Travel Documents 98: A People's Future of the United States: Speculative Fiction from 25 Extraordinary Writers

By: Victor LaValle (Editor), John Joseph Adams (Editor) Featuring stories by Violet Allen • Charlie Jane Anders • Lesley Nneka Arimah • Ashok K. Banker • Tobias S. Buckell • Tananarive Due • Omar El Akkad • Jamie Ford • Maria Dahvana Headley • Hugh Howey • Lizz Huerta • Justina Ireland • N. K. Jemisin • Alice Sola Kim • Seanan McGuire • Sam J. Miller • Daniel José Older • Malka Older • Gabby Rivera • A. Merc Rustad • Kai Cheng Thom • Catherynne M. Valente • Daniel H. Wilson • G. Willow Wilson • Charles Yu

Genre: near-future, post-apocalyptic, social change, cultural change, race relations

The Dust Cover Copy

In these tumultuous times, in our deeply divided country, many people are angry, frightened, and hurting. Knowing that imagining a brighter tomorrow has always been an act of resistance, editors Victor LaValle and John Joseph Adams invited an extraordinarily talented group of writers to share stories that explore new forms of freedom, love, and justice. They asked for narratives that would challenge oppressive American myths, release us from the chokehold of our history, and give us new futures to believe in.

They also asked that the stories be badass.

The result is this spectacular collection of twenty-five tales that blend the dark and the light, the dystopian and the utopian. These tales are vivid with struggle and hardship—whether it’s the othered and the terrorized, or dragonriders and covert commandos—but these characters don’t flee, they fight.

Thrilling, inspiring, and a sheer joy to read, A People’s Future of the United States is a gift for anyone who believes in our power to dream a just world.

The Scene

Worldbuilding

By turns uplifting, bloody strange, heartbreaking and joyful, this story collection touches on so many things: gender relations, race, hope, the need to feel safe, and the need to feel dignity among them. There are versions of America in this series that I dread, and versions of America that I long for. There’s one commentary on a certain mango-hued nutjob and his cough social philosophy that involves a quantum genetic drug dropped into the water supply, and it cracked me right up. Give Me Corn Bread Or Give Me Death is utterly fascinating and weirdly believable…though it does involve training dragons with siracha. And again and again, we see stories of integrity, cooperation, fierce love. And hope. Even in the darkest of realities, even when you’re trying to take an exam in the middle of a wildfire, there is hope.

The Crowd

Characterization

You’re going to meet so many great characters in this series. From the book-seller’s daughter trying to get her neighbors to look each other in the eye to the family giving birth to the first baby born in a decade, from the curandera fighting the Empire to the librarian of stories written in tattoos, the people in these stories will open your eyes to all kinds of ways to experience life.

The Lingo

Writing Style

You can imagine that twenty-five authors have some pretty different styles. But these works have been beautifully curated to balance one another in form and pacing. Some are full of a creeping horror. Some are fast and brutal. And some have the gentle banality of a son trying to tell his father that it’s okay that everyone has a good life now without working themselves to death for it. All of them will take you somewhere.

The Moves

Plot

Using current events as a jumping off point, these stories spin out possible permutations of our future. There isn’t one American dream, but many. Some are deeply grounded in science, some skewer social and political fears. And some let us see what it’ll look like when things get better.

Overall Rating

This is a book we need right now: a collection of dire warnings and beautiful dreams, hopes and fears. We’re at a crossroads in history. This book reminds us that we can take a turn into the dark or the light. And wherever we go, we’ll be taking our whole selves and all our facets along for the ride: good and bad, kind and cruel, genetic and historical.

Strap in.