A New History of the Future in 100 Objects
By Adrian Hon
Coffee-table books looking to present the history of pretty much anything in 100 objects have become so common it seems an obvious next step to project the genre into the future and the stuff of science fiction.
A big reason why we read SF is to imagine the way science and technology might change the world, and change us in the process. Adrian Hon, in the guise of a curator of a collector of these future artefacts writing in the year 2082, understands that while he’s talking about material (and even immaterial) “objects” (apps are included) he’s also telling “the stories of our collective humanity.”
The list proceeds chronologically, from tech that’s very close to what’s available now to the more distantly speculative. Some of the devices are merely fun toys and games while others are sinister and creepy. Some are both. But they all shape our experience of reality, virtual reality, and the shape of reality itself.
Canadian content? The Owen’s Original Cloned Burger developed in Hamilton, Ontario in 2033. No more eating animals after that.
Perhaps the world’s leading publisher of science fiction, Tor is also one of the few companies to have gotten online publishing right. Their Tor.com webpage regularly updates with great new fiction and has become an essential site for fans of the genre.
With the recent demise of two of the biggest “year’s best SF” anthology series, The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, under series editor John Joseph Adams, is going to have to pick up some slack. Putting SF and Fantasy together though can sometimes be an awkward fit.
With a title like How Long ‘Til Black Future Month? you may be expecting a collection of stories with a political bent, and if so N. K. Jemisin does not disappoint. In her introduction Jemisin, whose byline will likely always be headed by the fact that she won the Hugo Award for best novel three years in a row for the three parts of her Broken Earth series, talks about how much of an outsider she felt as a black woman author entering the field of SF and Fantasy in the early 2000s.
This book is the third Wastelands anthology to be brought out by editor John Joseph Adams, giving some indication of the public demand for this sort of fiction.
Ted Chiang is not a prolific author – Exhalation is only his second story collection – but he has a big reputation, recently bolstered by having written the story that the Denis Villeneuve movie Arrival was based on.
For several years now SF has had a good claim to being the most socially aware or “woke” genre of fiction. This is most likely because SF is by its nature more political and speculative in its imaginings, with its various utopias and dystopias representing critiques of our current ways of doing things. In the 2018 volume of The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy there was even a call by editor N. K. Jemisin for resistance to the “fascist” Trump regime by using SF stories to speak truth to power.
As an author and activist Cory Doctorow’s fiction often takes up the same political subject matter as his advocacy and opinion pieces. In recent years the two have been drawing ever closer together, to the point where the four novellas in his latest collection, Radicalized, might almost be thought of as dramatic essays.
For 35 years super-editor Gardner Dozois, who died last year, helmed the prestigious Year’s Best Science Fiction anthologies. The Very Best of the Best offers up some highlights from his tenure, but the subtitle is flat-out wrong as the book only includes stories that go back to 2002. There were two previous Best of the Best volumes that included stories published from 1983 to 2002, making this book the third such selection.