TY - ABST T1 - “At Every Door a Ghost” Y1 - 2023 A1 - Premee Mohamed ED - Jonathan Strahan (b. 1964) KW - Canadian author KW - Female author AB -

The story is set in a future where AI has gone wrong and killed thousands of people.

JF - Communications Breakdown: SF Stories About the Future of Connection PB - The MIT Press CY - Cambridge, MA SN - 9780262546461 U2 -

Illus. Ashley Mackenzie

U5 -

PSt

ER - TY - ABST T1 - "Company Man" Y1 - 2023 A1 - Shiv Ramdas A1 - Jonathan Strahan (b. 1964) KW - Indian author KW - Male author KW - US author AB -

The story is set n the future in which corporations have been given full civil rights that often supersede individual rights.

JF - Communications Breakdown: SF Stories About the Future of Connection PB - The MIT Press CY - Cambridge, MA SN - 9780262546461 U2 -

Illus. Ashley Mackenzie

U5 -

PSt

ER - TY - ABST T1 - “The Excommunicates” Y1 - 2023 A1 - Ken[nth Macrae] MacLeod (b. 1954) ED - Jonathan Strahan (b. 1964) KW - Male author KW - Scottish author AB -

The story is set in a future in which people spreading disinformation on the internet are excommunicated in that they are not permitted to use the internet. They form a church that rapidly grows in membership until war breaks out.

JF - Communications Breakdown: SF Stories About the Future of Connection PB - The MIT Press CY - Cambridge, MA SN - 9780262546461 U2 -

Illus. Ashley Mackenzie

U5 -

PSt

ER - TY - ABST T1 - “Here Instead of There” Y1 - 2023 A1 - [Sarah Bear Elizabeth] [Wishnevsky] (b. 1971) A1 - Jonathan Strahan (b. 1964) A1 - Elizabeth Bear [pseud.] KW - Female author KW - US author AB -

The story takes place in a future US where all services, including weather forecasts and storm warnings, have been privatized and are only available to those who have paid for the service. Its focus is a band living on an abandoned seasteading platform.

JF - Communications Breakdown: SF Stories About the Future of Connection PB - The MIT Press CY - Cambridge, MA SN - 9780262546461 U2 -

Illus. Ashley Mackenzie.

U3 -

Elizabeth Bear [pseud.].

U5 -

PSt

ER - TY - ABST T1 - "Less Than" Y1 - 2023 A1 - Lavanya Lakshminarayan ED - Jonathan Strahan (b. 1964) KW - Female author KW - Indian author AB -

The story takes place in Free India in which everyone is free and equal and has replace the authoritarian Regime in which only some people were acceptable. It turns out, though, that new internet is being used to manipulate individuals to produce what are perceived to be a eugenically superior next generation.

JF - Communications Breakdown: SF Stories About the Future of Connection PB - The MIT Press CY - Cambridge, MA SN - 9780262546461 U2 -

Illus. Ashley Mackenzie.

U5 -

PSt

ER - TY - ABST T1 - “Moral Hazard” Y1 - 2023 A1 - Cory [Efram] Doctorow (b. 1971) ED - Jonathan Strahan (b. 1964) KW - Canadian author KW - English author KW - Male author KW - US author AB -

The story is set in the present or near future and involves a plan to direct federal bailout money first to the homeless and the a scam to redirect it to large corporations.

JF - Communications Breakdown: SF Stories About the Future of Connection PB - The MIT Press CY - Cambridge, MA SN - 9780262546461 U2 -

Illus. Ashley Mackenzie.

U5 -

PSt

ER - TY - ABST T1 - “My City Is Not a Problem” Y1 - 2023 A1 - Tim Maughan (b. 1973) ED - Jonathan Strahan (b. 1964) KW - Canadian author KW - Male author KW - Scottish author AB -

The story is set in a near future London where an AI system is being set up to figure out the central problems of the city and propose solutions. It did so to the consternation of those in power.

JF - Communications Breakdown: SF Stories About the Future of Connection PB - The MIT Press CY - Cambridge, MA SN - 9780262546461 U2 -

Illus. Ashley Mackenzie.

U5 -

PSt

ER - TY - ABST T1 - “Sigh No More” Y1 - 2023 A1 - Ian [Neil] McDonald (b. 1960) ED - Jonathan Strahan (b. 1964) KW - Male author KW - Northern Ireland author AB -

The story takes places in London after a Carrington Event (a massive solar storm) knocks out all electric power. Satellites falling from the sky at night are popular viewing. The main focus of the story is the struggle to mount a previously planned performance of Much Ado about Nothing. The point is made that “If the pandemic pushed people apart and tech together, the Event blew tech apart and brought people tech together in mutual aid and community” (48). For an analysis of this response to disaster, see Rhiannon Firth, Disaster Anarchy: Mutual Aid and Radical Action. London: Pluto Press, 2022.

JF - Communications Breakdown: SF Stories About the Future of Connection PB - The MIT Press CY - Cambridge, MA SN - 9780262546461 U2 -

Illus. Ashley Mackenzie.

U5 -

PSt

ER - TY - ABST T1 - "After the Storm" Y1 - 2022 A1 - James Bradley (b. 1967) ED - Jonathan Strahan (b. 1964) KW - Australian author KW - Male author AB -

The story is set in an Australia damaged by climate change and focuses on its impact on one family as seen through the eyes of a young girl forced to move multiple times as the country and the family disintegrate.

JF - Tomorrow’s Parties: Life in the Anthropocene PB - The MIT Press CY - Cambridge, MA SN - 978-0-26254-443-6 U2 -

Illus. Sean Bodley.

U5 -

PSt

ER - TY - ABST T1 - “Down and Out in Exile Park” Y1 - 2022 A1 - Tade Thompson ED - Jonathan Strahan (b. 1964) KW - English author KW - Male author KW - Nigerian author AB -

The story is set on Exile Park, an island off the coast of Nigeria created from plastic and other waste that has become a refuge for dissidents and developed a system of governance and way of life that involves everyone and a parliament that operates like a Quaker meeting. They have redefined crime as Acts of Social Crime and the entire society is based around reducing such acts.

JF - Tomorrow’s Parties: Life in the Anthropocene PB - The MIT Press CY - Cambridge, MA SN - 978-0-26254-443-6 U2 -

Illus. Sean Bodley

U5 -

PSt

ER - TY - ABST T1 - “Drone Pirates of Silicon Valley” Y1 - 2022 A1 - Meg Elison (b. 1982) ED - Jonathan Strahan (b. 1964) KW - Female author KW - US author AB -

The story is set in a future where a drone delivery runs the area like a company town with the workers required to pay rent to live in barracks and buy everything they need from the company store with any, even slight, dissent leading to being fired. The focus, though, is on three teenagers who develop a system for capturing the drones and stealing what they are carrying.

JF - Tomorrow’s Parties: Life in the Anthropocene PB - The MIT Press CY - Cambridge, MA SN - 978-0-26254-443-6 U2 -

Illus. Sean Bodley

U5 -

PSt

ER - TY - ABST T1 - “I Give You the Moon” Y1 - 2022 A1 - Justina [Louise Alice] Robson (b. 1968) ED - Jonathan Strahan (b. 1964) KW - English author KW - Female author AB -

The story is set in a depopulated but high-tech future after a slow apocalypse produced by diseases and climate change. It focuses on a man living on the African coast helping to regulate the machines that are cleaning up the oceans and living in a simple hut on the beach living off the credits he earns and his interactions with his son and others, mostly at a distance through an unexplained wireless system.

JF - Tomorrow’s Parties: Life in the Anthropocene PB - The MIT Press CY - Cambridge, MA SN - 978-0-26254-443-6 U2 -

Illus. Sean Bodley

U5 -

PSt

ER - TY - ABST T1 - "Intervention" Y1 - 2018 A1 - Kelly Robson (b. 1967) ED - Jonathan Strahan (b. 1964) KW - Canadian author KW - Lesbian author AB -

The story is set in a high-tech future where children are raised in creches, with the job of caring for them in some cases a low status, low wage job. The story is told from the point of view of a woman who chooses the job and is rejected by her friends on Luna and chooses to leave to raise children in a space habitat. 

JF - Infinity’s End PB - Solaris CY - Oxford, Eng. SN - 978-1781085752 9781597809887 9781781085769 978-1645240259. N1 -

Rpt. in The Best Science Fiction of the Year. Volume 4. Ed. Neil Clarke (New York: Night Shade, 2019), 29-50, with an editor’s note on 29; in The Best Science Fiction & Fantasy of the Year: Volume Thirteen. Ed. Jonathan Strahan (Oxford, Eng.: Solaris/Rebellion Publishing, 2019), 141-65; and in her Alias Space and Other Stories. (Burton, MI: Subterranean Press, 2021), 77-109 with “Notes about ‘Intervention’” on 110

U5 -

PSt, Public

ER - TY - ABST T1 - “Longing for Earth” Y1 - 2018 A1 - Linda Nagata (b. 1960) ED - Jonathan Strahan (b. 1964) KW - Female author KW - US author AB -

The story is set in what appears to be a eutopian future in which Earth has been restored after most people have left to live on one of the many worlds created to reproduce different environments, but then choosing to live as their younger selves in virtual reality. The protagonist is a man who had hoped to win the lottery that allowed people to immigrate to Earth but, after retiring, while waiting, visited these worlds. At the time of the story, he is well over 300 and visiting his thousandth world.

JF - Infinity’s End PB - Solaris CY - Oxford, Eng. U5 -

PSt

ER - TY - ABST T1 - "The Oracle" Y1 - 2017 A1 - Dominica Phetteplace ED - Jonathan Strahan (b. 1964) KW - Female author KW - US author AB -

Satire on U.S. politics in which a “war of the month” is instituted to gain support for the President. 

JF - Infinity Wars PB - Solaris CY - Oxford, Eng U5 -

Public

ER - TY - ABST T1 - “Because Change Was the Ocean and We Lived by Her Mercy” Y1 - 2016 A1 - Charlie Jane Anders (b. 1969) ED - Jonathan Strahan (b. 1964) KW - Transgender author KW - US author AB -

Climate change dystopia in which the west coast of California is under water, much of North America is a wasteland, and Fairbanks, Alaska, is the only U.S. metropolis. Gender is flexible and varied. 

JF - Drowned Worlds: Tales from the Anthropocene and Beyond PB - Solaris CY - Oxford, Eng. SN - 9781849979306 978-1- 4399-1623-0 N1 -

Rpt. Who Will Speak for America? Ed. Stephanie Feldman and Nathaniel Popkin (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2018), 213-26. 

U5 -

PSt

ER - TY - ABST T1 - “Brownsville Station” Y1 - 2016 A1 - Christopher Rowe (b. 1969) KW - Male author KW - US author AB -

Climate change dystopia in which the elaborate technology that has protected civilization is defeated by the rising water.

JF - Drowned Worlds: Tales from the Anthropocene and Beyond PB - Solaris CY - Oxford, Eng. U5 -

PSt

ER - TY - ABST T1 - "Cold Comfort" Y1 - 2016 A1 - Pat[rice Anne] Murphy (b. 1955) A1 - Paul Doherty (1948-2017) ED - Jonathan Strahan (b. 1964) KW - Female author KW - Male author KW - US author AB -

Climate change story with most of the focus on an elaborate, and ultimately successful, plan to stop the release of the vast reservoirs of methane in the arctic. The story ends with an apparent eutopia, but with the caveat that billions died before people came to their senses. 

JF - Bridging Infinity PB - Solaris CY - Oxford, Eng U5 -

PSt

ER - TY - ABST T1 - “The Common Tongue, the Present Tense, the Known” Y1 - 2016 A1 - Nina Allan (b. 1966) ED - Jonathan Strahan (b. 1964) KW - English author KW - Female author AB -

The story is set after most of the world is drowned and is the protagonist is a marine biologist reflecting on the past and trying to understand the present and how both humans and the oceans and their inhabitants are responding to the new situation.

JF - Drowned Worlds: Tales from the Anthropocene and Beyond PB - Solaris CY - Oxford, Eng. U5 -

PSt

ER - TY - ABST T1 - “Dispatches from the Cradle; The Hermit—Forty-Eight Hours in the Sea of Massachusetts” Y1 - 2016 A1 - Ken Liu (b. 1976) ED - Jonathan Strahan (b. 1964) KW - Chinese-American author KW - Male author KW - US author AB -

Climate change story set when most people live either in space or on submersible rafts on Earth. Mars is being terraformed and plans are underway to try to dry out Earth. Whether this is a good or bad idea is left up the reader.

JF - Drowned Worlds: Tales from the Anthropocene and Beyond PB - Solaris CY - Oxford, Eng. N1 -

Rpt. in his The Hidden Girl and Other Stories (New York: Saga Press/Simon & Schuster, 2020), 254-271.

U5 -

PSt

ER - TY - ABST T1 - “Elves of Antarctica” Y1 - 2016 A1 - Paul J[ames] McAuley (b. 1955) ED - Jonathan Strahan (b. 1964) KW - English author KW - Male author AB -

The story is set in a climate change dystopia in which the coastal areas of most countries are under water and many islands have disappeared. There are major engineering projects to try to save what is left and to provide places for the displaced to live. The project in Antarctica, where the story takes place, is to try to keep the Antarctic ice sheet from melting and inundating more land.

JF - Drowned Worlds: Tales from the Anthropocene and Beyond PB - Solaris CY - Oxford, Eng. U5 -

PSt

ER - TY - ABST T1 - "The Mighty Slinger" Y1 - 2016 A1 - Tobias S[amuel] Buckell (b. 1979) A1 - Karen [Antoinette Roberta] Lord (b. 1968) ED - Jonathan Strahan (b. 1964) KW - Barbadian author KW - Female author KW - Grenadian author KW - Male author KW - US author KW - US Virgin Islands author AB -

The story begins in a future in which climate change and exploitation of the environment has left Earth uninhabitable. The Moon has been terraformed and the terraforming of Mars is in progress with indentured laborers. The story then follows a musician who has supported the workers and helped develop a project to revitalize Earth far into the future to when he can return to his recreated Caribbean homeland.

JF - Bridging Infinity PB - Solaris CY - Oxford, Eng N1 -

Rpt. with Lord as the first author in Sunspot Jungle. Volume 2. [Subtitle on the cover The Ever Expanding Universe of Fantasy and Science Fiction]. Ed. Bill Campbell (Greenbelt, MD: Rosarium Publishing, 2020), 471-95; and in The Best of World Science Fiction Volume 2. Ed. Lavie Tidhar (London: Head of Zeus, 2022), 365-398.

U5 -

PSt

ER - TY - ABST T1 - "Monuments" Y1 - 2016 A1 - Pamela Sargent (b. 1948) ED - Jonathan Strahan (b. 1964) KW - Female author KW - US author AB -

Climate change dystopia set in a New York City with Brooklyn, Staten Island, and much of Queens under water and many Manhattan streets now canals. Huge drop in world population with “self-deliverance” (suicide) one of the most common forms of death. 

JF - Bridging Infinity PB - Solaris CY - Oxford, Eng U5 -

PSt

ER - TY - ABST T1 - “Rager in Space” Y1 - 2016 A1 - Charlie Jane Anders (b. 1969) ED - Jonathan Strahan (b. 1964) KW - Transgender author KW - US author AB -

A sometimes-humorous story set in a future dystopia in which all computers on Earth have failed, no one can ever pay off their student debts, and peonage has been reestablished for debtors. 

JF - Bridging Infinity PB - Solaris CY - Oxford, Eng. U4 -

U5 -

PSt

ER - TY - ABST T1 - "What Is" Y1 - 2016 A1 - Jeffrey Ford (b. 1955) ED - Jonathan Strahan (b. 1964) KW - Male author KW - US author AB -

Climate-change dystopia in which the middle of the U.S. has experienced many years of extreme drought.

JF - Drowned Worlds: Tales from the Anthropocene and Beyond PB - Solaris CY - Oxford, Eng. U5 -

PSt

ER - TY - ABST T1 - “Who Do You Love?” Y1 - 2016 A1 - Kathleen Ann Goonan (1952-2021) ED - Jonathan Strahan (b. 1964) KW - Female author KW - US author AB -

The background to the story is a climate change dystopia where much of Florida is underwater and there are regular devastating storms that get worse over the years during which the story takes place. 

JF - Drowned Worlds: Tales from the Anthropocene and Beyond PB - Solaris CY - Oxford, Eng. U5 -

PSt

ER - TY - ABST T1 - "Drones" Y1 - 2015 A1 - Simon [David] Ings (b. 1965) ED - Jonathan Strahan (b. 1964) KW - English author KW - Male author AB -

A poverty-stricken future with major food shortages that require all crops to be heavily protected. Many babies are abandoned to die. Most women marry the powerful with the most powerful having many wives, and the less powerful men remain without sexual partners.

JF - Meeting Infinity PB - Solaris CY - Oxford, Eng. N1 -

Rpt. in The Best Science Fiction & Fantasy of the Year. Volume 10. Ed. Jonathan Strahan (Oxford, Eng.: Solaris, 2016), 485-97.

U5 -

Merril

ER - TY - ABST T1 - "Trademark Bugs: A Legal History” Y1 - 2015 A1 - Adam [Charles] Roberts (b. 1965) ED - Jonathan Strahan (b. 1964) KW - English author KW - Male author AB -

Dystopia in which Big Pharma releases trademarked viruses, makes huge profits from the “cures”, and becomes more powerful than any government.

JF - Reach for Infinity PB - Solaris CY - Oxford, Eng. N1 -

Rpt. in The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy 2015. Ed. Rich Horton ([Holicong, PA]: Prime Books, 2015), 351-65; in A Practical Guide to the Resurrected: Twenty-One Short Stories of Medicine and Science Fiction. Ed. Gavin Miller and Anna MacFarlane (Glasgow, Scot.: Freight Books, 2017), 172-92; and in Stories of Hope and Wonder in Support of the UK’S Healthcare Workers. Ed. Ian [George] Whates (Weston, Eng.: NewCon Press, 2020), 352-66. EBook. 

U5 -

Merril, PSt

ER - TY - ABST T1 - "Lost Continent" Y1 - 2008 A1 - Greg[ory Mark] Egan (b. 1961) ED - Jonathan Strahan (b. 1964) KW - Australian author KW - Male author AB -

Dystopia of the then current situation in Iraq and the refugee crisis it caused projected into the future.

JF - The Starry Rift: Tales of New Tomorrows. An Original Science Fiction Anthology PB - Viking CY - New York N1 -

Rpt. in his Crystal Nights and Other Stories Burton, MI: Subterranean Press, 2009), 11-37.

U5 -

PSt

ER -