Speculative fiction that speaks to our current moment(s)
I'm looking for your short stories, novelettes and novellas, and to a lesser extent novels too, that directly speak to the politics and social realities of today.
https://www.uncannymagazine.com/article/rabbit-test/ was a short story I shared here about 18 months ago that directly dealt with abortion restrictions and the future created from them.
Another user shared Better Living through Algorithms for a more optimistic sort of take on "AI"
And recently I was reminded of Mur Lafferty's The Ophelia Network, a novella which features a dystopian society where one of the changes from today was the Heritage Law. People of color needed to prove ancestory at least three generations, "preferably" descended from slaves. This plot point runs mostly in the background through the story but pops up occasionally.
From The Ophelia Network
Agent Frank looked up from Saxon’s tablet. “Your file says you’re half Black, half white. Your father’s people can be traced to sale at a South Carolina auction—wow, in 1619!” She looked at Saxon. “Is that correct?”
Saxon nodded. “Our records say he’s descended from the first slaves to set foot in this country. His father’s people have been here longer than most American families.”
Frank smiled. “You’re really lucky that those slaves had a kind master who kept good notes on his inventory.”
Bailey didn’t let his TV persona slip one notch. He had always been calm in the face of racist bait. He met Frank’s eyes and simply nodded; his father’s genealogy was not news to him. After the president signed the Heritage Law, all people of color had scrambled to do genealogical research to justify their place in a country their ancestors built but was suddenly not theirs. They needed proof of at least three generations of forebears in America, preferably descended from slaves.
The sponsors of the Heritage Law presented it as a step toward thanking slaves for building the country. America would thusly reward the slaves’ descendants with citizenship and the right to stay. What the sponsors failed to point out is that millions of other people of color would be deported.
The Heritage Law meant the first-generation Haitian family across the street from Bailey’s parents had been deported just last week. His parents were still trying to clean out their neighbors’ home and put their things in storage before the government claimed the house and everything inside.
It was with relief, not pride or gratitude, that his parents found the information about his many-great grandmother and her sale in Charleston, South Carolina.
“Yes, I’m a legal citizen of America,” Bailey said. His voice was slurred as his swollen lips rallied their troops to muster forth a communication.
I can think of a bunch of novels that say big things. The Handmaids Tale, 1984, Fahrenheit 451 etc. But I find shorter works tend to be more responsive to current events and often more cutting for their shorter length. I'd also suggest trying to avoid really common novel recs and focus on niche novels or shorter (also typically more niche I guess) works. But I'm not the boss of you.
Share your recs? Link them here if they're free to read online?
The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigaluoi is one I read several years ago and has truly stuck with me. Very high level, it's about a hypothetical future in which the Western United States has run out of water. It's one of the most realistic speculative science fiction books I've read and I think it's a very real possibility that something along these lines is going to happen in the not too distant future.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Water_Knife
this is a great question! I think most science fiction has something to say about the present, but here's a couple I've read in the past couple years that I think fit well.
Social media / influencer economy
Environmental
Immigration / cultural identity
AI
I'd absolutely agree that there's always something, but definitely looking for ones that deal with the themes of Trump era policies.
I love Monk and Robot and read Ministry for the Future but will check out the others! Novels are just a longer commitment so that's why I'm focusing mostly on short fiction. But the TBR can always get bigger.
Cory Doctorow has some interesting speculative takes on, if not current, then near-future possibilities.
Walkaway provides a view on a world dealing with the social, economic, and climate problems we face and proposes a future in which groups take advantage of ever-improving home-manufacturing hardware and open source software to literally build their own communities and live post-money.
The Lost Cause looks at a future dealing with the toxic aftermath of MAGA politics and climate denial in a world increasingly ravaged by climate change.
Radicalized - I haven't read this one yet, but from the summary it contains 4 short stories / novellas dealing with similar themes: economic in equality, police corruption, healthcare, and societal collapse.
To speak more to Radicalized, I think it's an extremely timely read. I read it maybe two years ago and I still recall the details of three of the four short stories very clearly.
Personally, I think "Unauthorized Bread" and the eponymous "Radicalized" were the two which speak most directly to social-technological developments which are happening right now, with the latter being referenced a lot in the context of the recent discourse around healthcare companies.
I'm snagging Radicalized from Hoopla (wil Wheaton reads the audiobook but they have both) now because it sounds perfect.
For what it's worth, I tried to read this one back in 2020. At the time, here's what I thought of it:
I seem to recall also finding that it had a very smug sort of tone that was also annoying.
Having said all of that, I know the book is well liked by a lot of other people.
Anarchal social groups can function... but in my opinion they only have a chance to work at rather low populations. In general, the larger population you have in a group, the more order and structure is required to make everything work.
My example of anarchy functioning would be to point to hippie communes in the 1960's.
Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower, with Parable of the Talents looking to take the lead. I found the Earthseed Mysticism a little glib, but the sociopolitical commentary is eerily precient.
I started reading those, then got completely distracted and forgot all about them. The first book was great, thanks for the reminder!
Yeah I'm a big Butler fan and it definitely speaks to the moment
Your linked story, Better Living through Algorithms, reminded me of a previous story I'd read - and I discovered it was the same author. Cat Pictures Please, another "good AI" story, won a bunch of awards in 2015-16. It was also what lead me to read Maneki Neko by Bruce Sterling (since it directly namedrops it). I'd suggest reading Maneki Neko first since Cat Pictures Please discusses it.
Other suggestions:
The Last Policeman - in this world, an asteroid is hurtling toward Earth and definitely going to wipe out all life in a few months, and there's nothing anybody can do about it. It's about finding hope/meaning in hopelessness and nihilism.
Nevertheless, She Persisted - a flash fiction collection by women/about women. I liked some of it and didn't really click with others of it, which is about to be expected for any fiction collection.
All of Philip K. Dick's short stories. I love his short stories but don't really like his novels. I feel like he has some great ideas that spiral into incomprehensibility if he continues too long.
Reading one story by Naomi Kritzger is a fast track to reading all stories by Naomi Kritzger in my experience!
Thanks for the links, I'll check them out. I do enjoy PKD but agree about his novels vs his short stories.
Ah. I love Maneki Neko! I saw it was published in 2011 and thought it read as if it were older - and then saw it was a reprint from 98, given that it's quite prescient, and very related to Kritzger's stories!
If we just did stuff for people and took care of each other we'd be happier.
Curlews
A world of AI, mandatory procreation, and banned knowledge
(Part of their Stop Copaganda winners)
Content warnings listed at the top of the story.
The qntm short story Lena, which you can read here:
https://qntm.org/lena
It’s a thought provoking 5-10 min read.
One of my favorite authors in speculative fiction is Annalee Newitz. And I really wish this wasn't so relevant, but their novel The Future of Another Timeline is right on point for some of our current social struggles.
Ooh thanks!
Wondering if anyone recalls this short story I am trying to place - of a priest who baptized infants in a dystopian world where abortion is banned, but then kills them. It's poignant commentary on caring only for the birth and "salvation" but not the life of a child but I'm failing to search, possibly because I've gotten a detail wrong or because it's particularly old or obscure. I'm fairly certain it's more of a classic story, but it's at least 20-30 years old