We are celebrating our fourth year of publication with fiction from China, Greece, and the United States. Over the course of the past three years we’ve been privileged to share dozens of translations and original fiction from every continent. At a time when international relationships in so many parts of the world are as strained as the nerves of ordinary citizens after two years of the pandemic, it is more important than ever to help people across the globe understand each other better. Storytelling and conjuring visions of possible and impossible futures are among the most effective ways to do that.

In the coming year we hope to highlight brilliant storytellers from even more countries and cultures. In addition, we will be collecting all the translations published in Future SF in 2020, along with Rosetta-nominated short stories and other select fiction (both SF and fantasy) in an anthology titled The Rosetta Archive: Notable SF/F Fiction in Translation. This book will be edited by myself and Tarryn Thomas, and should be available in both print and ebook formats in February 2022. This project is made possible by funding from the Future Affairs Administration, who will also be seeking to translate and share the same stories with Chinese readers.

In the meantime, we have not run out of firsts for the magazine: in this issue we’re publishing our first full novella, and it’s a translation!  “A Mountain of Dust” is written by veteran Future SF contributor Wangxiang Fengnian and translated by the Rosetta Award-winning Judith Huang. It’s a fable-esque tour-de-force through a world where a person’s wealth and status is reflected in their physical size. And just as we were about to publish the issue, we got word that it won the 2021 Gravity Awards for Best Novella in China!

Christine Lucas crafts a futuristic cyberpunk tale in space, while P.G. Galalis rounds up the issue with a bittersweet superhero story.

In addition to our fiction offerings, there’s also a review of the new Dune film as well as an analysis of the state of Brazilian speculative fiction and the challenges these authors are facing in sharing their stories with Anglophone readers.

We remain committed to making all Future SF content available online for free—even if the offerings are staggered over the course of a few weeks. Please help support our long-term growth by subscribing via our Patreon page.

Happy reading!