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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Attack Surface - Cory [Efram] Doctorow (b. 1971) (Tor/Tom Doherty Associates, 2020)
Third volume in a loosely connected series following Little Brother (2008) and Homeland (2013). This volume follows one of the minor characters from Little Brother, a woman who, as an adult, sells her skills to a corporation that helps the dictators of the world with the woman also assisting her friends who are trying to overthrow the same people. The novel focuses on her actions after she is forced to make a choice. A related novella is his “Lawful Interception.” Tor.com. Illus. Yuko Shimizu. http://www.tor.com/stories/2013/08/lawful-interception.
Keywords: Canadian author; English author; Male author; US author

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chronicle from the Land of Happiest People on Earth. A Novel - Wole [Akinwande Oluwole Babatunde] Soyinka (b. 1934) (Bookcraft, 2020)
The novel depicts a future African country, similar to Nigeria, that is corrupted by greed and the desire for power. Part mystery novel. Much humor.
U.S. ed. as Chronicle from the Land of Happiest People on Earth. New York: Pantheon Books, 2021. 444 pp.
Keywords: English author; Male author; Nigerian author; US author

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“The Department of Talent Resources. We Can Take Care of Everything: Part I” - Carrie Vaughn (b. 1973) (Ignorance is Strength: The Dystopia Triptych 1, 2020)
The first part of a three-part story developed over three volumes. In this part, a young woman who is struggling to survive financially after a bad accident is approach by a recruiter for a corporation that promises to take care of everything if she signs on. In the second part, “Keep Your Streak Going! We Can Take Care of Everything: Part II.” Burn the Ashes: The Dystopia Triptych 2. Ed. John Joseph Adams, Hugh Howey, and Christine Yant New York/London: Broad Reach Publishing + Adamant Press, 2020), 3-16, she has been working for the corporation for six years, health problems solved, living on its campus, which she never leaves, and appears happy while under constant pressure to fulfill set tasks within specified time periods to gain or lose credits, which are needed for everything. She and a man she just met even conceive a child to gain credit. The man is not a hard worker and falls down in the system. The woman does well, but at the end of the story her now-grown daughter chooses to leave the corporation and strike out on her own. In the third part, “You Have Been Crowdfunded. We Can Take Care of Everything: Part II.” or Else the Light: The Dystopia Triptych 3. Ed. John Joseph Adams, Hugh Howey, and Christine Yant New York/London: Broad Reach Publishing + Adamant  Press, 2020), 3-16, she and three friends are looking to retire at one of the corporation’s retirement homes but cannot actually confirm their existence or contact anyone they know who has retired.
Keywords: Female author; US author

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“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

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

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

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

"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

“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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“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

The Resisters. A Novel - Gish Jen (b. 1955) (Alfred A. Knopf, 2020)
The novel is set in a surveilled future with much of the U.S. underwater and the population is divided between the privileged “Netted” who live on land and the “Surplus” on live in the swamps or on the water. See also 2020 Jen, “Tell Me Everything,” which is also about a surveilled future.
Keywords: Chinese-American author; Female author; US author

"The Responsible Party" - Margret A. Treiber (Again, Hazardous Imaginings: More Politically Incorrect Science Fiction. An International Anthology, 2020)
Under The Responsible Party Act anyone who has made someone else uncomfortable is responsible for any later effect of that act.
Keywords: Female 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

"Revolt" - Sheri Sebastian-Gabriel (The Dystopian States of America: A Charity Anthology Benefiting the ACLU Foundation, 2020)
In the story immigrants from South of the border are turned into enhanced slaves.
Keywords: Female author; US author

Road Out of Winter - Alison Stine (b. 1978) (Harlequin Books/Mira, 2020)
Dystopia set in Appalachia in a future where civilization has gradually collapsed as cold reduces the growing season, communities cannot afford to heat public buildings, so close all schools, pipes have frozen so that there is no water in buildings, and so forth. The protagonist is a woman who knows how to makes things grow, packs up her seeds and grow lights, and leaves, towing her tiny house. On the way, slowly, she attracts a community of misfits, and they run into more and more violent cults. The novel won the 2020 Philip K. Dick Award.
Keywords: Female author; US 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

Sanctuary - Paola Mendoza (b. 1981); Abby Sher (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 2020)
The novel, a young adult dystopia, is set the United States in 2032 with President Trump in his third term and everyone required to wear an implanted chip that records everything about them and allows non-citizens to be identified. The protagonist is a young, undocumented woman whose father has been deported and whose mother’s fake chip fails. The family then struggles to reach California, which has seceded from the United States and provides sanctuary.
Keywords: Columbian author; Female author; US author

“A Scarf for Janice” - Sandra Ulbrich Almazan (Glass and Gardens: Solarpunk Winters. An Anthology, 2020)
The story is set some years after an unexplained Change when much of the natural world collapsed. In the story, a transgender person joins a bird count to be able to honor her transgender great aunt by visiting where she grew up, was tormented at school, and disowned by her parents. In this future all such prejudice has disappeared.
Keywords: Female author; US author

"Scarves" - Elizabeth Massie (The Dystopian States of America: A Charity Anthology Benefiting the ACLU Foundation, 2020)
The story is set in a future where it is illegal to be “pretty,” and each child must go through a ceremony where their face is scarred.
Keywords: Female author; US author

Sea Change - Nancy [Anne Koningisor] Kress (b. 1948) (Tachyon Publications, 2020)
The novel is set in a future in 2022, after a released biopharmaceutical caused a worldwide agricultural collapse and the outlawing of all GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms). The female protagonist is part of an underground movement to create safe GMOs the provide food for the hungry and clean up the environment. The ending suggests a sequel.
Keywords: Female author; US author

The Seep - Chana Porter (Soho Press, 2020)
Aliens arrive and infiltrate everywhere, allowing people to change their bodies at will, communicate telepathically, and live forever. Wars end. Everyone is fed. One focus of the novel is whether this is a good thing or not; another is on the choices people make.
Keywords: Female author; US author

"Set the Ice Free" - Shel Graves (Glass and Gardens: Solarpunk Winters. An Anthology, 2020)
The story is set in a future in which most people have left Earth fleeing climate change, and those that stayed, known as the Sun People, have adapted using a combination of traditional skills and advanced technology.
Keywords: Female author; US author

“The Shadow Prison Experiment. Shadow Prisons: Part I” - Caroline M[ariko] Yoachim (Ignorance is Strength: The Dystopia Triptych 1, 2020)
Three-part dystopia in which a everyone has an implant that regulates everything they see and the corporation that controls it develops a technology that replaces prisons by taking a person offline so that no one can see who it is. The Shades, as they are called, state popping up everywhere as more and more “crimes” warrant temporary or permanent exclusion. In the first story, the protagonist, who is in a single-sex marriage and has a transgender child, is given a permanent sentence. The second story is a decade or so later, and she is trying to survive, and her partner divorced her and has re-married, and she sometimes meets with her child, now a marred adult. In the third story, the corporation she is a leader in a revolution against the Shadow Prisons.
The three stories were rpt. in Lightspeed, nos. 123 - 125 (August - October 2020). https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/the-shadow-prison-experiment/ https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/shadow-prisons-of-the-mind/ https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/the-shadow-prisoners-dilemma/
Keywords: Female author; US 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

"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

"Sky Suck" - Juliana Roth (Reckoning 4: Creative Writing on Environmental Justice, 2020)
The story is set in a future devastated by climate change.
Also published online at https://reckoning.press/sky-suck/ (April 1, 2020).
Keywords: Female 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

“Sonya Josephine, and the Tragic Re-Invention of the 2019 Telephone” - I[sabel] S. Heynen (Mithila Review, 2020)
The story is set in a post-apocalypse dystopia in which much past knowledge has been lost although some is slowly being recreated. People have retreated into a city, the Egg, where they are sealed off from the outside. The city is crumbling. Assassination is legal and a booming business.
Keywords: Female author; US author

The Space Between Worlds - Micaiah Johnson (2020)
The novel is set in a universe where, under specific circumstances, travel among the universes is possible, and the protagonist is one of the women on Earth, which is a dystopia with deep economic and social divisions, chosen to travel.
Keywords: Female author; US 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

"Stealth" - Jillian Weise (b. 1981) (The New York Times Sunday Review, 2020)
The dystopia experienced by the disabled in a near future world of greater surveillance and collection of data on individuals.
Keywords: Female author; US 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

“Such People in It” - Meg Elison (b. 1982) (Big Girl plus The Pill plus Such People in It and much more, 2020)
An authoritarian, extremely rigid dystopia enforced by the “Decencies,” who respond violently to any opposition to the system. The protagonist works long hours in a call center for low pay and is constantly aware that he may breach some minor rule.
Keywords: Female author; US author

"Supply and Demand" - Anjali Sachdeva (McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, 2020)
The story takes place in a future where the privileged cites are all female with children produced from two eggs. Other women live in camps outside the cities and service men. All their daughters visit the cities and some stay.
Keywords: Female author; US author

“Tell Me Everything” - Gish Jen (b. 1955) (The New York Times Sunday Review, 2020)
The story is set in a high-tech future and focuses on interaction with an AI adviser/assistant. See also 2020 Jen, The Resisters. A Novel.
Keywords: Chinese-American author; Female author; US author

“The Things That Make It Worth It” - Lex T. Lindsay (Glass and Gardens: Solarpunk Winters. An Anthology, 2020)
The story is set in a future struggle to restore the environment from the overheating of climate change and the loss of plants and animals. In the story, the researchers are trying to produce snow for the first in many years.
Keywords: Female author; Queer author; US 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

Trust in the Law, For the Law Trusts in You. Lawless: Part I” - Merc Fenn Wolfmoor (b. 1986) (Ignorance is Strength: The Dystopia Triptych 1, 2020)
Dystopia in three parts. In the first story, mass shootings are a constant, and children are taught using VISIONS, a virtual reality system that supposedly allows safe education. In the second story, there is enforced church membership and attendance, patriarchy, marriage between a man and a woman, with the woman expected to have children, and constant updates rating on every individual with penalties for falling too low. CUSN, developed from VISIONS, connects everyone, but becomes infected with a virus. In the third story, a small group of people try to bring down the system.
Keywords: Non-binary author; Queer author; US 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 Truth Is All There Is” - Emily Parker (Slate, 2020)
The story is set in a future in which the blockchain controls is used for everything and is assumed to be completely reliable. One blockchain dominates the world, but China has introduced a competitor, which its citizens are required to use.
For a response, see Jill Carlson. “Trust No One. Not Even a Blockchain.” Illus. Lisa Larson-Walker. Slate (January 25, 2020). How much can we really trust the blockchain? (slate.com)
Keywords: Female author; US author

Upright Women Wanted - Sarah Gailey (Tom Doherty Books/Tor.com, 2020)
The novel is set in a fragmented future United States with the protagonist a young woman who is coming to realize she is gay and whose closest friend has been executed for having unapproved literature.
Keywords: Female author; US 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 Valley of Mothers” - Josie Columbus (Glitter + Ashes: Queer Tales of a World that Wouldn’t Die, 2020)
Post-apocalyptic dystopia centered on four children living by themselves, dreaming of a home, and not knowing who to trust.
Keywords: Transgender 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 and the Water” - E. M. Wright (Reckoning 4: Creative Writing on Environmental Justice, 2020)
The story is set in a U.S. refugee camp that is slowly being drowned.
Also published online at https://reckoning.press/the-water-and-the-wall/ (February 19, 2020).
Keywords: Female author; US 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

“Washed Clean: Say hello to a new you” - Fenn, Edem (Nature, 2020)
Brief story depicting a surveillance society controlled by a theocracy. A new religion develops around a procedure to change identities.
Keywords: Female author; US author

“‘We Care’” - Marissa [Kristine] Lingen (b. 1978) (If There’s Anyone Left. Volume 1. Science Fiction and Speculative Fiction Short Story Magazine, 2020)
The story is set in a future where one corporation dominates. The focus is on the one woman in the corporation who actually cares about its customers and the effects of its products on them and the environment. After her bosses all its employees directly into the company, she takes over.
Keywords: Female author; US author

"What You Need" - Hillary Monahan (The Dystopian States of America: A Charity Anthology Benefiting the ACLU Foundation, 2020)
The story is set in a future where health care is virtually non-existent for the poor.
Keywords: Female author; US 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

"Wings of Glass" - Wendy Nikel (Glass and Gardens: Solarpunk Winters. An Anthology, 2020)
The story is set in a small community within a dome in one of the few areas left that are not just desert.
Rpt. illus. in Little Blue Marble (January 31, 2020). https://littlebluemarble.ca/2020/01/31/the-heavenly-dreams-of-mechanical-trees/; and, without the illustration, in Little Blue Marble 2020: Greener Futures. Ed. Katrina Archer (Vancouver, BC, Canada: Ganache Media, 2020), 97-106, with a note on the author on 107.
Keywords: Female author; US author

"0.1" - Gabby Rivera (A People’s Future of the United States: Speculative Fiction from 25 Extraordinary Writers, 2019)
Post-catastrophe story set after a sentient bacterium had killed most of the world’s population, starting with the 1% and eliminating all who do not feel love and compassion. The story is about the birth of the first baby after the plague ended.
Keywords: Female author; Latinx author; Queer author; US 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

“Adjustments” - Allegra Hyde (TriQuarterly, 2019)
Brief climate change dystopia in which people have to keep moving to find a safe place to live as much of the globe becomes uninhabitable. In an online interview with Erin McReynolds, the female author discusses utopias at https://americanshortfiction.org/web-exclusive-interview-allegra-hyde/.
Rpt. in her The Last Catastrophe (New York: Vintage Books/Penguin Random House, 2023), 175-177.
Keywords: Female author; US author

After the Flood - Kassandra Montag (William Morrow, 2019)
Climate change dystopia in which the United States has been reduced to colonies on mountaintops. The female protagonist lives, with her small daughter, on their fishing boat until she goes on a quest into the northern seas in search of an older daughter taken by her husband.
U.K. ed. London: The Borough Press, 2019. 417 pp.
Keywords: Female author; US author

All City - Alex DiFrancesco (Seven Stories Press, 2019)
Climate change dystopia in which New York City is overwhelmed by a storm that floods parts of the city to unprecedented heights and divides the city even more deeply between the protected and unprotected.
Keywords: Transgender 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

"Ark" - Veronica [Anne] Roth (b. 1988) (Amazon Original Stories, 2019)
The Earth is about to be destroyed by an asteroid, and the story is set near the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, where the few people remaining on Earth are choosing plants to be loaded in Ark Flora for the trip to a new planet. Ark Fauna and most people have already left, and the protagonist is trying to decide whether to leave of stay.
Keywords: Female author; US 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

“As an Absence” - Joanna Michal Hoyt (New Orbit, 2019)
The story is set in a connected future where everyone is constantly inundated with messages and judged on their messages and what they post.
Rpt. in Best Vegan Science Fiction & Fantasy 2019. Ed. B. Morris Allen (Np: Metamorphosis Books, 2021), 143-55.
Keywords: Female 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

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

“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 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

The Book of Flora - Meg Elison (b. 1982) (47North, 2019)
The third volume of The Road to Nowhere Series following 2014 and 2017 Elison. In this volume, the protagonist is gender fluid, and the novel follows her life, loves, and struggles to escape from the various dystopias she finds herself in.
Keywords: Female author; US author

“The Bookstore at the End of America” - Charlie Jane Anders (b. 1969) (A People’s Future of the United States: Speculative Fiction from 25 Extraordinary Writers, 2019)
The story takes place in a bookstore that straddles the boundary between California and the United States, which are at war.
Rpt. in The Year’s Best Science Fiction Volume 1. Ed. Jonathan Strahan (New York: Saga Press, 2020), 1-22, with an editor’s note on 1; and in The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2020. Ed. Diana Gabaldon (Boston, MA: Mariner Books/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2020), 204-22, with a note on the author together with the author’s note on the story on 391.
Keywords: Transgender author; US 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

“Call and Answer” - Langley Hyde (If This Goes On, 2019)
The U.S. is completely controlled by fundamentalists, and bordering countries, like Canada, will not admit anyone with the U.S. passport, which separates a mother from her husband and child, with the story told in letters by the mother.
Keywords: English author; Female author; US 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

“Chapter 5: Disruption and Continuity [excerpted]” - Malka [Ann] Older (b. 1977) (A People’s Future of the United States: Speculative Fiction from 25 Extraordinary Writers, 2019)
Excerpts from a future book written after the United States has disappeared and been replaced by voluntary associations, some in virtual reality.
Keywords: Female author; Latinx author; US author

“The Choices You Made” - Sylvia Spruck Wrigley (If This Goes On, 2019)
The story tells of the creation of dystopias through the choices people make.
Keywords: Estonian author; Female author; German author; US author

“Choose Your Truth” - Jo Miles (Do Not Go Quietly: An Anthology of Victory in Defiance, 2019)
The story is set in a future with competing “truths” with companies reflecting political factions vying for the most followers.
Keywords: US 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

The City in the Middle of the Night - Charlie Jane Anders (b. 1969) (Tor, 2019)
A complex dystopia set on a planet settled from Earth. There are two cities, one authoritarian and one libertarian, both of which aspire to being utopian and both of which are deeply flawed.
Keywords: Transgender author; US author

City of Beasts - Corrie Wang (Freeform Books/Disney, 2019)
The novel is set in a post-nuclear war future where the sexes have divided into separate, antagonistic societies. The “beasts” are men as seen by the women. The ending suggests a sequel.
Keywords: Female author; US author

“A City of the People, For the People, By the People” - Ayona Datta (How to Run a City Like Amazon, and Other Fables, 2019)
In the story, an Indian city noted for its corruption is taken over by Whatsapp and “is owned and managed by a commercial company for private property” (1336 [341]). 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; Indian author; US 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

"Dead Wings" - Rachel Chimits (If This Goes On, 2019)
Dystopia in which bodies are replaceable.
Keywords: Female 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

Dealing in Dreams - Lilliam Rivera (Simon and Schuster BFYR, 2019)
Young adult dystopia set after a large earthquake destroyed most cities. The action is set in a city that was founded on feminist, women-only principles that has degenerated into a system of competition among girl gangs.
Keywords: Female author; Latinx 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

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

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 Divided" - Malka [Ann] Older (b. 1977) (Mason Jar Press, 2019)
Dystopia focusing on the wall be between Mexico and the U.S.
Keywords: Female author; Latinx author; US author

“The Doing and Undoing of Jacob E. Mwangi” - E. Lily Yu (Asimov’s Science Fiction, 2019)
The story is set in a future Kenya where, after a conflict called the Howl, the country came together in what was called the Compassion. Now, some years in the future society has divided into the Doers and the Don’ts, those who are creative and run everything and those who live off the basic income.
Rpt. in The New Voices of Science Fiction. Ed. Hannu Rajaniemi and Jacob Weisman (San Francisco, CA: Tachyon, 2019), 297-310; and in her Jewel Box: Stories (New York Erewhon Books/Kensington Publishing, 2023), 89-103.
Keywords: Female author; US 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

Ecological Memory - Caroline Ailanthus (Salt Water Media, 2019)
The novel is set after a pandemic, probably started deliberately, that wipes out all but 10% of the world’s population and depicts that relatively good society that is emerging after a period of conflict. Some technology, like the internet, has been revived, but the new society is based on independent but cooperating communities, each of which has its own money, called shares, that expire after two years. Occupations are organized into guilds, whose members wear identifiable clothing which, because clothing is expensive, are worn both when working and as leisure wear. The author says that she “writes post-apocalyptic optimism” (11). The text has Appendices “The Science of Ecological Memory (269-291), “An Annotated Reading List” (292-299), and “A Glossary of Sorts” (300-301) that describes the plants depicted at the beginning of each of the nine chapters.
Keywords: Female author; US author

"Editor's Eyes" - Calie Voorhis (If This Goes On, 2019)
Dystopia in which organs for transplant are put out to bid.
Keywords: Female author; US 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

"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

Famous Men Who Never Lived - K Chess (Tin House Books, 2019)
The novel is set in a future in which alternative realities exist and movement has occurred between one in which its Earth has been largely destroyed by nuclear weapons and one where that did not happen, and the refugees are not universally welcomed.
Keywords: Female author; US author

The Farm. A Novel - Joanne Ramos (Random House/Penguin Random House, 2019)
The novel is set in Golden Oaks, also known as The Farm, a commercial facility that hires poor women, known as hosts, serve as surrogates for wealthy women as seen from the perspectives of four women.
Keywords: Female author; Filipina author; US author

"Fine" - Jamie Lackey (If This Goes On, 2019)
A dystopia in which guns are so prevalent that, having passed a proficiency test at five, the permit to carry is tattooed on an arm. Shootings are so common that everyone wears armor on leaving home and no one goes out unless necessary.
Keywords: Female 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