Explore the technological wilderness across more than 160 pages of forward-thinking fact, fiction and opinion. Meet Smari McCarthy and the isolationists building a digital fortress in Iceland’s wilderness; heed the call of the wild with Kim Stanley Robinson and the ultraliters; and join Frank Swain as he trespasses his way across the once public spaces of our forbidden cities.
Urban paranoias and human possibilities throw off sparks in Forever Alone Drone’s bumper crop of stories. Jack Womack’s first short work in 17 years is set in his signature ultra-exploitative New York. Nancy Kress’s city feels more congenial, but proves no less forgiving of human folly. Robert Reed’s blasted and disfigured streets provide a bitterly ironic backdrop to a tale of the world’s salvation, while Liz Jensen’s nurse offers push-button closure to a city’s dying. Bruce Sterling builds a new urban experience out of mud and virtual reality, while new talent Romie Stott takes the anonymity of the singles bar pick-up to its logical, extreme, and surprisingly humane conclusion.
Also in Forever Alone Drone, American writer Madeline Ashby finds herself trapped inside a hostile America; Sumit Paul-Choudhury keeps to the shadows as he traces drone culture back to Voyager 2; and Simon Ings goes wandering Under Tomorrow’s Sky.