Search Worlds Without End

Twelve visions of living in a climate-changed world.

We are living in the Anthropocene - an era of dramatic and violent climate change featuring warming oceans, melting icecaps, extreme weather events, habitat loss, species extinction, and more. What will life be like in a climate-changed world? In Tomorrow's Parties, science fiction authors speculate how we might be able to live and even thrive through the advancing Anthropocene. In ten original stories by writers from around the world, an interview with celebrated writer Kim Stanley Robinson, and a series of intricate and elegant artworks by Sean Bodley, Tomorrow's Parties takes rational optimism as a moral imperative, or at least a pragmatic alternative to despair.

In these stories - by writers from the United Kingdom, the United States, Nigeria, China, Bangladesh, and Australia - a young man steals from delivery drones; a political community lives on an island made of ocean-borne plastic waste; and a climate change denier tries to unmask "crisis actors." Climate-changed life also has its pleasures and epiphanies, as when a father in Africa works to make his son's dreams of "Viking adventure" a reality, and an IT professional dispatched to a distant village encounters a marvelous predigital fungal network. Contributors include Pascall Prize for Criticism winner James Bradley, Hugo Award winners Greg Egan and Sarah Gailey, Philip K Dick Award winner Meg Elison, and New York Times bestselling author Daryl Gregory.

Contents:

• Introduction: Science Fiction in the Anthropocene - essay by Jonathan Strahan
• It's Science over Capitalism: Kim Stanley Robinson and the Imperative of Hope - interview of Kim Stanley Robinson by James Bradley
• Drone Pirates of Silicon Valley - short story by Meg Elison
• Down and Out in Exile Park - short story by Tade Thompson
• Once Upon a Future in the West - novelette by Daryl Gregory
• Crisis Actors - short story by Greg Egan
• When the Tide Rises - novelette by Sarah Gailey
• I Give You the Moon - novelette by Justina Robson
• Do You Hear the Fungi Sing? - novelette by Chen Qiufan
• Legion - short story by Malka Older
• The Ferryman - short story by Saad Z. Hossain
• After the Storm - novelette by James Bradley

An exciting science fiction collection that looks at what future communication might look like and how our shifting relationships with technology could change this most human of capabilities.

In Communications Breakdown, award-winning editor Jonathan Strahan asks some of the world's best science fiction writers to consider how the very idea of communication might change in the future. Rich terrain for speculation, this anthology brims with human stories about the future face of our age-old need to connect. As cyberpunk pioneer William Gibson said, "The future is already here - it's just not evenly distributed." So what happens when inequalities keep the future from everyone's front door? Who is in control? These stories show humanity's ability to construct the best possible worlds while also battling our potential to inflict unlimited harm.

Communications Breakdown features contributions from Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Famer Cory Doctorow, the winner of the Times of India AutHer Award Lavanya Lakshminarayan, Hugo Award winner Ian McDonald, as well as an interview with digital privacy activist Chris Gilliard by author and journalist Tim Maughan. Breaking down how we think about communication, Communications Breakdown calls readers to look at how vulnerable our modes of communication - and indeed, we ourselves - are.

Contents:

• Introduction (Communications Breakdown) - essay by Jonathan Strahan
• Here Instead of There - novelette by Elizabeth Bear
• Moral Hazard - short story by Cory Doctorow
• Sigh No More - short story by Ian McDonald
• Less Than - novelette by Lavanya Lakshminarayan
• What About Privacy? - interview of Chris Gilliard by Tim Maughan
• The Excommunicates - short story by Ken MacLeod
• Noise Cancellation - short story by S. B. Divya
• My City Is Not a Problem - short story by Tim Maughan
• Cuttlefish - novelette by Anil Menon
• Company Man - novelette by Shiv Ramdas
• At Every Door A Ghost - novelette by Premee Mohamed
• Artwork: Ashley Mackenzie - essay by Ashley Mackenzie