‘Tomorrow’s Parties: Life in the Anthropocene’ (The MIT Press, £15.99, ISBN: 9780262544436) is the latest in the 'Twelve Tomorrows' series, an annual anthology of sci-fi short stories published in partnership with MIT Technology Review that explores the application and impact of emerging technologies in our future. This instalment has a noble aim: to use fiction to examine visions of life in a world reshaped by climate change and other forces, while avoiding hopepunk or ‘material for doomscrolling’. Instead, it takes the welcome approach of ‘rational optimism’.
Editor Jonathan Strahan has brought together high-calibre contributors. The writers (who span many continents) include Hugo Award winners, plus a Philip K. Dick Award winner, and the collection opens with an interview with science fiction maestro Kim Stanley Robinson. This interview – in which Robinson compares how the events of the past few years have shaped attitudes compared with what...