What Next? Future Fiction Podcast

Becca has watched Downsizing, a science fiction comedy drama in which Paul Safrânek decides to undergo a recently-invented procedure to shrink his body so he can start a new life in an experimental community, which he ends up doing alone when his wife backs out at the last minute.

Carl has read a near-future which feels a little close to home. It's 2024 and Lauren Olamina is a young woman who can feel the pain of others and becomes displaced from her home. Several characters from various walks of life join her on her journey north through a troubled USA.

Becca has read Wool by Hugh Howey. A community lives in a silo beneath the surface of a ruined Earth. But something isn't right about life in the silo. What happens to those who venture outside?

Carl has read The Way The End of Days Should Be by Diane Cook. In the short story collection Man v. Nature, we find a narrator whose house has been surrounded by water. He was prepared for the flood.... but his neighbours were not.

Becca has read The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas by Ursula K Le Guin, which takes us to the summer festival in the utopian city of Omelas, but it's not long before we discover that this paradise has a dark side.

Carl has read The Employees, a Workplace Novel of the 22nd Century, in which a group of employees are monitored for their reaction to "the objects". Will the objects make them more efficient? Better at their jobs? Or will they create ruptures between humans and their humanoid colleagues?

Becca has watched Her, a film in which Scarlett Johansson voices Joaquin Phoenix's operating system and they fall in love. Easily done, I suppose.

We read Escape to Spiderhead by George Saunders, a short story all about the future of love and science.