This is the inaugural issue of a brand-new international project. Future Science Fiction Digest is a collaboration between the Future Affairs Administration and UFO Publishing. We believe science fiction is a global phenomenon and wish to showcase wonderful speculative stories from around the globe alongside works by established and well-recognized authors.
Future Affairs Administration is a technological/cultural brand focusing on the future, producing original content with a futuristic vision for a Golden Age of Chinese science fiction. Their core business is science fiction writing development, including sci-fi workshops, conversations between Chinese and overseas writers, and writing clubs. They assist their signed writers with IP development and help arrange deals with Chinese film and TV companies. Their departments currently include Non-Exist Media (Non-Exist Daily, radio, and TV channel) and Guork Publishing group for books, among others. They host a variety of events and conventions, including the new international Asia-Pacific Science Fiction Convention in Beijing.
UFO Publishing is a small press based in Brooklyn, NY, initially created to publish the Unidentified Funny Objects annual anthology series of humorous SF/F. I have also edited a number of other anthologies under the UFO Publishing label as well as for Baen Books, Arc Manor/Phoenix Pick, and Deorc Enterprises.
Our plan is to produce a quarterly publication of all-original stories with roughly half of them either translations of fiction that has not previously appeared in English or works written by authors who reside in primarily non-English speaking countries. Each issue would be available to read for free on the web, or to purchase as an e-book and eventually in print. While we’re preparing to launch this project, and in celebration of the first Asia-Pacific Science Fiction Convention, we have prepared this “Issue zero” containing a selection of previously published fiction. As editor, I wanted to present a wide range of great tales that were also indicative of the sort of fiction I intend to publish in the forthcoming issues, and I’m confident these fit the bill.
Ranging from lyrical to humorous, from optimistic to jaded, from earthbound to interstellar, these stories offer six very different glimpses into the future.
Matthew Kressel’s “The History Within Us” takes place during the final stages of the heat death of the universe, where a ship filled with refugees of different species is huddled near one of the last burning stars, and that star is about to go nova.
Tatiana Ivanova’s satirical “Impress Me, Then We’ll Talk About the Money” imagines the consequences of unscrupulous pharmacologists creating drugs that allow people to fulfill their deepest desire, which is to change.
In “Earthrise,” Lavie Tidhar examines what it means to be an artist in a futuristic society where humanity has colonized the solar system.
In Alvaro Zinos-Amaro’s “e^h” human colonists encounter a region of space in which their junk DNA mutates, revealing information encoded there by aliens.
Teng Ye’s “Universal Cigarettes” is a tongue-in-cheek tale of a grandiose marketing stunt with a dark twist reminiscent of Philip K. Dick’s work.
In the Nebula Award-nominated “Utopia, LOL?” by Jamie Wahls, a modern-day human wakes from cryogenic suspension in a utopian future overseen by a benevolent computer.
I hope you enjoy these tales and return for our launch issue and future issues to come.
