Review by Booklist Review
This speculative short story collection asks the reader intriguing questions about our future, investigating the possible stories to be found in upcoming innovations, from smart homes to a universal basic income to the introduction of AI into sports refereeing, disease prevention, and memory. A collaboration between Slate, New America, and Arizona State University, Future Tense brings together an exciting table of contents that features many of the best speculative fiction and surrealist authors of the moment, including Charlie Jane Anders, Carmen Maria Machado, and Nnedi Okorafor. The stories are often haunting, and ask us tough questions: a woman's abusive boyfriend locks her within her smart home by editing the permissions; an athlete's back is healed with starfish genes, but the Olympic Committee is unsure whether that counts as a performance enhancement; a disease-surveillance robot learns how to interact and be an asset to underrepresented communities. These 14 intelligent and complex stories hold both hopes and fears for our future, presenting poignant and fascinating tales of what we should consider as we alter our world.--Leah von Essen Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
This dynamic, dud-free anthology of 14 short stories written by some of speculative fiction's greats provides gripping, convincing glimpses into various near futures that explore the interrelated advancement of technology, society, and human nature. In Nnedi Okorafor's "Mother of Invention," an abandoned pregnant woman's life is endangered because of super-plants causing terrible allergies. Her hopelessness is balanced with the optimism of her smart house. The story is quiet and hopeful, and explores friendship and family. Meg Elison's heart-wrenching "Safe Surrender," in which humans intermarry and interbreed with aliens, looks at the stories people tell themselves about difference as well as what it means to find a home. Paolo Bacigalupi's "Mika Model" also attempts to define the nature of humanity after an android murders her owner. Each author cleverly and thoroughly explores the benefits and consequences of change, making this essential reading for anyone intrigued by what might come next for humankind. (Oct.)
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A diverse group of contemporary authors imagine our shared future in these speculative tales.These 14 stories peer into a variety of futures only just visible from where we stand. Many imagine solutions to pressing contemporary emergencies (climate change, overpopulation, economic inequality) and then, in the way of all the best literature, seek out the complications in that perfect picture. In Nnedi Okorafor's "Mother of Invention," the Niger Delta has been transformed into a nation-sized plantation of the "innovative air-scrubbing superplant known as periwinkle grass," which simultaneously solves the earth's CO2 emissions problem and strikes a blow against world hunger with its versatile seeds. The only problems are the "pollen tsunamis" and the resultant deadly allergic condition that strikes the story's protagonist in the final days of her pregnancy. In Charlie Jane Anders' "The Minnesota Diet," the "cutting-edge 'Smart-City' of New Lincoln" is a fantasy land of predicative-software enhanced, zero-carbon-footprint urban living. But when an agricultural collapse necessitates the reprioritization of food shipments, the entire city of "midlevel computer engineers, quality-control experts, content creators, architects, marketing experts, musical theater geeks and service workers" is deemed redundant, and starvation sets in. Other stories start with our current time's most pressing moral issues and imagine them worse. In Madeline Ashby's "Domestic Violence," smart homesprogrammed to surveil, predict, and protectbecome another tool in a domestic abuser's arsenal. Mark Stasenko's "Overvalued" imagines the endgame of skyrocketing college tuition costs as a complex industry of Wall Street-style investments, where the future of promising underprivileged youth is heavily leveraged on the competitive market. A standout story by Carmen Maria Machado sees a young girl exposed to the vast simultaneity of time in a fashion more lyric than the rest of the anthology's offerings. The charming "When Robot and Crow Saved East St. Louis," by Annalee Newitz, interjects both humor and hope. Science fiction has long been the great equalizer in the American literary landscapecapable of imagining more inclusive futures even as it struggles to represent them equitably on its pages. Because of the diversity of its authorship, this anthology does more than imagine what the world might be like if all of our perspectives were included. Instead, it moves past the picture of representation to a clear, uncompromising, imaginative look at just what it is we are all included in.Provocative, challenging stories that project the tech innovations of today onto the moral framework of tomorrow. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
