tomatocultivator's review
challenging
dark
informative
inspiring
relaxing
fast-paced
3.75
Vital Signals: Virtual Futures Near-Future Fictions is the latest volume of stories organized by Virtual Futures, a conference/salon/”group of renegade philosophers (per their website) that has been working out of the University of Warwick since 1994. Their goal is to use science fiction “as a tool for criticizing, interrogating, and navigating possible tomorrows.” This particular collection of stories features pieces that range from slight vignettes to in-depth new worlds written by established sci-fi writers, science journalists, scientists, civil servants, and more. These diverse thinkers were selected to, “provide tentative situations that may be manufactured by the activities of the present…” and “to quantify an ambiguous reality so that we stand a chance of shaping an uncertain future.” (from Ward, O’Hara, and Oram’s introduction).
Things do not look great – most of these writers are projecting some very negative consequences in the very near future aided on by income inequality, social media’s domination of information, and a damaged ecosystem. Divided into four sections, Virtual Persons, Post-Brain, Disease, and Conflict, they cover a lot of ground. It’s not hard to tell which stories were written by professional writers, but even the roughest prose is both brief and brings forward interesting points. I flagged a little in the middle, but was buoyed by both the occasional very clever idea, and the handful of truly strange and gonzo takes (I’m looking at you, Antoine Saint-Honore with your ‘CHOLESTOROL5.9 BigFLY’). I also hope that Brendan C. Byrne wrote more in the very possible but very disorienting world of ‘An Excerpt from the Post-Truth and Irreconcilable Differences Commission’, because it gave me great hope and great pause.
I feel like this book would go best with a discussion group or conference – looking at each story and tracking how our technology is getting us there, and how can we incentivize change to avoid it. As a collection of stories, it falls a little short, but as a series of thought experiments, it is engrossing. I am inspired to go back to the previous volume and find some more.
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