“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

“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

"Free WiFi" - Marie [Lillian] Vibbert (b. 1974) (If This Goes On, 2019)
Dystopia in which all access to the internet is controlled by corporations, all education is for profit and any minor lapse can get you set to a work farm.
Keywords: Female author; US author

The Future of Another Timeline - Annalee Newitz (b. 1969) (Tor/Tom Doherty Associates, 2019)
An alternative history in which women travel to the past to try to defeat the men who are doing the same to eliminate all rights for women and kill the ones opposing them. There is a list of “Historical Sources” on 341-47.
Keywords: Transgender author; US author

“A Gardener’s Guide to the Apocalypse” - Lynette Mejía (If This Goes On, 2019)
Post-apocalyptic dystopia (nuclear war) as seen through the eyes of a gardener trying to grow food.
Keywords: Female author; US 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

“Going north: Injecting hope for a better life” - Roxanne Khamsi (Nature, 2019)
Immigration dystopia.
Keywords: Female 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

The Grace Year - Kim Liggett (Wednesday Books/St. Martin’s, 2019)
Young adult dystopia in which at sixteen girls are banished for a year but are hunted by men and are in danger from each other.
Keywords: Female author; US author

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

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

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

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

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

“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

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

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

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

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

“It’s 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

"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

“Let’s Make this City and Urban Project Everybody Wants” - Shannon Mattern (How to Run a City Like Amazon, and Other Fables, 2019)
Baltimore is taken over by the seed accelerator Y Combinator. All the stories in the book are responses to a recent book, A New City O/S: The Power of Open, Collaborative, and Distributed Government (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2017), by Stephen Goldsmith and Neil Kleiman, that proposes, in the editors’ interpretation, that cities should act more like Amazon in dealing with their citizens.
Keywords: Female author; US author

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

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

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

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

"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

“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

"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

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

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

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

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

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

“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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pet - Akwaeke Emezi (b. 1982) (Make Me a World/Random House Children’s Books, 2019)
Young adult novel set in the city of Lucille, which had become a eutopia by, as they believed, eliminating all the “monsters,” such as politicians, businesspeople, lawyers, and religious leaders, who had exploited the people. The story is told from the point-of-view of a young girl who discovers that at least one monster remains. Much fantasy.
Keywords: African author; Transgender author; US author

Pimp My Airship: A Naptown by Airship Novel - Maurice [Gerald] Broaddus (b. 1970) (Apex Book Co., 2019)
The novel is set in a steampunk alternative future America with most of its current problems, but, in the novel. they are faced and combatted. Stories in the “Pimp My Airship Universe” include “Pimp My Airship.” Apex Magazine, no. 2 (July 2009) https://www.apex-magazine.com/pimp-my-airship/; “The Problem of Trystan.” Hot and Steamy: Tales of Steampunk Romance. Ed. Martin H. Greenberg and Jean Rabe (New York: DAW Books, 2011), 46-63; “Steppin’ Razor.” Asimov’s Science Fiction 38.2 (457) (February 2014): 82-104; rpt. in Lightspeed Magazine, no. 87 (August 2017); “I Used to Love H.E.R. (A/K/A/ Help Engineer and Rebuild My Robot <s>Girlfriend</s> Roommate.” Help Fund My Robot Army!!! and Other Improbable Crowdfunding Projects. Ed. John Joseph Adams. Np: John Joseph Adams, 2014. EBook; “(120 Degrees of) Know the Ledge.” Not Our Kind. Ed. Nayad Monroe (Dayton, OH: Alliteration Ink, 2015), 264-86 [Incorrect in the Table of Contents]; Buffalo Soldier. New York: Tor.com, 2017; and “All God's Chillun Got Wings.” Illus. Jenna Fowler Steampunk Universe. Ed. Sarah Hans (Dayton, OH: Alliteration Ink, 2017), 15-33.
An excerpt was published in Apex Magazine, no. 120 (May 2019). EJournal.
Keywords: African American author; English author; US author

“[Pink Heart Shape]” - Lesley [Naa Norle] Lokko; Maria Smith (Gross Ideas: Tales of Tomorrow’s Architecture, 2019)
The story begins and ends with a young woman living in poverty in Ghana, dependent of remittances from her sister in London. In between is a discussion African migration, the causes of the woman’s poverty, and the importance of such remittances.
Keywords: English author; Female author; Ghanaian author; Scottish author; South African author; US author

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

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

“Potholes and Pumpkin Spice” - Kalpana Shankar; Glenn Kaufmann (How to Run a City Like Amazon, and Other Fables, 2019)
Satire describing a city run by Starbucks. All the stories in the book are responses to a recent book, A New City O/S: The Power of Open, Collaborative, and Distributed Government (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2017), by Stephen Goldsmith and Neil Kleiman, that proposes, in the editors’ interpretation, that cities should act more like Amazon in dealing with their citizens. Female co-author. Shankar is a Professor of Information and Communication Studies at University College, Dublin. Kaufmann is a freelance writer from the United States to Dublin, Ireland in 2011 and now has dual citizenship.
Keywords: Female author; Irish author; Male author; US author

"Premium Places" - Dietmar Offenhuber (How to Run a City Like Amazon, and Other Fables, 2019)
The story is in the form of an academic article on a city designed and run by Pornhub. All the stories in the book are responses to a recent book, A New City O/S: The Power of Open, Collaborative, and Distributed Government (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2017), by Stephen Goldsmith and Neil Kleiman, that proposes, in the editors’ interpretation, that cities should act more like Amazon in dealing with their citizens.
Keywords: Male author; US author

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

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

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

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

“The Referendum” - Lesley Nneka Arimah (b. 1983) (A People’s Future of the United States: Speculative Fiction from 25 Extraordinary Writers, 2019)
A referendum is being held to repeal the thirteenth amendment to the U.S. Constitution that abolished slavery.
Keywords: English author; Female author; Nigerian author; US author

"The Rememberers" - [Qingpei] Rachel Heng (b. 1988) (McSweeney’s 58. 2040 A.D., 2019)
The story is set in Singapore after the water came and most Singaporeans now live underground in inverted skyscrapers with “the elite few . . . who can afford homes within the last remaining gated communities aboveground” (18). The protagonist’s family was among the last to move into the underground bunkers, as she calls them, where status is reflected in how close to the surface you lived. Life is tightly controlled with high unemployment and passes checked on exiting and entering. The authors of the stories were each “assigned a specific climate event mentioned” in the 2018 UN climate report collaborating with experts recommended by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) who “provide a scientific backbone” for the stories while giving the writers free rein to determine how closely they adhered to that science” (6-7). The Introduction to the volume (7-12) is by Susan Casey-Lefkowitz, Chief Program Officer of the NDRC.
Keywords: English author; Female author; Singaporean author; US author

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

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

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

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

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

“Safe and Secure Living in Camden” - Alan Wiig (How to Run a City Like Amazon, and Other Fables, 2019)
The story is designed as a report of a couple searching for a safe place to live, work, and raise their family. They settle on Camden, New Jersey, a formerly notoriously dangerous city that has partnered with corporations, such as Shotspotter, to install comprehensive surveillance. All the stories in the book are responses to a recent book, A New City O/S: The Power of Open, Collaborative, and Distributed Government (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2017), by Stephen Goldsmith and Neil Kleiman, that proposes, in the editors’ interpretation, that cities should act more like Amazon in dealing with their citizens. The author teaches urban planning and community development at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, who has also published a critique of the actual program in “Secure the City, Revitalize the Zone: Smart Urbanization in Camden, New Jersey.” Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space 36.3 (2018): 403-23.
Keywords: Male author; US author

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

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

Seedless - D. A. Xiaolin Spires (Little Blue Marble, 2019)
The story extrapolates the popularity of seedless fruit to a world where nothing is reproduced naturally.
Rpt. without the illus. in Little Blue Marble 2019: Climate in Crisis. Ed. Katrina Archer (Vancouver, BC, Canada: Ganache Media Books, 2020), 112-19.
Keywords: Female author; US author

“The Semantic City” - Andrew Iliadis (How to Run a City Like Amazon, and Other Fables, 2019)
The story is set in a future where Philadelphia has contract with Apple for its citizens, including teenagers, to have a Siri implant that provides them with a constant flow of information, including ads. All the stories in the book are responses to a recent book, A New City O/S: The Power of Open, Collaborative, and Distributed Government (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2017), by Stephen Goldsmith and Neil Kleiman, that proposes, in the editors’ interpretation, that cities should act more like Amazon in dealing with their citizens.
Keywords: Male author; US author

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Three Tales the River Told: A Glimpse of the Past” - Stewart C. Baker (Nature, 2019)
Climate-change dystopia where everyone lives underground and as entertainment someone goes to the surface to follow the course of the Yellow River.
Keywords: English author; Male author; US author

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Unauthorized Bread" - Cory [Efram] Doctorow (b. 1971) (Radicalized [The front cover adds Four Tales of Our Present Moment and the back cover say Dystopia is now], 2019)
The story is told from the point-of-view of a woman who is a refugee recently permitted to live in the U.S. as she moves through the system and focuses on the dystopia that is that system. The woman and others caught in the system fight back using their knowledge of technology.
Keywords: Canadian author; English author; Male author; US author

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

“The United States Should Welcome a Strong, United Latin America” - Malka [Ann] Older (b. 1977) (2019)
Reflections on the formation of a united Latin America, following on from the European Union and an African Union that the United States is vigorously opposing.
Keywords: Female author; Latinx author; US author

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

"The Unseen" - Jeremy W. Crampton; Kara C. Hoover (How to Run a City Like Amazon, and Other Fables, 2019)
The story is set in a future that is completely connected and surveilled by a company like Cambridge Analytica told from the point-of-view of a teenager who doesn’t fit the parameters. All the stories in the book are responses to a recent book, A New City O/S: The Power of Open, Collaborative, and Distributed Government (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2017), by Stephen Goldsmith and Neil Kleiman, that proposes, in the editors’ interpretation, that cities should act more like Amazon in dealing with their citizens.
Keywords: English author; Female author; Ghanaian author; Male author; US author

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“The Wordless Age” - Elly Bangs (b. 1986) (Galaxy's Edge, 2019)
Dystopia in which language is privatized and must be paid for by the word.
Keywords: Female author; Queer author; Transgender author; US author

Work, Love, and Learning in Utopia: Equality Reimagined - Martin Schoenhals (Routledge, 2019)
Non-fiction utopia. The author concludes by saying that “This book has described my own visions for a better world” (265), and that is what he does throughout the book, mostly in fairly general terms, but in some chapters with some specificity. Stresses pleasure, community, the elimination of hierarchy, including an equality that eliminates “otherness,” particularly regarding gender roles but extending to most areas of difference. The chapter on Work in Utopia (107-51) lays out the author’s “overall plan for the economy in Utopia,” which includes, among other things, a guarantee of basic needs for all people. The chapter entitled “The Intrinsic Pleasures and Purposes of Learning” (191-230) sees a deinstitutionalized lifelong learning as central to the good life. Some discussion of governance. Elimination of nation-states. The author is a cultural anthropologist who currently teaches is a member of the First Year Seminar Core Faculty at Appalachian State University.
Keywords: Male author; US author

You Have Arrived at Your Destination - Amor Towles (b. 1964) (Amazon Original Stories, 2019)
The story is set in a future where it is possible to both genetically engineer children but also apparently choose the trajectory of their lives.
Keywords: Male author; US author

“Your Future is Pending” - Matthew Kressel (Clarkesworld, 2019)
Corporate and surveillance dystopia.
Keywords: Male author; US author

“Your Guide to the Ever-Shrinking Solitude on the Planet Earth: How To Be Alone” - Jo Miles (Nature, 2019)
In a dystopia of complete connectivity, the protagonist struggles to find a space where he can only hear his own thoughts.
Keywords: US author

“Youthful Indiscretions” - Monica Stephens (How to Run a City Like Amazon, and Other Fables, 2019)
Buffalo, New York, has become SnapCity with all services provide by Snapchat. All the stories in the book are responses to a recent book, A New City O/S: The Power of Open, Collaborative, and Distributed Government (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2017), by Stephen Goldsmith and Neil Kleiman, that proposes, in the editors’ interpretation, that cities should act more like Amazon in dealing with their citizens.
Keywords: Female author; US author

“The 133rd Live Podcast of the Gourmando Resistance: A Taste of Freedom” - Beth Cato (b. 1980) (Nature, 2018)
The story depicts a dystopian future where eating real food is illegal.
Keywords: Female author; US author

20/20 - B[ret] Shawn Clark (First Run Books, 2018)
The novel is told by a man in a future devastated by rising sea levels remembering his life from boyhood to his current present.
Keywords: Male author; US author

2084 - Darla Hogan (Author, 2018)
Dystopia, the United State of Britland, in which AI’s supposedly run the world for the benefit of all humans. This results in extreme austerity, everyone separated from their parents for seven years from seventeen, and occupations chosen for individuals by AI’s. But the system has become corrupted with power in the hands of human leaders who are in conflict with each other.
Keywords: Male author; US author

"Accident" - Gretchin Lair (Bikes Not Rockets: Intersectional Feminist Bicycle Science Fiction Stories, 2018)
The story is set in a dystopian future where couples must get permission to use birth control and are paid for having more children.
Keywords: Female author; US author

“Across the Border” - Sahil Lavingia (Terraform, 2018)
The story depicts a U.S. citizen returning from a Mexico that has been completely cut off by a huge wall, with no communication permitted between the two countries.
Rpt. without the illus. in Terraform Watch Worlds Burn. Ed. Brian Merchant and Claire L. Evans (New York: MCD X FSG Originals/Farrar, Straus and Giroux/Motherboard/Vice, 2022), 124-132.
Keywords: Male author; Singaporean author; US author

Adjustment Day - Chuck [Charles Michael] Palahniuk (b. 1962) (W. W. Norton, 2018)
Dystopia in which the population is going to be adjusted by killing large numbers of people.
Keywords: Male author; US author

“The Adventure of You” - Paul [B.] La Farge (1970-2023) (Welcome to Dystopia: Forty-five Visions of What Lies Ahead, 2018)
A dystopia that depicts an underground hierarchical society through a supposed assignment to help individuals find themselves.
Keywords: Male author; US author

Afterwar - Lilith Saintcrow (b. 1976) (Orbit, 2018)
The dystopia that is the U.S. after a second civil war.
Keywords: Female author; US author

“An Agent of Utopia” - Andy [Andrew Robert] Duncan (b. 1964) (An Agent of Utopia: New & Selected Stories, 2018)
The story is told from the point of view of a man from Utopia who was sent to rescue Thomas More from the Tower of London by bribing people using paving stones from Utopia.
Rpt. in The Best Science Fiction & Fantasy of the Year: Volume Thirteen. Ed. Jonathan Strahan (Oxford, Eng.: Solaris/Rebellion Publishing, 2019), 503-29.
Keywords: Male author; US author

"Alternica" - Jennie Wood (All We Ever Wanted: Stories of a Better World, 2018)
A positive future story in comic form in which a future eutopia has been created but could be destroyed by actions in the past.
Keywords: Female author; US author

“The Amazing Transformation of the White House Dog” - Ron[ald Joseph] Goulart (1933-2022) (Welcome to Dystopia: Forty-five Visions of What Lies Ahead, 2018)
A robot dog with hypnotic powers takes over the White House and institutes liberal policies.
Keywords: Male author; US author

American Heart - Laura Moriarty (b. 1970) (HarperTenn, 2018)
A young adult dystopia set in a future United States where just being a Muslim is grounds for deportation.
Keywords: Female author; US author

American Utopia - David Byrne (b. 1952) (Unpublished album, concert, play, 2018)
The play and film are the most complete expressions of the idea, which has been compared to “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood” or a utopia of nostalgia for the twenty-first century. The book is made up of words from the play, many simply the names of U.S. cities with an illustration.
Keywords: Canadian author; Male author; Scottish author; US author

“And the Rest Is Music” - Paul Allor (All We Ever Wanted: Stories of a Better World, 2018)
A future story in comic form in which each person lives in a pod that creates their ideal world for them, with the intent to keep humans from destroying the planet. The story is about an old woman who leaves her pod and experiences what is left of the world.
Keywords: Male author; US author

“Application for Asylum.” - Eileen [Katherine] Gunn (b. 1945) (Welcome to Dystopia: Forty-five Visions of What Lies Ahead, 2018)
A brief dystopia in which a child applies for asylum to escape the United States as it becomes under the policies of the Trump administration.
Keywords: Female author; US author

"Ask Me About My Book Club" - M. Michelle Bardon (Resist Fascism, 2018)
Dystopia that reflects the current situation in the U.S. in which dragons have been elected to national office and are being fought by witches. Female author.
Keywords: Female author; US author

“At the Crossroads” - Elly Bangs (b. 1986) (Bikes Not Rockets: Intersectional Feminist Bicycle Science Fiction Stories, 2018)
The story describes three societies, one a completely oppressive, hierarchical dystopia, one an anarchist eutopia where all the peoples of the galaxy are welcome and treated equally, and Dyanna, which has tendencies in both directions. The story is told through a bicycle race with a team from each planet taking place on all three planets plus a deserted Fourth World, which are alternate versions of the same present. The protagonist is a black woman with a prosthetic leg and only one good eye. In some way, the race is intended to prevent an interdimensional war. It begins on Planet One, the technically advanced dystopia with smooth metal roads, whose riders look identical, have only a number which identifies superiority and inferiority, and apparently is planning an invasion of the other Earths. The second planet, Dynnya, is a coalition of over a thousand planets. They are primarily agrarian, have no central authority and extremely advanced biotechnology, with most of the planets having no private property, and there has been no war in many thousands of years.
Keywords: Female author; Queer author; Transgender author; US author

"AT392-Red" - Khairani Barokka (b. 1985) (Economic Science Fictions, 2018)
Dystopia that includes “Biodiversity Credit” that allowed that allowed the destruction of one area of the world’s environment in exchange for the supposed protection of another area. This result in a massive refugee crisis. This was followed by the introduction of “Accessibility Credits” by which improving accessibility for those with disabilities in one part of the world allowed another part of the world to eliminate accessibility.
Keywords: English author; Female author; Indonesian author; US author

"The Atonement Path" - Alex[ander Christian] Irvine (b. 1969) (Lightspeed Magazine, 2018)
Dystopia in which children who have broken the law must forever dress distinctively and do whatever a citizen wants.
Keywords: Male author; US author

Bandwidth: An Analog Novel - Eliot Peper (47North, 2018)
First volume of a climate change dystopia series followed by Borderless: An Analog Novel. Seattle, WA: 47North, 2018; and Breach: An Analog Novel. Seattle, WA: 47North, 2019.
Keywords: Male author; US author

"Big Rural" - Cat[herine Tigerlily] Rambo (b. 1963) (The Weight of Light: A Collection of Solar Futures, 2018)
The story focuses on the negative impact of corporate solar power on rural areas and ways of lessening that impact.
Keywords: Female author; US author

"BK Girls." - [Tamela] [Larimer] (b. 1968) (Welcome to Dystopia: Forty-five Visions of What Lies Ahead, 2018)
Dystopia in which Boko Haram has relocated to the US and is kidnapping girls for sex. The story is written from the point-of-view of one of the girls.
Keywords: Female author; US author

Blackfish City - Sam J[oshua] Miller (b. 1979) (Ecco/HarperCollins, 2018)
The novel is set in a climate-change dystopia in which sea level rises have forced most of the remaining world’s population to live on massive platforms in the oceans. It is presented through four main characters living on one called Qaanaaq east of Greenland and north of Iceland plus a text something like a blog that appears throughout the book. Qaanaaq is controlled by AI’s that make most of the decisions and function as a government.
An audiobook is narrated by Vikas Adam. Np: Harper Audio and Blackstone Audio, 2018.
Keywords: Male author; US author

"Bombs Away" - Howard Mackie (b. 1958) (All We Ever Wanted: Stories of a Better World, 2018)
A positive future story in comic form in which when war breaks out none of the missiles explode and the weapons don’t work because aliens had decided to give humans a second chance.
Keywords: Male author; US author

The Bond. A Novel - Robin Kirk (b. 1960) (Blue Crow Publishing/Goldenjay Books, 2018)
First volume of a trilogy set in a future controlled by a matriarchy that genetically engineers their children and determines their role in life at sixteen. The novel follows a girl who finds that the role chosen for her does not fit. The second volume is The Hive Queen. Chapel Hill, NC: Blue Crow Publishing/Goldenjay Books, 2020 follows a different set of characters searching for a rumored place of freedom and the troubles they experience during the search.
Keywords: Female author; US author

“Bright Sarasota Where the Circus Lies Dying” - James Sallis (b. 1944) (Welcome to Dystopia: Forty-five Visions of What Lies Ahead, 2018)
Dystopia in which people are taken from their homes and placed in camps.
Keywords: Male author; US author

“Burn Down the House” - Ted [Theodore Edwin] White (b. 1938) (Welcome to Dystopia: Forty-five Visions of What Lies Ahead, 2018)
A dystopia centered on the deep division between the one percent and everyone else. The majority are being burned out and killed. No education. Most poor women are prostitutes. The story focuses on one intelligent but poor girl who fights back.
Keywords: Male author; US author

“Burned-Over Territory” - Lee Konstantinou (b. 1978) (Slate, 2018)
Dystopia set in a society with a guaranteed income undermined by factionalism and bureaucracy.
Rpt., without the response, in Future Tense Fiction: Stories of the Tomorrow. Ed. Kirsten Berg, Torie Bosch, Joey Eschrich, Ed Finn, Andrés Martinez, and Juliet Ulman (Los Angeles, CA: The Unnamed Press, 2019), 173-89.
Keywords: African American author; Male author; US author

“Can You See It Now?” - Taylor Hoffman (All We Ever Wanted: Stories of a Better World, 2018)
A positive future story in comic form in which a death cult is poisoning the atmosphere, and two women fight back.
Keywords: Female author; US author

"Caught Root" - Julia K. Patt (Glass and Gardens: Solarpunk Summers. An Anthology, 2018)
The story is set in a future recovering from environmental collapse with two cities, one high-tech and one low-tech, trying to find a way to cooperate.
Keywords: Female author; US author

Census - Jesse Ball (b. 1978) (Ecco/HarperCollins, 2018)
A widowed father who is dyeing takes a job as a census taker in a dystopian country so that he can spend time travelling with his young son, who has Down syndrome. They travel across the country visiting cities in alphabetical order and meeting different people who are branded at each census.
Keywords: Male author; US author

“Charlie and the Aliens” - Ganzeer [pseud.] (b. 1982) (Who Will Speak for America?, 2018)
The story is about immigration and refugees on a far future Earth, and the strict rules they must follow to be accepted, even if they are human or were born on Earth and are returning after life on another planet.
Keywords: Egyptian author; Male author; US author

"Chat Room" - Nadia Shammas (All We Ever Wanted: Stories of a Better World, 2018)
A future story in comic form about the problem of wanting to fit in and finding friends when you are different.
Keywords: Female author; US author

Chercher La Femme - L[inda] Timmel Duchamp (b. 1950) (Aqueduct Press, 2018)
A complex novel set mostly on a spaceship travelling to a planet called La Femme that explores gender issues. There are clear dystopian elements on the starship, and whether La Femme is eutopian or dystopian is up to the reader.
Keywords: Female author; US author

"City Bones" - Richard Pulfer (Futurescapes Volume Two: Blue Sky Cities, 2018)
The story is set in a future Chicago where automated cars are helping reduce the pollution and ease traffic congestion, but drivers insist on still controlling their cars whatever the consequences.
Keywords: Male author; US author

The City Where We Once Lived. A Novel - Eric Barnes (b. 1968) (Arcade Publishing/Skyhorse, 2018)
A climate-change dystopia set in an unnamed city, where those living in the mostly abandoned North struggle to survive. A prequel is Above the Ether. A Novel. New York: Arcade Publishing/Skyhorse, 2019 in which people escaping from the beginnings of catastrophic climate change converge on the city.
Keywords: Male author; US author

Cold as Thunder - Jerrold W. Apps (b. 1934) (University of Wisconsin Press, 2018)
Surveillance and climate-change dystopia in which the Eagle Party has taken over the United States, privatized all schools, closed libraries and churches, and closed all independent media.
Keywords: Male author; US author

The Completionist - Siobhan Adcock (Simon & Schuster, 2018)
Dystopia in which mothers are required to give up their jobs to raise their children and must do so to rigidly enforced standards helped/supervised by “nurse completionists.”
Keywords: Female author; US author

“The Congress: A Taste of Success” - Dave Kavanaugh (Nature, 2018)
The story depicts a eutopian future where a past Congress had created an artificial intelligence to run the world, which it has done successfully. There are still elections, and the story is on what happens when a woman who has been elected discovers the truth.
Keywords: Male author; US author

“Contingency Plans for the Apocalypse” - [Divya Srinivasan] [Breed] (Uncanny Magazine, 2018)
The story is set in a future where abortion is illegal in Arizona and abortion providers and their supporters are liable to be shot on sight by the authorities but legal in California, and there is an underground railroad between the states that has to cross a fortified border.
Rpt. in her Contingency Plans for the Apocalypse and Other Possible Situations (Gurugram, India : Hachette India, 2019), 11-26. 9789388322430
Keywords: Female author; Indian author; US author

"The Cost of Doing Business" - Nancy [Anne Koningisor] Kress (b. 1948) (Asimov's Science Fiction, 2018)
The story focuses on a plan to green the United States, initially on a small scale in Flint, Michigan, and the throughout the country and the dystopian means used to achieve the eutopian end.
Rpt. in A Year Without Winter. Illus. Ed. Dehlia Hannah, ed. with Brenda Cooper, Joey Eschrich, and Cynthia Selin, Fiction eds. (New York: Columbia Books on Architecture and the City, 2018), 173-211.
Keywords: Female author; US author

Crossing Over - Paul Clayton (Author, 2018)
Dystopia of the next U. S. Civil War, which is based on political beliefs. The novel depicts a couple and their daughter trying to escape to Canada.
Keywords: Male author; US author

The Cube. A Novel - Kelly Fumiko Weiss (Windy City Publishers, 2018)
The Cube is a game in sites around the world and that people play compulsively. The novel focuses on trying to understand the Cube and has both dystopian and eutopian elements.
Keywords: Female author; US author

Culture - Z - Karl Andrew Marszalowicz (Black Rose Writing, 2018)
The novel traces the history of the use of C.R.I.S.P.R. technology to create on demand the children and body parts people want with all the problems and corruption involved.
Keywords: Male author; US author

"Dangerous" - Lisa Mason (b. 1953) (Welcome to Dystopia: Forty-five Visions of What Lies Ahead, 2018)
Satire on bureaucracy in a surveillance dystopia.
Keywords: Female author; US author

"Day At the Park" - Eliot Rahal (All We Ever Wanted: Stories of a Better World, 2018)
A brief positive future story in comic form in which a girl and a young girl who is a robot play in the park.
Keywords: Male author; US author

“A Day in the Life of a Socialist Citizen” - Bhaskar Sunkara (b. 1969) (The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for a Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequality, 2018)
Essay in which the author compares of precarious life of an average citizen in contemporary capitalist Edison, New Jersey, with such a life in a “slightly idealized version of Sweden” where a eutopian socialist system exists. The title is taken from Michael Walzer’s “A Day in the Life of a Socialist Citizen: Two Cheers for Participatory Democracy.” Dissent (May-June 1968): 243-47, which focuses on the subtitle.
Keywords: Male author; US author

The Day the Sun Changed Colors - Scott Talbot Evans ([CreateSpace], 2018)
Humorous novel that begins in a high tech eutopia in 4377 in which the sun changes colors that reflect increased radiation that will ultimately destroy the planet. The novel follows the exploits of two families trying, with the help of a robot, to build a spaceship to escape. There is a glossary that describes the way time is noted, clocks, categories of the ages of people, the sky colors, length, various sizes, volume, speed, and “infinite math.”
Keywords: Male author; US author

“Designed for Your Safety” - Elizabeth Bourne (Welcome to Dystopia: Forty-five Visions of What Lies Ahead, 2018)
In a dystopia riddled with disease, a building controlled by an artificial intelligence locks the workers inside.
Keywords: Female author; US author

Destiny: Quest for a New World - Donald Morgan Edwards (Xlibris, 2018)
The first volume of a series in which, given the collapse of Earth’s environment and a developing authoritarianism on Earth, a successful search for a habitable planet is made and the first settlers struggle to get the colony established. A sequel is Kairos: Book Two of “Quest for a New World”. [Bloomington, IN]: Xlibris, 2018, which describes the successful settlement, but new settlers with different ideas cause problems. The novel’s ending suggests a sequel.
Keywords: Male author; US author

Detonation. A Novel - Erik A. Otto (Sagis Press, 2018)
Dystopia in which the U.S. is divided between two countries, one of which accepts and the other rejects Artificial Intelligences, which have become more intelligent and powerful than humans. 2021 Otto, Proliferation. A Novel is set in the same future.
Keywords: Canadian author; Male author; Swiss author; US author

“The Diggers 2.0” - Kevin Christopher Jesse (Futurescapes Volume Two: Blue Sky Cities, 2018)
The story is set in a polluted city in which the rich have clean air, and the poor are left to suffer and die, and the poor, predominantly Hispanic community decide to improve their lot.
Keywords: Male author; US author

“Divided Light” - Pressman, Corey S.; Clark A. Miller; Joey Eschrich (The Weight of Light: A Collection of Solar Futures, 2018)
The story is set in a future climate-change dystopia in which Phoenix, Arizona, is completely under a covering that collects solar power and outside the city is a settlement where the people have modified themselves and the countryside to live without water.
Keywords: Male author; US author

Doctor Benjamin Franklin’s Dream America: A Novel of the Digital Revolution - Damien Lincoln Ober (Night Shade Books/Skyhorse, 2018)
An alternative history dystopia in which the internet is an integral part of the culture at the time of the American Revolution. The British take control of it, killing everyone who uploads the Articles of Confederation. An off-grid George Washington saves the day, but then disagreements develop over the centralized control of the internet.
Keywords: Male author; US author

"The Doner" - Tabitha Sin (Broad Knowledge: 35 Women Up To No Good, 2018)
A zombie story set in a climate-change dystopia in which New York city that is slowly disappearing under the ocean.
Keywords: Female author; US author

Dry - Neal Shusterman (b. 1962); Jarrod Shusterman (Simon & Schuster BYFR, 2018)
A climate change dystopia when the water runs out.
Keywords: Male author; US author

"The Elites" - Stephanie Feldman (Welcome to Dystopia: Forty-five Visions of What Lies Ahead, 2018)
Dystopia depicting a family separated when one member leaves the U.S. to help a sick relative and is not allowed to return. A second theme is the competition to get children into elite schools.
Keywords: Female author; US author

“The End of the Incarnation” - Malka [Ann] Older (b. 1977) (Who Will Speak for America?, 2018)
A depiction of the gradual dissolution of the United States ending with rights becoming universal rather than tied to citizenship.
Rpt. as “The End of the Incarnation I” through “The End of the Incarnation VII.” In her . . . and Other Disasters (Baltimore, MD: Mason Jar Press, 2019), 15, 39, 55, 95, 105, 139, 165.
Keywords: Female author; Latinx author; US author

The Entity: 2147 - David A[lan] Collier (AuthorHouse, 2018)
The novel is set in a future U.S. that has been devastated by climate change and a world facing a massive immigration crisis caused by flooding. The novel, though, takes place mostly in the U.S. Midwest after an alien artifact lands on a family’s farm and is concerned with the impact on the family. The ending leaves open the possibility of a sequel.
Keywords: Male author; US author

"Escape from Caring Seasons” - Sarah Pinsker (b. 1977) (Twelve Tomorrows, 2018)
A dystopia brought about by an artificial intelligence that controls all the residents in Caring Seasons, a senior citizens home, and whose decisions, which are aimed at benefiting the home not than the residents and cannot be overridden by anyone. The story concerns a man trying to get his wife released when the algorithm says she should stay.
Rpt. in her Lost Places. Stories (Easthampton, MA: Small Beer Press, 2023), 110-138.
Keywords: Female author; US author

"The Evac" - Thomas Webb (Little Blue Marble, 2018)
The story is about UN troops evacuating people from an Earth-like planet that had been destroyed by the environmental policies that had been destroying Earth. Before it was too late, the people of Earth had realized what was happening had instituted the policies necessary to reverse the devastation.
Rpt. without the illus. in Little Blue Marble 2018: Stories of Our Changing Climate. Ed. Katrina Archer. Np: Ganache Media epub, 2018. EBook.
Keywords: Male author; US author

“An Excerpt from the Post-Truth and Irreconcilable Differences Commission” - Brendan C. Byrne (b. 1982) (Vital Signals: Virtual Futures Near-Future Fictions, 2018)
A journalist reports a future with a computer as President of the U. S. creating a form of fascism.
Originally published online on Imperica (April 2018), which is no longer available online
Keywords: Male author; US author

Existence Augmented - Channing Whitaker (Off Speed Press, 2018)
Climate change dystopia
Keywords: Male author; US author

"Exit Here" - Andrew Kozma (Reckoning 3: Creative Writing on Environmental Justice, 2018)
Environmental dystopia.
Rpt. https://reckoning.press/exit-here/ (June 11, 2019).
Keywords: Male author; US author

“Extreme Bedding” - David Marusek (b. 1951) (Welcome to Dystopia: Forty-five Visions of What Lies Ahead, 2018)
Brief dystopia with terrorists everywhere.
Keywords: Male author; US author

"False Alarm" - John Cooper Hamilton (Little Blue Marble, 2018)
Dystopia set in the U. S. after the Resettlement Wars that had been brought about by climate change and the loss of the ability to grow crops in their traditional locations. This led to some countries importing both the crops and the people who had worked the crops.
Rpt. without the illus. in Little Blue Marble 2018: Stories of Our Changing Climate. Ed. Katrina Archer. Np: Ganache Media epub, 2018. EBook
Keywords: Male author; US author

"Farewell" - Mary Anne Mohanraj (b. 1971) (O/R Books, 2018)
A dystopia in which a family is being broken up and the grandmother is being deported.
Keywords: Female author; US author

“A Field of Sapphires and Sunshine” - Jaymee Goh (Glass and Gardens: Solarpunk Summers. An Anthology, 2018)
The story is set in the 22nd century in which the U.S. economy has collapsed, and it is cheaper for the protagonist to attend university in the U.S. than at home in Asia. The world has adapted to climate change by, among other things, abolishing airplanes, and the protagonist flies home on an airship, and, since the flight takes a week, reflects on the world situation and her place in it as a new graduate.
Keywords: Female author; Malaysian author; US author

“First Steps Outside” - Josh[ua] Gorfain (All We Ever Wanted: Stories of a Better World, 2018)
A positive future story in comic form in which two people who meet online as avatars and are afraid of ever going outside choose to meet.
Keywords: Male author; US author

"Fixable" - Paolo [Tadini] Bacigalupi (b. 1972) (Futurescapes Volume Two: Blue Sky Cities, 2018)
In the future, pollution is devastating, the official position is that the air is clean, and it is illegal to report the facts.
Keywords: Male author; US author

“For the Sake of Snake Power” - Brenda Cooper (b. 1951) (The Weight of Light: A Collection of Solar Futures, 2018)
near future climate-change dystopia in which poor people in Phoenix die in the regular heat waves because the government is selling their solar power to other cities. The story is followed by the essays, Joshua Loughman, “Lessons from the Snake: Energy and Society;” and Esmerelda Parker, “Drawing from Nature: Designing a Solar Snake.”
Keywords: Female author; US author

“The Free Orcs of Cascadia” - Margaret Killjoy (b. 1982) (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 2018)
The story is set in a future in which people in role-playing games choose to fashion their lives on the roles they play. The focus is on the conflict between the “Free Orcs” who are anarchists and the fascist Orcines. The Free Orcs live in the town of Gray Morrow located in the remains of a town in the middle of a “scorched graveyard of a Douglas fir” forest (170). They use “Dark Speech” (related to Tolkien’s “Black Speech”), are matriarchal, which is “roughly anarchist,” (the Orcine are patriarchal), and live by their version of “orcish code of honour” that stresses “interdependence between individual sovereignty and collective identity” (171). The author self-describes as a transgender woman who prefers the pronouns she/her.
Rpt. in her We Won’t Be Here Tomorrow and Other Stories (Chico, CA/Edinburgh, Scot.: AK Press, 2022), 17-35.
Keywords: Female author; Transgender author; US author

Free the Bear - C. D. Spensley (Author, 2018)
California, which is much more scientifically advanced than the rest of the country, secedes. The ending suggests a sequel.
Keywords: Male author; US author

The Freedom Trials - Meredith Tate (Page Street Publishing Co, 2018)
A dystopia in which selected prisoners are put through the varied tests of the Freedom Trials with the reward of freedom if they succeed and execution if they fail. The protagonist, who has had her memory of her crime erased, has made enemies among the other prisoners, some of whom want her to fail.
Keywords: Female author; Swiss author; US author

Frostlands - Feffer, John (Haymarket Books, 2018)
Second volume of a series that is connected to 2016 and 2021 Feffer but telling a different story. This volume focuses on the conflict between a large corporation that has developed a treatment that greatly extends life, hoping to save the wealthiest one percent of the population and a woman, the wife of the protagonist in the first volume, who is developing a method for radically cooling the climate. An AI used by the corporation but captured and reprogrammed by the community where the woman lives also plays an important role.
Keywords: Male author; US author

"Fuck You Pay Me” - Francis Bass (Reckoning 3: Creative Writing on Environmental Justice, 2018)
The story is set in an environmentally damaged future where most people are deeply in debt, the entire safety net has disappeared, and the possibility of higher education is eroding.
. Rpt. https://reckoning.press/fuck-you-pay-me/ (April 2, 2019).
Keywords: Male author; US author

“The Future Encyclopedia of Luddism” - Miriam A. Cherry (Economic Science Fictions, 2018)
Presented as an encyclopedia entry that begins with the actual Luddite movement of the earlier nineteenth century, which, instead of being defeated, is successful. Luddite councils are established in factories, then these expand into the political real, then worldwide. The Luddite’s history of successes is then followed to the twenty-fourth century.
Keywords: Female author; US author

The Future Will Be BS Free - Will[iam D.] McIntosh (b. 1962) (Dorrance Press, 2018)
The novel describes the eutopian and dystopian effects of a totally reliable lie detector that can always be carried by anyone and left on.
Keywords: Male author; US author

"Gaea" - Rich Douek (All We Ever Wanted: Stories of a Better World, 2018)
A positive future story in comic form in which Earth has been nursed back to health only for others to arrive set to despoil it again.
Keywords: Male author; US author

“Galatea in Utopia” - Nick [Nicholas] Wolven (The Magazine of Fantasy of Science Fiction, 2018)
The story is set in a future in which all but a few people can change their gender and all bodily characteristics as often as they want and addresses the relationship issues this creates.
Keywords: Male author; US author

"Glow" - J. S. Breukelaar (Welcome to Dystopia: Forty-five Visions of What Lies Ahead, 2018)
Dystopia set in the United States after an election of an anti-immigrant president.
Keywords: Aotearoa New Zealand author; Australian author; Female author; US author

"Good Time" - Vasilis Pozios (All We Ever Wanted: Stories of a Better World, 2018)
A positive future story in comic form in which technology both punishes and rehabilitates in a very short time.
Keywords: Male author; US author

"Habitat" - Christie Yant (Shades Within Us: Tales of Migration and Fractured Borders, 2018)
Dystopia in which the response to climate-change is to move all humans into one huge building and leave nature to itself. The building is designed to replicate the culture and environment of the people, and the story examines the response of the last group of humans who had still been living outside.
Keywords: Female author; US author