

“How We Burn” - Brenda Peynado (b. 1985) (Lightspeed, 2020)
The story is set in a future with most plants and animals extinct, and a long one child policy has produced a surveillance society and overly protective families. The story is told from the point-of-view of a rebellious teenager.
Keywords: Dominican American author; Female author

"I Needed the Discounts" - Connor Willumsen (The New York Times Sunday Review, 2020)
Dystopia in which individuals wear a suit that keeps them constantly fed ads with discounts. Upgrades ultimately take over the person’s life. Presented graphically.
Keywords: Canadian author; Male author

“Idle Hands. Robots Rise: Part I” - Tobias S[amuel] Buckell (b. 1979) (Ignorance is Strength: The Dystopia Triptych 1, 2020)
Dystopia in three parts set on Moreland, a seasteading built outside the U.S. territorial waters so that the extremely wealthy can live free of taxes and any laws but their own. The second generation discovers that there is no one to do the work, so they bring in thousands of robots, including sentient AIs, one of whom is the protagonist in all three stories. In the first story, the AI is bored and arranges to be thrown into the ocean to kill him. In the second story set some years later, the AI has been found and restored to life by a dissident faction that is trying to foment revolution. In the third story, after the owner of Moreland has killed the AI, it is again restored to run in an election.
Keywords: British Virgin Islands author; Grenadian author; Male author; US author; US Virgin Islands author

"Immigration" - Alex Nowrasteh (Visions of Liberty, 2020)
Alternative history depicting the ways in which the United States would be better today if it had never imposed immigration controls. The text includes information on the controls that were imposed.
Keywords: Male author; US author

“The Immolation of Kev Magee” - [Alexandra Margaret] [Dellamonica] (b. 1968) (Clarkesworld, 2020)
In a climate-change future, a billionaire is using some of his money to refreeze parts of the Arctic in exchange for tax breaks and the government not looking too hard at his finances. Extreme poverty and people depend on a wide variety of ways of getting points on social media to gain or maintain status. The author’s novel Gamechanger. New York: Tor, 2019 is set in the same future.
Keywords: Canadian author; Genderqueer author

"Impy" - Fiona M. Jones (MonstraCity Press, 2020)
The story is set in a future where the government provides every child an IM or Individualized MentorPet to reinforce their self-esteem.
Keywords: Female author; Scottish author

“In Silent Streams, Where Once the Summer Shone” - Seanan McGuire (b. 1978) (Shapers of Worlds: Science fiction & fantasy by authors featured on the Aurora Award-winning podcast The Worshippers, 2020)
The story is about a slow apocalypse and all the “little” things that people ignore from bees to viruses that accumulate until it is too late.
Keywords: Female author; US author

“Inheritors. The Inheritors: Part I” - Hugh [Crocker] Howey (b. 1975) (Ignorance is Strength: The Dystopia Triptych 1, 2020)
Dystopia in three parts. In the first part, a researcher who develops a cure for cancer and wants it freely available has it taken by her university so it can make huge profits. She then develops a simple genetic manipulation that produces highly intelligent and physically able children and gives it secretly to the extremely disadvantaged. In the second part, “normal” humans are trying, with considerable success, to eliminate the enhanced humans. In the third part, while the violence against the advanced continues, a rapprochement seems possible.
Keywords: Male author; US author

“An intersection of Parallel Lives: Blood Ties” - Wendy Nikel (Nature, 2020)
The story is told from the perspective a passenger on a of a far-future colony ship where the internal economy is based on the free market who travels to an old, slow colony ship where helping others is the norm and an ecological eutopia has been created within the ship.
Rpt. without the subtitle and with a different illus. Little Blue Marble (July 8, 2022). https://littlebluemarble.ca/2022/07/08/an-intersection-of-parallel-lives/; and without the subtitle or an illus. in Little Blue Marble 2022: Warmer Worlds. Ed. Katrina Archer (Np: Genache Media, 2023), 54-58, with a note on the author on 58.
Keywords: Female author; US author

“Interstate Africana” - W. C. Dunlap (Fiyah: Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction, 2020)
The story depicts a “highway” through the universe travelled by African souls.
Keywords: African American author; Female author

"Islanders" - Alexander Weinstein (Universal Love. Stories, 2020)
The story is set in a future where climate change has inundated much of the country and a man and his son living on an island survive by fishing and diving for supplies in submerged homes.
Keywords: Male author; US author

“Jigsaw Children" - Grace Chan (Clarkesworld, 2020)
The story is set in Hong Kong, which had become a part of the People’s Republic in 2047, and mainland China between 2098 and 2126. The protagonist is one of the “jigsaw children,” children who had been created by gene splicing and the carried by a surrogate mother, with China setting an annual quota of babies. She has three mothers and two fathers (the surrogate mother doesn’t count), and all the children are raised in a Children’s Center until they are sixteen, with the girls having an implant that stops menstruation at thirteen and the boys a vasectomy at sixteen. Over the years of the story, conflict over the program grows.
Keywords: Australian author; Female author

The Key to Fear - Kristin Cast (Blackstone, 2020)
First volume of a dystopian series in which, following a pandemic, touching is forbidden and books are banned. The Key holds complete power, and the novel focus on a woman who believes all is for the best and a man who is a rebel. The second volume is The Key to Fury (2022).
U.K. ed. London: Head of Zeus, 2020.
Keywords: Female author; Japanese author; US author

Kimber: Book One of the Elyrian Chronicles - L. K. Hingey (Author, 2020)
When a solar storm irradiated Earth, the few survivors fled deep underground. In 2209 a subspecies of humankind has been created, and a major focus of the novel is whether they are fully human or can be enslaved. Forthcoming volumes are to include Cheyenne: Book Two of the Elyrian Chronicles and two prequel volumes.
Keywords: Female author; US author

"The Kindly Ones" - Andrew Fox (b. 1964) (Hazardous Imaginings: The Mondo Book of Politically Incorrect Science Fiction, 2020)
The story is set in a future that has adopted many of the policies identified with liberalism that the author doesn’t like. The focus of the story told through a series of reports of the investigation of a Christian father’s treatment of his child.
Keywords: Male author; US author

The Last Good Man - McMullan, Thomas (Bloomsbury, 2020)
The novel is set in a post-pandemic world in which the protagonist escapes the crumbling city to a much too perfect village. The villagers write anonymous accusations on a huge wall, which bring the Reckoning. Reminiscent of Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” (1948).
Keywords: Male author; Scottish 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

“The Last of the Goggled Barskys” - Joey Siara (Slate, 2020)
The story is set in an apparently eutopian future with no wars or poverty in which everyone wears Goggles that curate their lives, giving three rated choices for every action. In the story, a couple is apparently successfully raising their children with the Goggles, but then decide to introduce uncertainty.
Keywords: Female author; Male author; US author

“The Last Testament” - Aurelius Raines II (FIYAH: Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction, 2020)
Set in the future, the story is about the violence against young African American by the Chicago police.
Keywords: African American author; Male author

“The Last to Die” - Rita Chang-Eppig (Clarkesworld, 2020)
The story is set in a future in which most people have become nearly immortal by uploading themselves into cyborg bodies, and those who could not be uploaded are isolated on islands and cared for by robots.
Keywords: Female author; US author

“The Last White Rhinoceros” - Witi [Tame] Ihimaera[-Smiler] (b. 1944) (Monsters in the Garden: An Anthology of Aotearoa New Zealand Science Fiction and Fantasy, 2020)
Post-apocalyptic (nuclear war) dystopia in which most humans died, most of the remaining preyed on each other, and the few insolated groups of survivors, most notably some Māori, were collected by the new android civilization in hopes of restarting homo sapiens.
Keywords: Aotearoa New Zealand author; Male author; Māori 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

The Loop - Ben Oliver (Chicken House, 2020)
The first volume of a planned young adult trilogy. In this volume a sixteen-year-old boy is being held in prison awaiting execution. As the world outside changes, the world in the prison deteriorates even further as the boy tries to escape. The second volume is The Block. Frome, Eng.: Chicken House, 2020. U.S. ed. New York: Chicken House/Scholastic, 2021.
U.S. ed. New York: Chicken House/Scholastic, 2020.
Keywords: Male author; Scottish 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

"Love Letter" - George Saunders (b. 1958) (The New Yorker, 2020)
A letter from a grandfather to his grandson in the near future when a corrupt authoritarian government under the leadership of one man (clearly Donald Trump) who won the presidency three times and then by his son has taken over the U.S. The grandfather reflects on what has grandson should do when a friend has been disappeared.
Rpt. without the illus. in his Liberation Day: Stories (New York: Random House, 2022), 95-104.
Keywords: Male author; US author

“Lyceum. Aiden Part I” - Karin Lowachee (b. 1973) (Ignorance is Strength: The Dystopia Triptych 1, 2020)
A three-part dystopia in which a company is developing a neurological educational link that will give all children access to knowledge and help in understanding it. The eutopian possibilities of the project are derailed when the teenage son of the developer is killed in an accident, and she becomes fixed on the neurolink, which had named after her son. In the second part, the man who took over its development makes it possible for the link to be shared, and it spreads throughout the population beyond schools, with some seeing the results positively and others seeing them negatively. In the third part, the developer creates an android that can access the neurolink and looks and acts as if it is human.
Keywords: Canadian author; Female author; Guyanese author

The Machine That Would Rewild Humanity” - Tobias S[amuel] Buckell (b. 1979) (Escape Pod: The Science Fiction Anthology, 2020)
The story is told by an AI who is the head of a project to rewild Earth with extinct animals, including humans, a few of which were brought back earlier and are housed in the Kensington Zoo.
Keywords: British Virgin Islands author; Grenadian author; Male author; US author; US Virgin Islands author

The Maiden Voyage of New York City - Gary Girod (b. 1990) (Brain Lag, 2020)
At the beginning of the novel, Manhattan is flooded, and the first two floors of office buildings are unusable, but then all the main buildings are raised up. There follows a war for control of the city.
Keywords: Male author; US author

Mallworld Incorporated - Jeffery Zavadil (b. 1969) ([Bookbaby], 2020)
Following the devastation of the environment that made it impossible to grow any food, everyone, except “workeys” condemned to short lives in the algae farms, lives in a huge mall that extends from Milwaukee, Wisconsin to Pennsylvania. Everyone must spend constantly and up to their minimum shopping quota, or they are sent outside for a time. Monthly fashion. Everyone is said to be fat and happy, and the basic belief system is that “Libertarian capitalism made us all free” (18). Definite status differentiation. The protagonist reads and old utopia and begins to wonder if there could be a more fulfilling life, and over the course of the novel, he reinvents himself both physically and mentally and begins to challenge the norms of behavior in the Mall. His attitude to the people outside the Mall, who he had seen as animals, he comes to see as fellow human beings, and begins the process of trying to create a better society. First volume of a trilogy followed by Mallworld Incorporated: Bound Together. Np: [Bookbaby], 2020, in which the powerful in Mallworld respond, often violently, to the movement to make Mallworld more equal. Mallworld Incorporated: Bound Forward is forthcoming.
Keywords: Male author; US author

"Mama Wata" - Sisonke Msimang (Unlimited Futures: Speculative, Visionary Blak and Black Fiction, 2020)
The story details the destruction of the environment, especially water, from the perspective of the last surviving mermaid.
Keywords: Australian author; Canadian author; Female author; Kenyan author; South African author; US author; Zambian author

Master Class - Christina [Villafãna] Dalcher (Berkley/Penguin Random House, 2020)
The novel is set in a future in which every individual is graded through standardized tests, which determines their place in society, with the low scoring sent to work farms. Based on the eugenics movement of the early twentieth century.
UK ed. as Q: London: HarperCollins, 2020. 384 pp.
Keywords: Female author; US author

The Ministry for the Future - Kim Stanley Robinson (b. 1952) (Orbit/Hachette Book Group, 2020)
Set in the near future when climate change is rapidly worsening, the Ministry for the Future is established by the United Nations with little actual power, but it brings together a number of committed people determined to bring about changes, some through diplomacy, others through any means possible. The novel follows the woman who is head of the Ministry and her interactions with the heads of the most powerful national banks, some of the ways scientists throughout the world are trying to limit the effects of climate change and improve peoples’ lives, and some of the attempts to further change or oppose it through violence.
Three chapters are reprinted in No More Fairy Tales: Stories to Save Our Planet. Ed. D[enise] A. Baden (Np: Habitat Press, 2022), Chapter 42 as “The Carboni” (94-101), Chapter 22 as “Drambers” (234-239), and Chapter 93 as “Project Slowdown” (263-273).
Keywords: Male author; US author

"The Mirages" - Alaya Dawn Johnson (b. 1982) (Reconstruction. Stories, 2020)
The story is set in Mexico in a climate change future where the cities have gone underground but still reflect the economic divisions of the country and people are still trying to move North, although now to Nunavut in northern Canada. The African American female author was born, raised, and educated in the United States through her BA in East Asian languages cultures at Columbia University. She now lives in Mexico where she received a master’s degree in Mesoamerican Studies at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.
Keywords: African American author; Female author; Mexican author

Mirror's Edge - Passey, Alex (At Bay Press, 2020)
The novel begins in a future polluted Earth that is under corporate control and everyone has a personal minder implanted that replaces an independent thought and then shifts the protagonist, without the implant, to a pristine alternative world that has rejected all that makes Earth a dystopia. There he meets the woman who has brought him to her world and travels with him back to his to reform it. The message seems to be “Every utopia will always be a dystopia to someone” (346).
Keywords: Canadian author; Male author

“Mister Dawn, How Can You Be So Cruel? Slumberland: Part I” - Violet Allen (Ignorance is Strength: The Dystopia Triptych 1, 2020)
Dystopia in three parts in which, in the first story, dreams are first curated for wealthy individuals. In the second story, drugs become common to enhance shared dreaming. In the third story, dreams become for entertainment for everyone in dream shows but also used for social control.
Keywords: African American author; Female author

The Mother Fault - Kate Mildenhall (Simon & Schuster (Australia), 2020)
The novel is set in a future Australia devastated by climate change and ruled by a fascist-sounding political party that has established concentration camps (BestLife Centers). The novel focuses on a woman whose husband has disappeared in Indonesia with her and her children then threatened by the government. The novel ends in a way that suggests a sequel.
Keywords: Australian author; Female author

"Mudlarking" - Neil Williamson (b. 1968) (Biopolis: Tales of Urban Biology, 2020)
The story contrasts the new housing enabled by centralized systems that recycle/reclaim all the scarce metals needed for further technology with the old tenements to the detriment of the former.
Rpt. in Best of British Science Fiction 2020. Ed. Donna Scott ([Weston, Eng.: NewCon Press, 2021), 107-15.
Keywords: Male author; Scottish author

“Never a Butterfly, Nor a Moth with Moon-Painted Wings” - Aimee Ogden (Beneath Ceaseless Skies, 2020)
The story is set in a climate-change future depicting the treatment of refugees from an island that sank beneath the waves in a country that accepts them as menial laborers while eliminating their language and culture.
Keywords: Female author; US author

"The New Mutants" - Fawns, Angelique (Gotta Wear Eclipse Glasses. Third Flatiron Anthologies Volume 9, Book 28 (Summer 2020), 2020)
A virulent virus wipes out most of the population, with most of the survivors are young adults, who form gangs around different bands.
Keywords: Canadian author; Female author

The New Wilderness. A Novel - Diane [Marie] Cook (b. 1976) (Haper, 2020)
In a severely polluted future, a woman, whose daughter is dieing from effects of the pollution, decides to escape to the Wilderness State, an area that has been off limits to people. The novel follows her life and the lives of others in the wilderness. Female author.
Keywords: Female author; US author

“No One Who Runs Is Innocent” - Bracken MacLeod (The Dystopian States of America: A Charity Anthology Benefiting the ACLU Foundation, 2020)
The story is set in a surveillance, anti-immigrant, racist future United States.
Keywords: Male author; US author

“Notes on the Supply of Material in the Bodies Market” - Rodrigo Juri (b. 1971) (Recognize Fascism: A Science Fiction and Fantasy Anthology, 2020)
Corporate controlled dystopia.
Keywords: Chilean author; Male author

"Notice" - Sarah Pinsker (b. 1977) (Us in Flux, 2020)
The story in set in a religious community called Reliance that imagines itself as self-sufficient and is cut off from the outside world as seen through the eyes of a young man in the community.
Keywords: Female author; US author

“Oil and Ivory” - Jennifer Lee Rossman (Glass and Gardens: Solarpunk Winters. An Anthology, 2020)
The story is set in a future where climate change produces huge variations in ice cover that threatens the narwhale population.
Keywords: Queer author; US author

“One Big Happy Family” - Matthew Baker (b. 1985) (Why Visit America. Stories, 2020)
The story is set in a future in which all children are raised in well-run public nurseries followed by other excellent public institutions and with little or no contact with their parents. Present as obviously eutopian, but one mother sees it differently.
Keywords: Male author; US author

“One Final Walk in the Dust and Rain” - Anthony W. Eichenlaub (Curious Futures, 2020)
Climate change dystopia set in the Upper Mississippi area that has become a dust bowl.
Keywords: Male author; US author

“One of the less horrible of the many dystopian futures visited by the Time Traveller: Watch and Wait” - Rahul Kanakia (b. 1985) (Nature, 2020)
The story depicts a future in which people are quite contented machine minders.
Keywords: Transgender author; US author

“Optimizing the Path to Enlightenment” - Priya Chand (Clarkesworld Magazine, 2020)
Keywords: Female author; US author

“Opt-In. Harvest: Part I” - Seanan McGuire (b. 1978) (Ignorance is Strength: The Dystopia Triptych 1, 2020)
Dystopia in three parts focusing on the sale of body parts. In the first story, a poor woman sells organs in order to pay her bills. In the second story, a law is passed legalizing the sale of body parts that, with amendments, means that anyone in debt can be required to sell their body parts to pay it off, and a woman has her womb and uterus harvested. In the third part, a resistance has arisen with the story told by a woman in the resistance trying to get access to the records that show whose organs were harvested and who they went to
Keywords: Female author; US author

Orange City - Lee Matthew Goldberg (Atmosphere Press, 2020)
Dystopia in which outcasts of various sorts are brought to a hidden city completely under the control of a man who has been mechanically enhanced. The first book in a series to be followed by Lemonworld.
Keywords: Male author; US author

“Orchidaceae” - Thomas Badlan (Glass and Gardens: Solarpunk Winters. An Anthology, 2020)
In the new ice age brought about by climate change brought both drought and blizzards, the Svalbard Seed Vault is being used to grow plants in huge domes reflecting the lost regions of the world and feed a population that is starting to grow again.
Keywords: Male author; US author

“The Orphan of Greenridge (Water). Ko Ko Né Ä: Part I” - Darcie Little Badger (b. 1987) (Ignorance is Strength: The Dystopia Triptych 1, 2020)
Dystopia in three parts linked by connections to indigenous cultures and the effects of climate change. In the first story, water is rationed, and the testing of water is rigged to hide the fact that it is contaminated. In the second story, a woman with a baby is trying to escape conflict. In the third story, Texas is one of the few states that sells off mostly abandoned land to the very rich.
Keywords: Female author; Native American author

"Ostraka" - Claire G. Coleman (b. 1974) (After Australia, 2020)
The protagonist is an Aboriginal woman who on returning to Australia is detained at declared stateless under a 2039 law that allows the government to ostracize anyone who it decides is a person of bad
Keywords: Aboriginal author; Australian author; Female author

Otaku - Chris[topher James] Kluwe (b. 1981) (Tor, 2020)
The novel is set in a future drowned Miami, now known as Ditchtown but officially the South Coast Protectorate, which is separate from what is left of the United States and under the rule Church of Christ Ascendant. The novel’s protagonist is a woman trying to survive there while half of her life is spent in Infinite Game, a virtual world, where she is a leader.
Keywords: Male author; US 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

“A Parable of Things That Crawl and Fly” - Robert Scott Graham; Wallace Cleaves (Pulp Literature, 2020)
The story is set in a future that honors indigenous cultures and the past but has developed technology that radically prolongs life and the old control everything.
Keywords: Male author; US author

“Parent-Teacher Association” - Jessica Powell (The New York Times Sunday Review, 2020)
Surveillance dystopia in which parents demand to have their children constantly tracked and have immediate access to the tracking.
Keywords: Female author; US author

"PARTY TIME!" - Ben[jamin Allen] H. Winters (b. 1976) (Lightspeed, 2020)
A fairly light-hearted take on a totalitarian regime with the protagonist a woman trying to organize an office party.
Keywords: Male author; US author

The Perfection of Fish - J. S. Morrison (Black Rose Writing, 2020)
Gender war. In the near future, a testosterone lowering drug is required, and a wealthy man works to make women more subservient.
Keywords: Male author; Scottish author

"Pigs" - G. D. Dearborn (The Dystopian States of America: A Charity Anthology Benefiting the ACLU Foundation, 2020)
The story is set in a future in which America is ruled by a few Barons. It is told from the perspective of a boy on a farm raising “pigs” for slaughter.
Keywords: Female author; US author

"The Pill" - Meg Elison (b. 1982) (Big Girl plus The Pill plus Such People in It and much more, 2020)
A diet pill is developed that works, except for 10% mortality, is so popular that there are very few overweight people left and being overweight is made effectively illegal.
Rpt. in The Year’s Best Science Fiction Volume 2. Ed Jonathan Strahan (New York: Saga Press, 2021), 65-94, with a note about the author on 65; and in The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy™ 2021. Ed Veronica Roth (Boston, MA: Mariner Books/HarperCollins, 2021), 39-66.
Keywords: Female author; US author

"The Pinecone Lady" - Jo Miles (Little Blue Marble, 2020)
The story begins in drought and fire-ravaged country, that is transformed by the Pinecone Lady, a Johnny Appleseed, but for all trees.
Rpt. without the illustration in Little Blue Marble 2020: Greener Futures. Ed. Katrina Archer (Vancouver, BC, Canada: Ganache Media, 2020), 38-45, with a note on the author on 45.
Keywords: Female author; US author

“Press play: Suspended for safety” - Marissa [Kristine] Lingen (b. 1978) (Nature, 2020)
A pandemic allegory in which children are “paused” for the duration of a war.
Keywords: Female author; US author

The Price of Safety - Michael C. Bland (World Castle Publishing, 2020)
First volume of a trilogy set in 2047 in a surveillance dystopia in which a man tries to protect his daughter after she commits a crime. The second volume is The second volume is The Price of Rebellion. Pensacola, FL: World Castle Publishing, 2023. 386 pp. In this volume, he joins a rebellion which is attacked by the government before it can act.
Keywords: Male author; US author

"The Protest" - Alex Berenson (b. 1973) (The New York Times Sunday Review, 2020)
Surveillance dystopia with drones everywhere.
Keywords: Male author; US author

“Pulls Weeds and Does Dishes” - Anthony W. Eichenlaub (Neo-Opsis Science Fiction Magazine, 2020)
A positive story about the ability of robots to assist the elderly in staying independent.
Keywords: Male author; US author

The Pursuit of the Pankera: A Parallel Novel About Parallel Universes - Robert A[nson] Heinlein (1907-88) (Caezik SF & Fantasy/Arc Manor, 2020)
The novel begins with the same protagonists as in his 1980 The Number of the Beast and then takes them into a parallel universe that uses settings from Mars novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875-1950) and the Lensman series by E[dward] E[lmer] “Doc” Smith (1890-1965).
Keywords: Male author; US author

“A Rare Hybrid of Dung Beetle and Lion” - Noa Covo (Reckoning 4: Creative Writing on Environmental Justice, 2020)
A teenager describes the environmentally damaged future world she lives in as she walks through her city.
Keywords: Female author

“Recovering the Lost Art of Cuddling” - Tessa Fisher (Glass and Gardens: Solarpunk Winters. An Anthology, 2020)
The story is set in a climate change future where, in the north, blizzards are common, and, in the south, the heat is debilitating.
Keywords: Lesbian author; Transgender author

“Red Sky at Morning: Nil Desperandum: Part I” - Alex[ander Christian] Irvine (b. 1969) (Ignorance is Strength: The Dystopia Triptych 1, 2020)
Dystopia in three parts that begins in a climate change dystopia in Downeast Maine. Fires fill the air with smoke. No power. Massive flooding. The protagonist is a woman raising her granddaughter. In the second part that granddaughter is trying to survive alone in her grandmother’s house in an area that has been taken over by vigilantes who kill all “foreigners,” but particular Blacks, ethnic minorities, and anyone gender nonconforming. The woman is part of an underground railroad hiding fugitives. In the third part, the last of those fugitives visits the remains of the burned-out house where the woman was killed trying to save her, a killing that started a revolt against vigilantes.
Keywords: Male author; US author

“Resilience” - Octavia Cade (b. 1977) (Stuff, 2020)
The story is set in Wellington, New Zealand, transformed, post-pandemic, into an ecological eutopia.
Rpt. in the author’s You Are My Sunshine and other stories (Hamilton, ON, Canada: Stelliform Press, 2023), 121-128.
Keywords: Aotearoa New Zealand author; Female author