10 Futures

by Michael Pryor

Ten possible futures. Two lives. One enduring friendship.Sam and Tara. Best friends in a future when artificial intelligence organises our lives, and micropets are the latest craze. Best friends when rationing means cold showers and no internet. Best friends when genetic matching makes asking a girl on a date a minefield of epic proportions. But will they still be best friends in a future when plague wipes out most of humanity? Or a future when the Inquisitor asks Sam to choose one betrayal over another?Michael Pryor, one of Australia's best authors of speculative fiction, imagines what our next 100 years might be like. Utopia or dystopia? Miracle or catastrophe? Whatever might happen, it's just around the corner. Which future will be yours?

Genres: Science Fiction, Short Stories, Young Adult, Dystopia, School, Read For School, Anthologies

240 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 2, 2012

About the author

Michael Pryor's bio
Check out my Fantasy podcast, 'The World Below the War in the Heavens' wherever you get your podcasts!

I was born in Swan Hill, Victoria. I spent my childhood in country Victoria and Melbourne before moving to Geelong at the age of 10. I lived in Geelong until I went to university in Melbourne after secondary school.

I currently live in Melbourne. I’ve worked as a drainer’s labourer, a truck driver, a bathroom accessories salesperson, an Internet consultant, a Multimedia Developer, a Publisher, in a scrap metal yard and as a secondary school teacher. Whew.

I’ve taught English, Literature, Drama, Legal Studies and Computer Studies.

I've published over thirty-five novels and more than sixty of my short stories have appeared in Australia and overseas in publications such as Overland and the New South Wales School Magazine. My writing moves from literary fiction to genre Science Fiction to slapstick humour, depending on my mood.

I’ve been shortlisted eleven times for the Aurealis Award for Speculative Fiction, and have also been nominated for a Ditmar award. My short stories have twice been featured in Gardner Dozois’ ‘Highly Recommended’ lists in The Year’s Best Science Fiction and The Year’s Best Fantasy. Nine of my books have been CBC Notable Books, I’ve been longlisted for a Golden Inky and I’ve been shortlisted for the WAYBRA Award. I’ve also twice won the Best and Fairest Award at West Brunswick Amateur Football Club.

My reviews tend toward the three word style of the trenchant critic, N. Molesworth.

Reviews

[Jenny · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ahh, I so wanted to love these stories, but alas... Each short is set in a different year - twenty, fifty, a hundred years from now - and features the same two teen characters, Sam and Tara. (Pryor has obviously read about quantum mechanics' many worlds theory.) For me, linking each story through these two characters grew old fast. Rather than grow, Sam and Tara remained two-dimensional set pieces throughout. Their job, it seemed, was simply to lead readers from one chunk of info to the next and on to the moral at the end of each story. A shame. Injecting a bit of soul would have added so much.

[Megan · Rating 1 out of 5]

*uni read
this book made me scream and not in a good way.
every single time i turned the page i wanted to throw it against the wall.
there are 10 chapters, and none of them have an ending. like at all.
these short stories have absolutely no connection, the characters are one dimensional and show absolutely no growth and the pacing within this books literally makes no sense.
it focuses on the exposition of unimportant elements within the story, and then suddenly it all comes to head in the last pages of the chapter. and then every single one of these stories is left open ended and does not provide any sort of satisfaction or relief once you're done reading it.
if i could give this 0 stars i would.

[Sofia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read for uni!

[Alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

A clever premise that for the most part results in some occasionally undercooked but overall fairly interesting short stories (except 2040, which is straight up garbage).
The use of the same characters is an excellent narrative device, though eventually becomes a bit repetitive by the time you reach the final chapter.
Thematically heavy in a way that I wish more of my YA books had been as a teenager. Some of the interesting ideas I wish had been expanded on, but offered intriguing glimpses into a range of genres and topics. Very solid as introductory sci-fi for a younger reader.

[Adele · Rating 1 out of 5]

(Uni read) Quite possibly one of the worst books I have ever read

[Christian West · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ten short stories set in ten different futures. Each possible future revolve around two friends, Tara and Sam. Whether they are surviving from a zombie-style apocalypse, living in Antarctica after the sea levels rose, or attempting to just be friends in a society which separates men and women, they retain their same basic abilities and skills, but have to use them in totally different ways depending on the society around them.

This doesn't read like a book of short stories, and the familiarity of having the same characters in each story is comforting. Because the book isn't really advertised as a book of short stories, it was confusing moving from the first story to the second (as I had not a clue why the two characters were suddenly in a very different situation).

Highly recommended.

[Katharine (Ventureadlaxre) · Rating 5 out of 5]

So very, very enjoyable.

Katharine is a judge for the Aurealis Awards. This review is the personal opinion of Katharine herself, and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of any judging panel, the judging coordinator or the Aurealis Awards management team.

To be safe, I won't be recording my review here until after the AA are over.

[Alex · Rating 1 out of 5]

Going into this book, I thought it would be something interesting and entertaining to read. Turns out it was just the opposite. To me it was slow and boring, but of course... that's just my opinion.

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Michael Pryor's 10 Futures is a 2013 sci-fi anthology which unveils a wide array of futuristic timelines, each with their own premise about how we will deal with climate wars, clone organ harvesting, and the rise of artificial intelligence, amongst others. Each are titled with their own year and written in present tense, as if to present a sense of immediacy; the 2020 chapter speaks of a post-pandemic world where every community is left to fend for itself, unintentionally and eerily prescient. Others are familiar in less inspiring ways, walking the genre's well-travelled paths without the depth or political intrigue to truly examine what dual protagonists Sam and Tara (who reappear each chapter) represent of the broader human experience: there's the Handmaid's Tale lite, the 1984/Starship Troopers imitation, or the one where nanobots have solved all bodily ailments, or the one where Pryor minimises the socioeconomic dilemmas of an ageless population into one about whether or not to return a Beanie Baby.

I can appreciate the prose is pitched at a level for younger readers, but unfortunately there's plenty of it that is simply awkward and cumbersome, especially for some of the premises which necessitate a lot of work to set up their alternate worlds (see paid holidays to "Arab-Israeli Fun Land" or racism being a "thing of the past"). Often, the stories will abruptly cut off right before the supposed climax and leave you with the breadcrumbs of a more cohesive plot, or clumsily reveal a twist which wraps up the capital M Message in a neat little bow. The best of them, unsurprisingly, are those which fixate more on the human behaviour underneath the glossy or gritty futures presented. 2030 (and similarly 2020) surveys the wasteland after "Total Financial Collapse", but beyond the logistics of such communal scavenging is a frighteningly sober portrait of the lengths we sometimes go to for survival, cold rationalisation overriding the ethical boundaries of the old world (reminiscent of Le Guin's Omelas or Jackson's The Lottery). Those harsh truths, after all, are what the mirror of speculative fiction is all about.

[Sam Schroder · Rating 4 out of 5]

I spoke with my faculty about adding some new books to the book room (which is a lot better than it was 2 years ago when I arrived, but still needs some serious attention and love). Two of my staff recommended this book, which they studied as part of their teaching degrees. I was happy to take their word for it, but one kindly leant me his copy and they are so right. This will be a great addition. I’m thinking Year 9 or 10, probably. 10 Futures is ten stand-alone short stories that speculate on society, technology and survival in settings spanning the next 100 years. In some, the future is bleak, in others it is structured and prosperous. In each story, our protagonists are teenage friends, Sam and Tara. In each story, we are left unsure about what might happen next. In all ten stories, the teaching potential is significant. Great choice by the boys. I look forward to teaching this one.

[Qing Qing · Rating 1 out of 5]

1.5 stars — not the worst book I’ve ever read, but I would’ve stopped reading about 1 page in if it weren’t a text study

Ten (low-quality) short stories set in ten different futures with the same two protagonists and zero connections between said stories. Hmm… kinda hard to see what the author was aiming for with this one. It’s as if he could only bother to come up with two one-dimensional characters* and just decided to recycle them in some stories he made off the top of his head. Speaking of recycling, one of the protagonists, Sam, speaks two other languages. That is, he uses the same two phrases from each language about 3 times each — ding gua gua, bu zhong yong, accha, and bura. Pryor really knows how to recycle, huh :/

*Sam is soft-hearted, artistic, and sometimes wants to make money. Tara is short-tempered, firm, and ambitious, especially when it comes to changing the world. That’s it. That’s all you’ll ever know about them from 229 pages.

[Mistress Bast · Rating 2 out of 5]

I liked a couple of the stories, but as an anthology it didn't really work for me. I found the repetition of the lives of Tara and Sam in different futures was quite distracting. Yes, it meant that Pryor didn't have to re-introduce us to characters every story which saved time. But on the other hand, we didn't really get any deeper appreciation for them as the anthology moved on. I felt that the stories could have been read in any order, but perhaps would have enjoyed the stories more if the 'futures' were used to explore Sam and Tara's characters more deeply rather than to explore different ideas of dystopian futures.

[Rhonda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Picked this up at my local library and didn't realise this was "young adult fiction" until I came to write this review, and it partly explains the note at the end of the book that "a comprehensive teaching support kit is available". It did seem like a discussion-prompting book. Each short chapter gives a different view of the future with the same 2 characters, and invites the reader to think "do I like this future?", and if not, "how can we avoid having that future?" No easy answers, but the seeds of the future are right here in the present. Not too in depth but still thought provoking.

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

“10 Futures” was lent to me by @tmntpunk after he lent it to @samluvsluke. You know how I’ve said before that I’m not into sci fi and fantasy? Well I’m starting to think I’m into sci-fi! This is 10 short stories all about the same two characters. Only here set in different times in the future. Some of these futures are dystopian and some are more utopian. All are alarming for their possible truth.

[Sarah Thornton · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's a mixed bag, as most collections of short stories are.

Thematically linked, with a focus on sustainability and conservation, the concept was intruiging but unfortunately the two main characters weren't interesting enough to justify following them for one hundreds years across multiple futures.

That may have been the point - ordinary people in unusual situations - but it lost a lot of steam in the execution.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read this for Children's Literature unit at university and I didn't mind the concept of short stories spanning over different times with same two characters but found the execution a little off. Other than that I found 2020 story a tad creepy since it had a pandemic last year.

[Izzabelle Taualofai · Rating 4 out of 5]

I want to read it please

[Briar Hocking · Rating 2 out of 5]

A book that leaves you hanging.

over and over and over.

Because there is not ending. no resolution. nothing.

The stories have a lot of good ideas and could be made into full books.

[M · Rating 1 out of 5]

Patronising, boring and full of SciFi cliches not exclusively, but including: homophobic ableist genetic testing in one of the short stories and AI anxiety. Like florals in spring, "ground breaking"

[Marnee · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book and the concept behind it but it was a bit confusing to grasp hold of wirh all the changes. It didnt feel like it flowed but more cut and than started again.

[Kat Foster · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such interesting stories, and scary to think that some of these stories are true.

[Forrest · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed all.the short stories in this!

[Larissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

It wasn’t the worst book but it also wasn’t the best, some of the stories were good and I enjoy them but some were just long and boring.

[Jaq · Rating 4 out of 5]

A solid idea and well executed.

[Cat · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read for uni

[Georgia · Rating 2 out of 5]

The only interesting part was the eerily prediction of the 2020 chapter… everything else was a drag to read..

[Susie Burnham · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked these short stories. Very clever and The Year 2020 was so close to’ The COVID situation! Would love for any of these stories to be fleshed out.

[Phoebe · Rating 3 out of 5]

The concept of this book was interesting and could have made for a great read; however, the execution lacked in a few areas.
I found that the characters of this story seem very flat. Their backgrounds or personalities weren't really looked at much at all and the only thing I have really gathered about Sam is that he likes art and for Tara I can't remember much other than that she is 16.
Most of the concepts for the ten stories had potential, however I think each setting and situation need more of a backstory to make it seem more realistic and place the reader inside the world. A few of the concepts mentioned in the book also need more research done on them, I found that the concepts weren't known very well or that some of the things that happened just didn't make sense factually. The lack of facts made the book read a lot more childish.
So overall, it was an interesting book and I don't regret reading it. Because it was made up of ten short stories it meant that the pace was kept fast and was a quick read. The main thing to be improved is character and plot development.

[Elly · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the main things that I loved about this book was the concept behind it. Ten short stories, featuring the same two characters, covering a variety of possibilities about the future.

I've been a big fan of Michael Pryor ever since I read the Laws of Magic series, which was of a very different tone to his other series. A lot of this was because the format was short stories rather than a series, but I felt a little bit like there was a slightly more serious tone to it.

The stories are well written and engaging, despite the open-endedness of many of them. I liked the ambiguity, personally, as the focus of the book was the future and the future is always unknown, it left the end of the story open to the reader and their imagination while referencing this fact a little.

I purchased the book at Supanova Sydney so that I would have something for Michael to sign while he was there and the book was worth every cent.

[Elaine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Michael Pryor's 10 Futures follows the lives of two best friends, both teenagers, one boy, one girl, but not romantically attached. The book contains 10 possible scenarios for the future of both the world and the friendship as it might appear within the specific future contexts. I thought this was a wonderful boook - it doesn't read like short stories but rather as a set of possibilities for connection and disintergration. The personalities of the two main characters both change and remain consistent - commenting perhaps on the idea that there is a fundamental 'self' which is affected but cannot be completely determined by contextual, historical factors.
While some of the scenarios are more capitvating than others, overall the book explores interesting concepts such as the role of technology, class divides, education, human-technology relations, human survival (and hospitality toward 'others' in the context of a world effected by contagious disease), community and place.