"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

"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

“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 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

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

“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

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

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

"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

"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

“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

“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

"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

"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

"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

"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

“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

"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

"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 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 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

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

"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

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

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

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

"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

“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

“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

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

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

“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

"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

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

“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

"Revitalized" - Jason P. Burnham (Metaphorosis, 2020)
The brief story is set in a future with an extreme water shortage.
Rpt. in Metaphorosis 2020. The Complete Stories. Ed. B. Morris Allen (Neskowin, OR: Metaphorosis, [2021]), 243-247.
Keywords: Male author; US author

Riot Baby - Tochi [Joshua] Onyebuchi (b. 1987) (Tom Doherty Associates/Tor.com, 2020)
The novel is set in contemporary American and reflects the dystopia it is today for young African Americans and as it gets worse in the future as seen through the eyes of a brother and sister. Elements of fantasy.
Keywords: African American author; Male author

Rise & Shine - Patrick Allington (b. 1969) (Scribe Publications, 2020)
Rise and shine are the only two city-states that have survived an ecological catastrophe that has destroyed most living things. The two are perpetually at war, and the people feed, literally, off the news footage from the war.
U.S. ed. Minneapolis, MN: Scribe, 2021. 233 pp.
Keywords: Australian author; Male author

“Sacred Chords” - Alexei Collier (Recognize Fascism: A Science Fiction and Fantasy Anthology, 2020)
Dystopia in which music is restrict to specific modes as in Plato’s Republic.
Keywords: Male author; US author

The Secret Files of Donald J. Trump, Volume 1: The Tijuana Tango - Francis le Lapin [pseud.] (Black Coat Press, 2020)
Dystopian alternative history in which Trump is a spy for the Russian Tsar.
Keywords: Belgian author; Male author

“The Sick House” - Josh Waterman (The Dystopian States of America: A Charity Anthology Benefiting the ACLU Foundation, 2020)
A future in which everyone who is at all dependent must constantly reiterate that they are grateful for still having their arms and legs.
Keywords: Male author; US author

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

"Six Plus Four" - Matt Bechtel (The Dystopian States of America: A Charity Anthology Benefiting the ACLU Foundation, 2020)
The story is set in a future where there is no public education, only education corporations whose only purpose is making a profit, and there are no wrong answers.
Keywords: Male author; US author

"Snow Globe" - Brian Burt (Glass and Gardens: Solarpunk Winters. An Anthology, 2020)
The story is set in a future in which Lake Superior is sovereign native territory recognized as such by both Canada and the U.S. As a result, floating cities, constituting the Lake Superior Archipelago of Nations (LSAN), have been established. Each city is different, often tribally based, and moveable.
Keywords: Male author; US author

So Long Earth - Michael Bienenstock (Np, 2020)
The novel is primarily concerned with the development of a spaceship that would make it possible to search for another livable planet and is very detailed on the problems of developing it. But the reason for leaving Earth is the climate change dystopia brought about by Trump’s policies with Trump reelected in 2020.
Keywords: Male author; US author

“A Solitary Crane Circles Cold Mountain” - Gregor Hartmann (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 2020)
In a future following a world war and environmental devastation, a deep divide has developed between those who want to save Gaia, with various factions among them, and those who want to use an asteroid to send people to another planet. The story centers on a woman who is trying to design a society for the asteroid that can last for fourteen generations.
Keywords: Male author; US author

“Solitude, in Silent Sun” - Mike Adamson (Little Blue Marble, 2020)
The story is set in a future where people have returned to Earth from space with the goal of rejuvenating it under strict environmental regulations, but some people are starting to break the rules to make a profit.
Rpt. without the illustration in Little Blue Marble 2020: Greener Futures. Ed. Katrina Archer (Vancouver, BC, Canada: Ganache Media, 2020), 68-74, with a note on the author on 75.
Keywords: Australian author; Male author

“Spaceship October” - Greg[ory John] van Eekhout (b. 1967) (Escape Pod: The Science Fiction Anthology, 2020)
The story is set on a generations spaceship on which the leaders preach equality, but many people do not have enough food, housing. or adequate health care.
Keywords: Male author; US author

"The State Machine" - Yudhanjaya Wijeratne (b. 1992) (Slate, 2020)
The story is set in a gradually collapsing future in which Sri Lanka is the testing ground for governance based on algorithms and traces its development from a computer game to a self-evolving system.
Keywords: Male author; Sri Lankan author

“The Stones of Särdal” - Karl [Gustav Schlosser] Dandenell (Little Blue Marble, 2020)
Brief story set in future a temperate Sweden. A 105-year-old man is being interviewed for a recording to be placed on a spaceship. He describes the setting, the very old building he lives in, and some of the history.
Originally published on The Word Count Podcast Episode 100 in 2020 but not available there.
Keywords: Male author; Swedish American Author

Strange Labour - Penner, Robert G. (Radiant Press, 2020)
Post-apocalyptic (unexplained) dystopia in which a woman travels across the United States, sometimes with a companion, meeting individuals and people in small communities struggling to survive.
Keywords: Canadian author; Male author; US author

“The Suicide of Our Troubles” - Karl Schroeder (b. 1962) (Slate Future Tense, 2020)
The story is set in a future in which aspects of the natural world are enabled by AI and use their ability to communicate to hire a lawyer to develop a strategy to eliminate pollution. For a response, see Anna V. Smith, “When Nature Speaks for Itself.” Slate Future Tense (November 28, 2020). https://slate.com/technology/2020/11/suicide-of-our-troubles-environmental-personhood.html, in which the author discusses attempts to grant legal personhood to the natural world.
Rpt. without the illus. in The Year’s Best Science Fiction Volume 2. Ed Jonathan Strahan (New York: Saga Press, 2021), 401-418, with a note on the author on 401.
Keywords: Canadian author; Male author

“Tāwhaki” - Witi [Tame] Ihimaera[-Smiler] (b. 1944) (Scorchers: A Climate Fiction Anthology, 2020)
The story is set in a future where increasing heat has killed the overwhelming majority of people, plants, and animals, and the people who remain live deep underground, with only occasional trips to the surface.
Keywords: Aotearoa New Zealand author; Male author; Māori author

The Test - Sylvain Neuvel (b. 1973) (Tor.com, 2020)
The short novel describes the U.K. citizenship test given to refugee, which involves how they respond to a simulated terrorist attack on the test site.
Keywords: Canadian author; Male author

Three Days to EOC. A Novella - Abhimanyu Sukhdial (Children’s Art Foundation-Stone Soup, 2020)
Climate change dystopia. EOC refers to the end of civilization.
Keywords: Male author; US author

"Trigger" - Paul Mountfort (Scorchers: A Climate Fiction Anthology, 2020)
The story is set in a future Aotearoa New Zealand that is succumbing to fires from the increased heat and flooding from the collapse of the melting of Antarctic ice. Society has broken down, and no one with any real authority remains. The protagonist has fled Auckland with his family, but his refuge is about to been engulfed in fire.
Keywords: Aotearoa New Zealand author; Male author

“The Truth About the Boy. Targets: Part I” - Adam-Troy Castro (b. 1960) (Ignorance is Strength: The Dystopia Triptych 1, 2020)
Dystopia in three parts. The first two parts take place in a future United States dominated by True America, which responds to the rapidly growing mass killings by denying that the people killed ever existed, and harassing, jailing, and in every way mistreating those who lost loved ones in the killings and who insist that those people had existed. The third part takes place after True America has been defeated but with vocal true believers still voicing their denials.
Keywords: Male author; US author

“The Turbine at the End of the World” - James Rowland (Prairie Fire: A Canadian Magazine of New Writing, 2020)
The story is set in a future where all cities near the coast are mostly under water.
Rpt. in Best of British Science Fiction 2020. Ed. Donna Scott ([Weston, Eng.: NewCon Press, 2021), 183-89.
Keywords: Aotearoa New Zealand author; Male author; UK author

“Urgent Care” - Mark S. Bailen (Little Blue Marble, 2020)
A woman goes to an Urgent Care office for planets to see if Earth is healthy and gets a mixed response from the alien doctors.
Rpt. without the illustration in Little Blue Marble 2020: Greener Futures. Ed. Katrina Archer (Vancouver, BC, Canada: Ganache Media, 2020), 120-27, with a note on the author on 128.
Keywords: Male author; US author

"The Vastation" - Paul [Edward] Theroux (b. 1941) (Slate, 2020)
Pandemic dystopia in which the well-off live in protected cities and others live in compounds based on ethnicity that war with each other.
Keywords: Male author; US author

Vulcan's Forge - Robert Mitchell Evans (Flame Tree Press, 2020)
The novel is set in the only colony of Earth that survived its destruction, which has a repressive regime and criminal gangs.
Keywords: Male author; US author

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

"The War on Drugs" - Trevor Burrus (Visions of Liberty, 2020)
A comparison of the success by mid-twenty-first century of the legalization of all drugs eliminated street crime and the other negative effects of drugs in 2020.
Keywords: Male author; US author

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

“We Were The Workshop for (a torturer’s) Utopia.” - Carlos Norcia (Big Echo. Critical SF, 2020)
Dystopia in which authors are encouraged to join a writers' group, which is infiltrated by a man working for the government and passes on the authors work to the government, which then tortures them.
Keywords: Male author

“When Last the Cicadas Sang” - Anthony W. Eichenlaub (Little Blue Marble, 2020)
Brief climate change dystopia told from the point-of-view of a farmer who had resisted changing her ways.
Rpt. without the illustration in Little Blue Marble 2020: Greener Futures. Ed. Katrina Archer (Vancouver, BC, Canada: Ganache Media, 2020), 133-36, with a note on the author on 137.
Keywords: Male author; US author

“Whenua to Whenua” - James George (b. 1962) (Scorchers: A Climate Fiction Anthology, 2020)
The story is set in a future Aotearoa New Zealand and focuses on the impact on both individuals and communities of the disappearance under the rising sea of the homeland of a Māori community.
Keywords: Aotearoa New Zealand author; Male author

"White Flu" - Omar Sakr (After Australia, 2020)
The story takes place in a future Australia in which a deadly pandemic only white people. The protagonist is a queer Arab Australian who mostly concerned with the conflicts within his extended family, most of whom shun him.
Keywords: Australian author; Male author

“Yat Madit” - Dilman Dila (b. 1977) (Africanfuturism: An Anthology, 2020)
A complex little story told by a young woman when the man she thought of as her father is released from thirty years in prison. He had been the corrupt, murderous dictator of the country and intends to run for local office, but the country is now governed through a set of algorithms, the Yat Madit, that she is afraid he intends to undermine.
Keywords: Male author; Ugandan author

The 8th Emotion - Joshua Spiller (Splendour Publishing, 2019)
The novel begins in a flawed eutopia organized into tribes that come into conflict, but a new emotion is discovered that has the potential to heal the divisions and bring about an even better society that it was before the conflicts emerged.
Keywords: Australian author; Male author

Above Sea Level. A Novel - Douglas E. Congdon (Author, 2019)
Sequel to 2015 Congdon, Heat 30:1; a third volume, They Are Coming Tomorrow, set between the other novels, has been announced. The novel begins in a climate change dystopia, but independent cities develop positive responses with humans and AIs working together.
Keywords: Male author; US author

“Adios America” - Paul Clayton (Appalling Stories 4: Even More Stories of Social Injustice, 2019)
Dystopia in which a Democratic Socialist feminist of East Asian and Asian parents is elected president and establishes a number of policies includes abortion available to birth, opening the country to all undocumented aliens, euthanasia required at sixty-five with cremation used to turn the bodies into fertilizer. The protagonist is a homeless seventy-year-old white man who is trying to get together enough money to be taken to Mexico.
Rpt. in the author's Escape from the Future and Other Stories (Np: Author, 2022), 163-193.
Keywords: Male author; US author

“All the Good Dogs Have Been Eaten” - Gregory Jeffers (If This Goes On, 2019)
Dystopia set after the collapse of the economy.
Keywords: Male author; US author

“Amazon’s First Fully Automated Factory Is Anything But” - Brian Merchant (The New York Times, 2019)
The dystopia of working as a support to the robots in a warehouse, repairing them, cleaning up after them, doing the work they can’t do in conditions designed for the robots and not for humans.
Keywords: Male author; US author

Anyone. A Novel - Charles Soule (b. 1974) (Harper Perennial, 2019)
A science fiction novel exploring what happens when a scientist creates a way for to transfer their consciousness into another body, which creates a dystopia. At the very end when the scientist changes the algorithm so that such transfers happen randomly at any time, with a few sentences suggesting a better result.
Keywords: Male author; US author

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

“Artificials Should Be Allowed to Worship” - Steven James (b. 1969) (The New York Times, 2019)
The Op-Ed is set in a world where AI’s are trying to achieve equality and is written by one who wants to worship.
Keywords: Male author; US author

"At Climate Court" - Jeff Hecht (Little Blue Marble, 2019)
Climate change dystopia in which the retired chief executive of an oil company faces charges of crimes against humanity.
Rpt. without the illus. in Little Blue Marble 2019: Climate in Crisis. Ed. Katrina Archer (Vancouver, BC, Canada: Ganache Media Books, 2020), 163-67.
Keywords: Male author; US author

Auxiliary. London 2039 - Jon Richter (TCK Publishing, 2019)
The novel is set in a future London dominated by TIM, The Imagination Machine, which controls everything.
Keywords: Male author; UK author

Baby Steps. Genetic Pressure Volume 1 - Eugene Clark [pseud.] (Better Publishing, 2019)
The novel is set in a future where genetic engineering is standard practice for the wealthy, who try to predetermine the characteristics they want their children to have. The book includes appendices of the “Dramatis Personsae” (343-46), a “Glossary” (347-55), and “Human Social Breeding Systems” (357-59).
Keywords: Male author; US author

“A Bad Day In Utopia” - Matthew Baker (b. 1985) (Lightspeed, 2019)
A woman living in a future matriarchy is having a bad day and decides to visit a menagerie where men are kept in well-appointed cages and are available for sex for a small fee.
Rpt. in the author's Why Visit America. Stories (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2020), 91-102.
Keywords: Male author; US author

Bangkok Wakes to Rain - Pitchaya Sudbanthad (Riverhead Books, 2019)
The novel is set in different time periods including a future in which Bangkok is under water.
Keywords: Male author; Thai author; US author

Beyond All War - Eric Keller (Black Dog Publishing, 2019)
Post-apocalyptic novel that follows a number of survivors into northern Canada where they gradually create a community while fighting off groups trying to take control of the area.
Keywords: Canadian author; Male author

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

“Billionaires Shouldn’t Live Forever” - Paul Krugman (b. 1959) (The New York Times, 2019)
The Op-Ed opposes the practice, based in working being done today, that will allow the very rich to extend their lives indefinitely.
Keywords: Male author; US author

The Black Dwarves of the Good Little Bay - Varun Thomas Mathew (Hachette India, 2019)
The novel is set in a future Bombay/Mumbai (both names are used) that has by inundated by flood waters and replaced by an immense Bombadrome in which everyone lives in a controlled sanitized environment. Such Buildings are being built all over India and are spreading throughout the world. The story of the development of the Bombadrome is told by the last civil servant of the old India. Could use a glossary.
Keywords: Indian author; Male author

"The Blindfold" - Tobias S[amuel] Buckell (b. 1979) (A People’s Future of the United States: Speculative Fiction from 25 Extraordinary Writers, 2019)
The story is set in a future where, in an attempt to make trials fairer, the personal characteristics, such as race, are blocked from the members of the jury. The protagonist is a hacker who works to ensure that the system works who is hacked by those trying to undermine the system.
Keywords: British Virgin Islands author; Grenadian author; Male author; US author; US Virgin Islands author

“Blood Drive” - Neil Floyd (Kasma Magazine, 2019)
The story is set in a future where blood is in short supply, and blood donations are compulsory with enough blood taken that the donor may not survive.
Keywords: Male author

A Boy and His Dog at the End of the World - C[harlie] A. Fletcher (b. 1960) (Orbit/Hachette Book Group, 2019)
A post-apocalyptic dystopia about a boy living on an isolated island searching the mainland for his stolen dog.
UK ed. London: Orbit/Hachette Book Group, 2019
Keywords: Male author; Scottish author

“Bulletproof Tattoos” - Paul Crenshaw (b. 1968) (If This Goes On, 2019)
Dystopia in which both individual and mass shootings are constant, and an ink is developed that deflects bullets.
Keywords: Male author; US author

The Burning River - Lawrence Patchett (Victoria University Press, 2019)
The novel is set in a future Aotearoa/New Zealand that has experienced a devastating environmental collapse and follows the experiences of one Pākehā man who travels across the country with a few Māori in search of connections among people and the possibility of rebuilding the country. In the future, and in the text, people are bilingual in English and Māori and use the languages as if they were one.
Parts were originally published as “The Road to Tokomairiro.” Sport: New Zealand Literary Magazine, no. 39 (2011); and “Intruder.” Illus. Overland, no. 219 (Winter 2015): 42-45 https://overland.org.au/previous-issues/issue-219/fiction-lawrence-patchett/
Keywords: Aotearoa New Zealand author; Male author

“By His Bootstraps” - Ashok K[umar] Banker (b. 1964) (A People’s Future of the United States: Speculative Fiction from 25 Extraordinary Writers, 2019)
Satire in which the U.S. government, under President Trump, initiates a program that changes the DNA in a person back to its human origins, thus ridding the country of all mixed-race immigrants. Something goes wrong and most people in the country become Native American Indians.
Keywords: Indian author; Male author

The Captain and the Glory: An Entertainment - Dave Eggers (b. 1970) (Alfred A. Knopf, 2019)
Anti-Trump dystopian allegory.
U.K. ed. London: Hamish Hamilton, 2019. 114 pp.
Keywords: Male author; US author

"Cat" - Deepak Unnikrishnan (Gross Ideas: Tales of Tomorrow’s Architecture, 2019)
The story takes place in a city in one of the Gulf states that was almost wiped out when a plane full of bombs crashed and the bombs detonated. As a child, the protagonist was severely injured, and the focus is on years later, after multiple surgeries, when all nations have closed their borders that closed off further treatment, and everyone is struggling to survive and get some pleasure out of life.
Keywords: Abu Dhabi author; Male author

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

"The City and the Cygnet: An Alternative History of the Atlanta Urban Nucleus in the 21st Century" - Michael [Lawson] Bishop (1945-2023) (Kudzu Planet Productions/Fairwood Press, 2019)
The volume brings together, revises, and adds to his UrNu (Urban Nucleus) cycle set in a domed Atlanta, Georgia, as seen through the eyes of a range of its inhabitants. Reprints his Catacomb Years (1979), substantially revises his A Little Knowledge (1977), and adds “Interlude: After Jalyrica’s Fall” 398-99), “Prelude: The Domes” (21-24), “Death Rehearsals” (400-56), a “Chronology” (457-60), and an “Author’s Afterword: With a Little Help From My Friends . . . and My Betters” (461-63).
Keywords: Male author; US author

“A City of Digital Engagement” - Ryan Burns (How to Run a City Like Amazon, and Other Fables, 2019)
The dystopia created by turning a city over to Instagram. All the stories in the book are responses to a recent book, A New City O/S: The Power of Open, Collaborative, and Distributed Government (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2017), by Stephen Goldsmith and Neil Kleiman, that proposes, in the editors’ interpretation, that cities should act more like Amazon in dealing with their citizens.
Keywords: Canadian author; Male author

"The Civic Method" - Matthew Claudel (How to Run a City Like Amazon, and Other Fables, 2019)
After an unexplained collapse, many cities are run on the model of the book publisher Elsevier, which is in competition with cities run by Springer, Taylor and Francis, and the rapidly growing Routledge. Each city completely controls every aspect of its citizens lives. The only threat on the horizon is in the Midwest of the United States where Open Access is growing. All the stories in the book are responses to a recent book, A New City O/S: The Power of Open, Collaborative, and Distributed Government (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2017), by Stephen Goldsmith and Neil Kleiman, that proposes, in the editors’ interpretation, that cities should act more like Amazon in dealing with their citizens.
Keywords: Male author; US author

"The Convoy" - Brian Merchant (Motherboard, 2019)
A near future dystopia in which a film telling the story of a terrorist cell within a convoy of immigrants moving toward the U.S. border is deliberately released to the media as an actual threat, and even though no evidence is found and the actor who played the leader in the film offers to testify, he is manipulated into trying to flee and imprisoned. Everything was designed to give the president an excuse to move troops to the border.
Keywords: Male author; US author

“Cryps, Chains and Cranks” - Matthew Zook (How to Run a City Like Amazon, and Other Fables, 2019)
The dystopia created by cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. All the stories in the book are responses to a recent book, A New City O/S: The Power of Open, Collaborative, and Distributed Government (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2017), by Stephen Goldsmith and Neil Kleiman, that proposes, in the editors’ interpretation, that cities should act more like Amazon in dealing with their citizens.
Keywords: Male author; US author

Deaf Republic - Ilya Kaminsky (Graywolf Press, 2019)
The story/parable is told in poems and is set in the current world. In it a soldier breaking up a protest, shoots and kills a deaf boy, and the entire town becomes deaf. The people resist to the further brutality through signing, and throughout the book signs are illustrated. The specific ways of resisting by different people are depicted. Many of the poems were originally published separately, often in different form, in various outlets.
Keywords: Deaf author; Male author; US author

Dear Machine: A Letter to a Super Aware/Intelligent Machine (SAIM) - Gary Kieser (2019)
The book is, as the subtitle says, in the form of a long letter to a future super aware/intelligent machine in which he tries to explain humanity to the machine and suggest things it should research and ways that it should behave. The author is alternatively frightened and hopeful about the coming impact of such machines on Earth and its inhabitants.
Keywords: Male author; US author

“Death of an Air Salesman” - Rich[ard William] Larson (b. 1992) (Clarkesworld, 2019)
The story is set in a dystopian future where the rich get fresh air delivered by drones, the poor mostly breathe the deadly air, and the middle-class buy canisters of fresh air when they can.
Keywords: Canadian author; Male author; Nigerien author

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

“Discobolos” - James [N.] Wood (If This Goes On, 2019)
Dystopia in which one corporation, more powerful than the government, has taken complete control of the food supply and destroys any natural food. Discobolus of Myrton is an early classical Greek sculpture of a discus thrower.
Keywords: Canadian author; Male author

The Divers’ Game. A Novel - Jesse Ball (b. 1978) (Ecco/HarperCollins, 2019)
Dystopia of a society divided into two class, one of which can kill a member of the other at will.
Keywords: Male author; US author

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

“The Divided Island” - Rhys [Henry] Hughes (b. 1966) (Diabolical Plots, 2019)
A very brief story about an island in which one part was rational and ordered and the other part was chaotic. Each had a zoo that replicated the other’s way of life.
Keywords: Male author; Welsh author

“The Dropped Twenty” - John McLaughlin (Kasma Magazine, 2019)
The story is set in a future where jobs are so scarce that people are paid $2000.00 per year of their expected life to be euthanized so that their body parts and fluids can be reclaimed, the money going to their family.
Keywords: Male author

During-the-Event. A Novel - Roger Wall (b. 1955) (University of Alaska Press, 2019)
The protagonist, During-the-Event or D.E., is a seventeen year old boy who has lived with his grandfather in rural North Dakota. After their town his destroyed and his grandfather has died, he must travel through the dystopia of a collapsed United States.
Keywords: Male author; US author

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

“EasyCity” - Manuel B. Aalbers (How to Run a City Like Amazon, and Other Fables, 2019)
The EasyJet version of a city as seen by a couple wanting to rent an inexpensive EasyFlat in EasyCity, a new suburb being built near the airport that EasyJet has renamed to suggest it is closer to a major city than it actually is and going through all the add-on extras. All the stories in the book are responses to a recent book, A New City O/S: The Power of Open, Collaborative, and Distributed Government (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2017), by Stephen Goldsmith and Neil Kleiman, that proposes, in the editors’ interpretation, that cities should act more like Amazon in dealing with their citizens. The EasyJet version of a city as seen by a couple wanting to rent an inexpensive EasyFlat in EasyCity, a new suburb being built near the airport that EasyJet has renamed to suggest it is closer to a major city than it actually is and going through all the add-on extras. All the stories in the book are responses to a recent book, A New City O/S: The Power of Open, Collaborative, and Distributed Government (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2017), by Stephen Goldsmith and Neil Kleiman, that proposes, in the editors’ interpretation, that cities should act more like Amazon in dealing with their citizens.
Keywords: Belgian author; Male author

“Elliott Spencer” - George Saunders (b. 1958) (The New Yorker, 2019)
In the story an old man has had his memory “scraped” and reprogrammed, and he and others are used as political protesters.
Rpt. in his Liberation Day: Stories (New York: Random House, 2022), 197-233.
Keywords: Male author; US author

"e-race" - Russell Nichols (Terraform, 2019)
The story is set in a future in which racial differences are being eliminated through surgery and focuses on one man who resists.
Rpt. without the illus. in Black Sci-Fi Short Stories: An Anthology of New & Classic Stories (London: Flame Tree Publishing, 2021), 278-82.
Keywords: African American author; Male author

"The Erasure Game" - Yoon Ha Lee (b. 1979) (Take Us to a Better Place, Stories, 2019)
The story is set in a flawed utopia in which surveillance is constantly used to ensure good health.
Print version ISBN 9781595911117 sent to foundation members
Keywords: Male author; US author

"Esperanto" - Jamie Ford (b. 1968) (A People’s Future of the United States: Speculative Fiction from 25 Extraordinary Writers, 2019)
The story depicts a world in which most people’s experience of it is through virtual reality and how they react when the system is sabotaged.
Keywords: Male author; US author

"The Esteemed" - Robert Reed (b. 1956) (Asimov’s Science Fiction, 2019)
A manipulative time traveler visits various timelines in Earth’s past with variants of one family responding to the visits, all of which relate to catastrophes, including nuclear war, global warming, and the misuse of genetic engineering and artificial intelligence. Third story in the series that includes “Veritas.” Illus. Mark Evans. Asimov’s Science Fiction 26.7 (318) (July 2002): 102-40, which is set in ancient Rome; and “Truth.” Asimov’s Science Fiction (October/November 2008): 168-224, which is set in an alternative early 2000s. It was made into the move Prisoner X (2016), written by Reed and Gaurav Seth (b. 1968) and directed by Seth.
Keywords: Male author; US author

Fall or, Dodge in Hell. A Novel - Neal [Town] Stephenson (b. 1959) (William Morrow, 2019)
A massive novel in which a wealthy man’s brain scanned after his death and comes to exist in Bitworld, which is far from utopian. A good part of the novel is about a quest taking place in Bitworld. A second theme has most the U.S. Middle West under the control of a cult, which is made possible by Facebook, which provides different “information” to different areas and people. Some of the characters originated in his Reamde. New York: William Morrow, 2011.
Keywords: Male author; US author

“Fix That House!” - John [Joseph Vincent] Kessel (b. 1950) (Interzone, 2019)
The satirical story is set in a future U.S. South where slavery still exists.
Keywords: Male author; US author

FKA USA: The Complete Unabridged and Annotated Edition - Reed King [pseud.] (Flatiron Books, 2019)
The novel is set in a future fragmented United States in which much of each coast has disappeared due to earthquakes or flooding and the rest is composed areas of various sizes controlled by corporations, religious groups, ethnicities, and so forth, often in conflict with each other. Severe pollution and shortages. It begins in an area controlled by a corporation producing food completely out of chemicals using what is, in effect, slave labor. A young man chosen to deliver a talking goat to San Francisco has to cross through hostile territory and is joined by an android who wants to be human. The novel ends with appendices on What Is a Human (441-44), Defining Dissolution (445-46), Annie Waller V. Kitty Von Dutch, Katty Von Dench, and Katie Von Dulch (446-51), Politics and Natural Disaster: The Unexamined Link (453-55), The Android Freedom Fighters, 2050-2070s (457-60), The Rumpelstiltskin Roaches, and Other Lies From the Golden Age of Genetic Engineering (461-63).
Keywords: Male author; US author

“The Flotilla at Bird Island” - Mike McClelland (Take Us to a Better Place. Stories, 2019)
The story is set in a future U.S. where Atlanta, Georgia is on the coast, diseases are rampant, most flora and fauna re dying out, and all the other expected effects of climate change. But the focus of the story is a plan to save what remains of the world after even further damage.
Keywords: Male author; US author

"Flourish" - Calum L. MacLeòid (Shoreline of Infinity, 2019)
The story is set in a future of sentient cities that appear to produce a eutopia for their inhabitants.
Keywords: Male author; Scottish author

“Follow, Past Meridian” - Mark W. Tiedemann (b. 1954) (Analog Science Fiction Science Fact, 2019)
The story is set in a future in which people generally life within fairly narrow geographical confines. It focuses on a boy at his coming of age at fourteen who must decide on his future within what seem to be few options.
Keywords: Male author; US author

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

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

"Ghost Town" - Kanishk Tharoor (McSweeney’s 58. 2040 A.D., 2019)
The story is set in Uttarakhand, India, and the oppressive heat of the lowlands gradually reached the mountains and destroyed the crops. Most people leave but one couple stays even after their son leaves and dies in a construction accident in Oman.
Keywords: Indian author; Male author; US author

Golden State - Ben[jamin Allen] H. Winters (b. 1976) (Mulholland Books/Little, Brown & Co., 2019)
A dystopian future after a disaster in which much of the population of the United States has been wiped out. But the Golden State, which appears to be Los Angeles, remains, reconstituted as a dystopia in which it is illegal to lie and brings significant penalties. The novel focuses on an investigator in one of the many bureaucracies that have been established to enforce the law.
Keywords: Male author; US author

“Good News Bad News” - Charles Yu (b. 1976) (A People’s Future of the United States: Speculative Fiction from 25 Extraordinary Writers, 2019)
The future is depicted in a series of short reports, the main one being about racist robots.
Keywords: Male author; Taiwanese American author

"The Good Plan" - Mikael Awake (McSweeney’s 58. 2040 A.D., 2019)
The story is set “somewhere in the Northern Hemisphere” but concerns Africa. The Good People have the Good Plan to wall themselves off from the rest of the world to protect themselves from refugees, whose memories they take. The protagonist, who is being escorted in chains back to Africa, describes what little he can remember of the Crisis that the Good People blame on everyone but themselves.
Keywords: African American author; Male author

"Good Pupils" - Jack Lothian (If This Goes On, 2019)
The dystopian school of the near future where all students are controlled by an electronic collar and teachers are armed.
Keywords: Male author; UK author

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"The Most Magical Place” - Anthony Vanky (How to Run a City Like Amazon, and Other Fables, 2019)
Satire on planned cities run by AIs programmed by companies like Disney. All the stories in the book are responses to a recent book, A New City O/S: The Power of Open, Collaborative, and Distributed Government (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2017), by Stephen Goldsmith and Neil Kleiman, that proposes, in the editors’ interpretation, that cities should act more like Amazon in dealing with their citizens.
Keywords: Male author; US author

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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