Tomorrow’s Parties: Life in the Anthropocene by Jonathan Strahan (Editor)

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Rating: 3/5 Stars

An interesting collection of stories based around the Anthropocene and the way people have adapted to it, for good or bad. The book starts with an interview with Kim Stanley Robinson, who has written several books on the subject, and his views and thoughts on the Anthropocene. The stories I found interested in the anthology are by Meg Elison, Tade Thompson, Daryl Gregory, Greg Egan, Chen Qiufan and Saad Z. Hossain.

• “Drone Pirates of Silicon Valley” by Meg Elison: in a future where drones deliver almost everything, a group of teens do some piracy by bringing down an occasional drone and taking its cargo. But that would lead to the desire to help those whose lives have become constrained by the done manufacturer.
• “Down and Out in Exile Park” by Tade Thompson: a family of researchers are pulled into an unusual populated island made up of plastic near the border of Nigeria that nobody wishes to claim. That allows the island (Exile Park) to experiment with its own form of democratic governance without a formal state. The researchers discover the unusual person at the centre of the experiment, whose death may mean its end. Things are not helped by the discovery of possible sabotage.
• “Once Upon a Future in the West” by Daryl Gregory: a story, told from various viewpoints, of life in a California where wildfires are common and people mostly avoid meat. A medic and her daughter seek out a patient, while a gambler hopes to make a killing on the stock market. Meanwhile, a surreptitious cattle meat delivery goes wrong and ends up being involved in a dramatic meat scene of another kind: or maybe not.
• “Crisis Actors” by Greg Egan: a man, convinced that the world is involved in a huge conspiracy to manufacture a crisis around global warming, goes ‘undercover’ as a member of a team helping a Pacific island prepare and recover from a typhoon. His job is to expose the crisis actors that he is sure would use the typhoon as an excuse to dramatize a catastrophe. What he does, or does not, discover might make you wonder about the true motives of the covert organization that he appears to be a part of.
• “When the Tide Rises” by Sarah Gailey: an underwater worker works hard at getting enough credits from her company to fund her desires to be modified for a life underwater. But it does not seem to be working. Then a fellow worker quietly suggest leaving the company for another underwater option, and now she has to decide what to do.
• “I Give You the Moon” by Justina Robson: in a future where telepresence can bring you anywhere, a boy in Africa desires to journey like the Vikings once did.
• “Do You Hear the Fungi Sing?” by Chen Qiufan, translated by Emily Jin: a fascinating story about two people sent to an isolated mountain village in order to connect the village to a developing artificial sensory network. But as the girl assigned to finish the connection discover, the village already has a natural sensory network, and it is interested to know what she has to offer.
• “Legion” by Malka Older: a rambling story set as a confrontational live face-to-face interview with a Nobel Peace Prize winner for a technology known as “Legion”. As the interview proceeds, it is gradually revealed, but it is only towards the end does Legion’s chilling people to monitor people’s behaviour shown.
• “The Ferryman” by Saad Z. Hossain: Set in a future where immortality is practical via brain and life enhancements, the elite have moved off world while the poor still have to make a living, earning credits. But if the enhancements occasionally fail and the person died, it falls on one ‘ferryman’ from an untouchable caste to deal with the bodies. When a widower then demands to see the body of her husband, it exposes the actions of the ferryman who has been trying to give the dead a new kind of immortality.
• “After the Storm” by James Bradley: a teenage girl lives with her grandmother, whom she doesn’t like. While waiting for the return of her father, she does community work, helping to build up shore defences, like planting mangroves, against the rising tide. But life, both physical and personal, is still hard for her as she has to battle a coming storm as well as the storms in her personal life.

Book read from 2022/10/30 to 2022/11/10