Working Futures: The Future Of Work May Be Beautiful

from the you-never-know dept

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We're off today for the long weekend, but I wanted to use the opportunity to publish the last of our posts about the stories in our Working Futures science fiction anthology about the future of work. If you haven't read the earlier ones, they're here:

1. Welcome to Working Futures
2. The future of work is likely to be complicated
3. The future of work will have unexpected consequences
4. The future of work will blur the line between humans and machines

The post will cover the final two stories in the book, which both really stood out when we went through the selection process.

Generation Gap, by Holly Schofield. This is Holly's second story in our collection and among the many things we loved about it was how it really painted a picture of a potentially very different world -- which held the possibility of being beautiful, but also possibly terrifying. Or perhaps something in between. And it raises questions about how our future world will connect with the past.

A Brief History of Algorithmic Life: Introduction, by Christopher Alex Hooton, is the final piece in the book for a reason. It's such a lovely story, purporting to be the introduction of a long textbook about the history of "algorithmic life." As Chris explained on our recent podcast, his goal with the story was to get away from the science part of science fiction and see if he could write just a "beautiful story." And he succeeded, writing a touching story about an incredibly unexpected friendship between a human and an "algorithmic" life.

I'm happy we're closing out with both of these stories, because they're probably the two most literary of the entire anthology. As with most of the other stories, the world they present has things that will frighten some people -- and intrigue other people. Aspects of both utopia and dystopia show up in both, but what stands out about both of these stories is the relationships they portray, and the way in which both stories build an incredibly visual world in the future that comes alive via the stories.

So now we've summarized all 14 stories in the book -- we hope you've been inspired to check out the collection. We'll still have some more posts about the project coming in the future, but first we wanted to put the focus on what matters most: the stories the anthology includes.

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Filed Under: ai, future, future of work, science fiction, speculative fiction, working futures