Welcome to the first issue of the Future Science Fiction Digest, brought to you by the Future Affairs Administration and UFO Publishing. Our shared vision is to showcase great science fiction stories from across the globe. In this issue alone we’ve got fiction from China, the Ukraine, Nigeria, and Italy, as well as the United States.

Lawrence M. Schoen takes us to rural China where we meet an alien who finds what we think of as modern technology unpalatable. All four of our international authors in this volume take us far outside the solar system where humans might encounter alien life or otherworldly phenomena but must consistently face the challenge of contact with the most inscrutable species of all: fellow human beings.

Meanwhile, the other American authors fully embrace near-future technologies. There are AIs and nanobots and androids aplenty. Mike Resnick contemplates the meaning of perfection, while others present a vision of compassionate machine intelligence, and invite us into a thrilling world of corporate espionage.

In addition to these tales we’ve included a profile on noted Ukrainian novelists Marina and Sergey Dyachenko, who have a short story translation in this issue, an interview with a pair of TV showrunners from Puerto Rico working in SF/F, and a critical examination of the role of empire in classic and modern science fiction.

All of these stories and articles will appear over time at www.future-sf.com and will be immediately available upon release in ebook and print editions. I sincerely hope you’ll enjoy this issue, and many more to come.

Happy reading!