Make Shift

Science fiction stories of pandemic-inspired ingenuity, grit, and determination.

This new volume in the Twelve Tomorrows series of science fiction anthologies looks at how science and technology—existing or speculative—might help us create a more equitable and hopeful world after the coronavirus pandemic. The original stories presented here, from a diverse collection of authors, offer no miracles or simple utopias, but visions of ingenuity, grit, and incremental improvement. In the tradition of inspirational science fiction that goes back to Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke, these writers remind us that we can choose our future, and show us how we might build it.

In these imagined futures, telepresence tourism replaces the viral dangers and environmental destruction of international travel; hackers attempt to disrupt the new quadratic voting system; robot bartenders administer vaccines; a Canadian farmer grows grain for the national rationing program; Hong Kong refugees create an augmented reality performance space for the Edinburgh Festival; a worker must choose between his daughter and his job caring for the people and environment of the locked-down and rewilded Kolkata. In addition, Wade Roush, science writer and editor of a previous Twelve Tomorrows anthology, interviews Ytasha Womack, author of Afrofuturism and Post Black, about the pandemic, racial justice, and how science fiction can help us imagine a healthier, fairer society.

Stories by

Madeline Ashby, Indrapramit Das, Cory Doctorow, Adrian Hon, Rich Larson, Ken Liu, Malka Older, Hannu Rajaniemi, Karl Schroeder, D. A. Xiaolin Spires

Interview

Wade Roush, Ytasha Womack

About the Editor

Gideon Lichfield is Editor-in-Chief of MIT Technology Review.