Terraform: Watch/Worlds/Burn

Merchant and Evans, the editors of Vice’s science fiction vertical, Terraform, whose mandate is to publish work at “the front lines of tomorrow,” bring 52 Terraform stories to print for the first time in this impressive anthology. They collect plausible scenarios like Laurie Penny’s bitterly clever “Blue Monday,” in which a worker at an animal-video content factory hatches a plan to rescue her stolen cat, and E. Lily Yu’s “The Wretched and the Beautiful,” about the all too real fate of a ship of alien refugees that crash-lands at an expensive beach resort. Alongside these are larger leaps ahead, such as Marlee Jane Ward’s heartbreaking “Who’s a Good Boy,” in which dogs can be upgraded to full humanlike consciousness, and far-future tales that merely glance at the present, like Tlotlo Tsamaase’s “Virtual Snapshots,” where a woman travels from her life support facility to visit her sick mother. While the tone throughout tends toward the bleak and searing, hope shines through in Sarah Gailey’s welcoming “Drones to Ploughshares,” about agricultural robots starting new lives, and Shannon Chamberlain’s “Reunion,” in which a Mexican adoptee finds an unexpected friend in a transport drone. This showcase of today’s leading imaginations offers enough vivid cautionary tales to make even the most optimistic tech utopian hesitate. (Aug.)