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Make Shift: Dispatches from the Post-Pandemic Future
Science fiction stories of pandemic-inspired ingenuity, grit, and determination.
This new volume in the Twelve Tomorrows series of science fiction anthologies looks at how science and technology--existing or speculative--might help us create a more equitable and hopeful world after the coronavirus pandemic. The original stories presented here, from a diverse collection of authors, offer no miracles or simple utopias, but visions of ingenuity, grit, and incremental improvement. In the tradition of inspirational science fiction that goes back to Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke, these writers remind us that we can choose our future, and show us how we might build it.
This new volume in the Twelve Tomorrows series of science fiction anthologies looks at how science and technology--existing or speculative--might help us create a more equitable and hopeful world after the coronavirus pandemic. The original stories presented here, from a diverse collection of authors, offer no miracles or simple utopias, but visions of ingenuity, grit, and incremental improvement. In the tradition of inspirational science fiction that goes back to Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke, these writers remind us that we can choose our future, and show us how we might build it.
185 pages, Kindle Edition
First published March 2, 2021
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182 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
June 9, 2021
MIT Press has published a series of collections of science fiction short stories, each with a particular message in mind, often around the impact of new technologies on some aspect of society. So, for example, a recent addition, Entanglements, looked at the impact on relationships and families of emerging technologies. The series is known as 'Twelve Tomorrows', though in the case of Make Shift there are only 10 stories. This is a rapidly assembled collection where the focus is being post-pandemic: the idea was to be positive and show how science and technology could create a fairer, more hopeful world in the aftermath of what many stories assume will be a whole series of pandemics, starting with Covid-19.
There is always a big danger with fiction-with-a-message that the earnestness of the message will get in the way of the storytelling, and that's certainly the case in a number of stories here. In general with these collections there a couple of standouts and a couple of flops, with the rest occupying a middle ground of stories. Perhaps because this collection was put together quickly, it feels rather less effective than previous entries in the series - not helped by a rather strange idea of positiveness, as I found many of the stories quite depressing.
For me the standout here was The Price of Attention by Canadian author Karl Schroeder, featuring a police consultant on the autism spectrum who uses special glasses to manage his focus. It was clever, entertaining and had a sense of drama. There was one oddity - it featured a US where a new voting system allowed people to vote multiple times if they paid for the privilege which seemed both poorly thought through (it was supposed to reflect the importance people put on the issue, but the pricing was absolute, not based on the voter's personal worth) and highly unlikely ever to be passed into law. However, this didn't get in the way of a story with drive and purpose. It perhaps wasn't a coincidence that the post-pandemic aspect was almost incidental - the story would have worked just as well without it.
In too many of the stories, nothing much really happened. They were just a vehicle for describing a new technology and how it would work post (or during) pandemics. A typical example was the opener, Little Kowloon, in which British writer Adrian Hon portrays an attempt to put on an Edinburgh Festival show using new technology to get round the issues of social distancing. There just wasn't enough of a story there to care much about it.
As with previous collections in this series, there were a couple of stories I had to give up part way through as it was just too much hard work to carry on with no reward for the reader - the message simply pushed storytelling out of the way so much that it wasn't worth the effort.
Not the best addition to MIT's series, then, but as with all these collections there will almost certainly be some stories here that do appeal, so worth seeking a copy out from a library.
There is always a big danger with fiction-with-a-message that the earnestness of the message will get in the way of the storytelling, and that's certainly the case in a number of stories here. In general with these collections there a couple of standouts and a couple of flops, with the rest occupying a middle ground of stories. Perhaps because this collection was put together quickly, it feels rather less effective than previous entries in the series - not helped by a rather strange idea of positiveness, as I found many of the stories quite depressing.
For me the standout here was The Price of Attention by Canadian author Karl Schroeder, featuring a police consultant on the autism spectrum who uses special glasses to manage his focus. It was clever, entertaining and had a sense of drama. There was one oddity - it featured a US where a new voting system allowed people to vote multiple times if they paid for the privilege which seemed both poorly thought through (it was supposed to reflect the importance people put on the issue, but the pricing was absolute, not based on the voter's personal worth) and highly unlikely ever to be passed into law. However, this didn't get in the way of a story with drive and purpose. It perhaps wasn't a coincidence that the post-pandemic aspect was almost incidental - the story would have worked just as well without it.
In too many of the stories, nothing much really happened. They were just a vehicle for describing a new technology and how it would work post (or during) pandemics. A typical example was the opener, Little Kowloon, in which British writer Adrian Hon portrays an attempt to put on an Edinburgh Festival show using new technology to get round the issues of social distancing. There just wasn't enough of a story there to care much about it.
As with previous collections in this series, there were a couple of stories I had to give up part way through as it was just too much hard work to carry on with no reward for the reader - the message simply pushed storytelling out of the way so much that it wasn't worth the effort.
Not the best addition to MIT's series, then, but as with all these collections there will almost certainly be some stories here that do appeal, so worth seeking a copy out from a library.
June 25, 2025
“A Veil Was Broken”: Afrofuturist Ytasha L. Womack on the Work of Science Fiction in the 2020s - Wade Roush
This is a discussion of contemporary popular events and how their daily life is going. It also examines the Black experience during the pandemic with considerable social commentary. Brief asides about Afrofuturism are interspersed.
Little Kowloon - Adrian Hon
Roughly 10 years after COVID-19 there's a bird flu pandemic. Social distancing is enforced by omnipresent drones and strict legal measures. Despite that, the Edinburgh Festival will continue, though entirely in augmented reality (AR). The Hong Kong diaspora puts on their own event, featuring Dynamic Distancing. This technology allows for that most illicit of contemporary thrills, standing closer than 6 feet away from someone.
Meh
Patriotic Canadians Will Not Hoard Food! - Madeline Ashby
A representative for a real estate developer goes to a government subsidized farm that's run by three queer women of color asking them to sell. His time there becomes much more eventful than wanted.
Meh
Interviews of Importance - Malka Older
Elder Resources, which is part of every local government now, interviews the elderly to gather their memories for posterity, relatives, and big data. Chela has heard many stories, but there's only one life story she wants to really hear, her mother's, but she keeps refusing.
Meh
Jaunt - Ken Liu
Chronicles the rise of jaunts, which is what brief, often repeated, teletourism vistations are called, through various media mediums. The transition between each item could be much smoother, but I found it all interesting. It ends with government resistance for the usual reasons and a technical explanation of how to route around their restrictions.
Enjoyable
Koronapárty - Rich Larson
A resentful unemployed alcoholic older gay man whose lover recently died overhears youths talking about having a party and enjoying life, which can't be allowed.
Meh
Making Hay - Cory Doctorow
18 year Wilmar's life has been disrupted by a second pandemic, causing him to become depressed. He decides to go on an outing to be less depressed and finds a girl to talk to about their collective woes and what can be done about them.
Meh
The Price of Attention - Karl Schroeder
A detective with autism is working a murder case involved with the upcoming referendum. The pandemics changed everything. The police were defunded, votes are for sale, property values are self-assessed, owners are forced to sell to sufficient offers, there's intensive contact tracing, and much more. The detective doesn't mind, because life is all algorithms. All he needs to do is solve the murder before he becomes overstimulated.
Meh
Mixology for Humanity’s Sake - D. A. Xiaolin Spires
The year is 2038, it's been 19 years of successive pandemics. Rikuta's wife died during the previous one, so he moved to his family's rice farm and sake brewery. He seeks to revolutionize the process, but then comes to realize it's more important to improve the social experience of being quarantined. If there cannot be other humans involved, perhaps a robot mixologist may suffice, and it may yet serve an even greater purpose.
Ok
A Necessary Being - Indrapramit Das
In Kolkota, mehka* work to restore the city. One of the pilots rescues a girl and adopts her. The essential workers who venture outside often do so in exoskeletons and other seconds skins to take job requests from those who remain inside. It is the age of plagues.
*mecha, the robots, and mecca, as in a holy sanctuary, since they both live in and worship them.
Enjoyable
Vaccine Season - Hannu Rajaniemi
Many refuse to be vaccinated, so infectious vaccines have been developed so that the immunized can spread the vaccine, both to those who want it and those who don't. The vaccines now protect from heart disease, Alzheimer's, and cancer, but still many refuse. The newest vaccine mitigates senescence, which many find to be an unnatural alteration of the life cycle. Torsti's grandfather is one who refuses and he's desperate to know why, when immortality is close so at hand, that he insists on dying.
Ok
This is a discussion of contemporary popular events and how their daily life is going. It also examines the Black experience during the pandemic with considerable social commentary. Brief asides about Afrofuturism are interspersed.
Little Kowloon - Adrian Hon
Roughly 10 years after COVID-19 there's a bird flu pandemic. Social distancing is enforced by omnipresent drones and strict legal measures. Despite that, the Edinburgh Festival will continue, though entirely in augmented reality (AR). The Hong Kong diaspora puts on their own event, featuring Dynamic Distancing. This technology allows for that most illicit of contemporary thrills, standing closer than 6 feet away from someone.
Meh
Patriotic Canadians Will Not Hoard Food! - Madeline Ashby
A representative for a real estate developer goes to a government subsidized farm that's run by three queer women of color asking them to sell. His time there becomes much more eventful than wanted.
Meh
Interviews of Importance - Malka Older
Elder Resources, which is part of every local government now, interviews the elderly to gather their memories for posterity, relatives, and big data. Chela has heard many stories, but there's only one life story she wants to really hear, her mother's, but she keeps refusing.
Meh
Jaunt - Ken Liu
Chronicles the rise of jaunts, which is what brief, often repeated, teletourism vistations are called, through various media mediums. The transition between each item could be much smoother, but I found it all interesting. It ends with government resistance for the usual reasons and a technical explanation of how to route around their restrictions.
Enjoyable
Koronapárty - Rich Larson
A resentful unemployed alcoholic older gay man whose lover recently died overhears youths talking about having a party and enjoying life, which can't be allowed.
Meh
Making Hay - Cory Doctorow
18 year Wilmar's life has been disrupted by a second pandemic, causing him to become depressed. He decides to go on an outing to be less depressed and finds a girl to talk to about their collective woes and what can be done about them.
Meh
The Price of Attention - Karl Schroeder
A detective with autism is working a murder case involved with the upcoming referendum. The pandemics changed everything. The police were defunded, votes are for sale, property values are self-assessed, owners are forced to sell to sufficient offers, there's intensive contact tracing, and much more. The detective doesn't mind, because life is all algorithms. All he needs to do is solve the murder before he becomes overstimulated.
Meh
Mixology for Humanity’s Sake - D. A. Xiaolin Spires
The year is 2038, it's been 19 years of successive pandemics. Rikuta's wife died during the previous one, so he moved to his family's rice farm and sake brewery. He seeks to revolutionize the process, but then comes to realize it's more important to improve the social experience of being quarantined. If there cannot be other humans involved, perhaps a robot mixologist may suffice, and it may yet serve an even greater purpose.
Ok
A Necessary Being - Indrapramit Das
In Kolkota, mehka* work to restore the city. One of the pilots rescues a girl and adopts her. The essential workers who venture outside often do so in exoskeletons and other seconds skins to take job requests from those who remain inside. It is the age of plagues.
*mecha, the robots, and mecca, as in a holy sanctuary, since they both live in and worship them.
Enjoyable
Vaccine Season - Hannu Rajaniemi
Many refuse to be vaccinated, so infectious vaccines have been developed so that the immunized can spread the vaccine, both to those who want it and those who don't. The vaccines now protect from heart disease, Alzheimer's, and cancer, but still many refuse. The newest vaccine mitigates senescence, which many find to be an unnatural alteration of the life cycle. Torsti's grandfather is one who refuses and he's desperate to know why, when immortality is close so at hand, that he insists on dying.
Ok
Want to read
April 24, 2021As heard on on LeVar Burton Reads:
https://omny.fm/shows/levar-burton-re...
https://omny.fm/shows/levar-burton-re...
July 18, 2021
Commissioned in April 2020, this collection of short stories imagines post-Covid futures. But books take a long time to publish, and lots has changed since then. I found it very difficult to judge these stories on their own merit when most take place in what now feel like alternate realities that we have no way to get to. So even the most optimistic of the predictions here now depress me, since they feel impossible to reach.
Only one story, Vaccine Season by Hannu Rajaniemi, predicts that people might not want to take a vaccine. But even then, the problem is handwaved away with a gross solution where billionaires save the day.
Ken Liu's story, Jaunt, was genuinely thought-provoking for me in the way it critiques global tourism and imagines how the industry might adapt to post-pandemic life. But the rest of the stories just feel like futures that are now closed to us.
This is, again, not really a fault of the book. But I can't evaluate a book in a vacuum either. I picked it up to look for some optimism, and found very little of it.
Only one story, Vaccine Season by Hannu Rajaniemi, predicts that people might not want to take a vaccine. But even then, the problem is handwaved away with a gross solution where billionaires save the day.
Ken Liu's story, Jaunt, was genuinely thought-provoking for me in the way it critiques global tourism and imagines how the industry might adapt to post-pandemic life. But the rest of the stories just feel like futures that are now closed to us.
This is, again, not really a fault of the book. But I can't evaluate a book in a vacuum either. I picked it up to look for some optimism, and found very little of it.
February 16, 2024
In early 2020, there was an event you might have heard of, a little pandemic thing. Obviously we do not speak of such things anymore, nor do most people take even the slightest precautions against it, but back then, it was a really big deal and nobody knew how it might go. In those turbulent days, this anthology was assembled, a look forward at how such a big pandemic might shape our future. An optimistic look, to give us hope.
When I say this was assembled early in the pandemic, I mean it. It came together remarkably fast and all the stories were, I believe, written in 2020, when we still had periodic lockdowns and such. So the stories do take a wide variety of approaches, some of them assuming mass casualties and major changes to our lifestyle for decades to come, others assuming it more or less blows over and a few enduring societal lessons are learned or technologies develop. No matter what side the stories fall on, it means for a lot of them you'll find a certain quaintness to them, as none I saw really predicted the massive response followed so swiftly by 'oh well, what are ya gonna do?' attitude. Of course, 'optimistic' was in the anthology's mission statement, so even the ones that assume the worst about a particular pandemic are still pretty hopeful about humanity's ability to come back, and not just, you know, ignore things and pretend the problem's been solved.
Short story anthologies get a default three stars, because they're always a mixed bag, some I like, some I don't care for. To get higher than that, they have to have a really good proportion or some outstanding ones. This anthology gets the default three and... in the month or so since I finished it I can remember only a handful, but none that blew me away. Of course, I always enjoy certain things, like some of Karl Schroeder's outside-the-box and possibly completely impractical ideas for solving big social problems (even if I'm unsure if they're workable, I like that he's at least thinking of them). Otherwise, Madeline Ashby's "Patriotic Canadians Will Not Hoard Food" and Hannu Rajaniemi's "Vaccine Season" probably stood out for me as my favorites.
As I said, three stars. And interesting from a historical perspective, fictional responses to a slow-unfolding real world era in the early stages.
When I say this was assembled early in the pandemic, I mean it. It came together remarkably fast and all the stories were, I believe, written in 2020, when we still had periodic lockdowns and such. So the stories do take a wide variety of approaches, some of them assuming mass casualties and major changes to our lifestyle for decades to come, others assuming it more or less blows over and a few enduring societal lessons are learned or technologies develop. No matter what side the stories fall on, it means for a lot of them you'll find a certain quaintness to them, as none I saw really predicted the massive response followed so swiftly by 'oh well, what are ya gonna do?' attitude. Of course, 'optimistic' was in the anthology's mission statement, so even the ones that assume the worst about a particular pandemic are still pretty hopeful about humanity's ability to come back, and not just, you know, ignore things and pretend the problem's been solved.
Short story anthologies get a default three stars, because they're always a mixed bag, some I like, some I don't care for. To get higher than that, they have to have a really good proportion or some outstanding ones. This anthology gets the default three and... in the month or so since I finished it I can remember only a handful, but none that blew me away. Of course, I always enjoy certain things, like some of Karl Schroeder's outside-the-box and possibly completely impractical ideas for solving big social problems (even if I'm unsure if they're workable, I like that he's at least thinking of them). Otherwise, Madeline Ashby's "Patriotic Canadians Will Not Hoard Food" and Hannu Rajaniemi's "Vaccine Season" probably stood out for me as my favorites.
As I said, three stars. And interesting from a historical perspective, fictional responses to a slow-unfolding real world era in the early stages.
July 14, 2022
The Twelve Tomorrows series from MIT press has produced some of the most thought provoking science fiction from some of best current writers of the genre. Always centered on a theme, it is easy to guess what the 2021 book asked its writers to consider. One of the things I have enjoyed in the series is the way in which a theme can sharpen ideas and expose new ones, this hit a peak with the 2018 edition in my view.
I read Make Shift while sick with the BA.5 variant, and two years into the pandemic, reading the ideas of writers from two years ago placed many stories too firmly in the “early pandemic” timeframe. While the theme-to-story has a tendency to create fictional essays rather than narrative driven stories, I find this to be a feature, not a bug. There are great entries in this edition, and Hannu Rajaniemi’s Vaccine Season, Ken Liu’s Jaunt, and Cory Doctorow’s Making Hay struck with me after finishing.
I read Make Shift while sick with the BA.5 variant, and two years into the pandemic, reading the ideas of writers from two years ago placed many stories too firmly in the “early pandemic” timeframe. While the theme-to-story has a tendency to create fictional essays rather than narrative driven stories, I find this to be a feature, not a bug. There are great entries in this edition, and Hannu Rajaniemi’s Vaccine Season, Ken Liu’s Jaunt, and Cory Doctorow’s Making Hay struck with me after finishing.
June 4, 2021
And here we have what is probably the first set of fictional responses to the pandemic, how we reacted to it, and the issues it brought out. Ten authors create short stories of the near future after this pandemic (and in a depressing number of cases, later pandemics). They are all very tightly written and clever. Two that stand out for amplifying the things that happened last year. One is Ken Liu's “Jaunt”, where the world embraces telepresence as an antidote to both disease spread and climate change, but when anybody can activate a robot anywhere, should there be restrictions by nationality or occupation? The other is Hannu Rajaniemi's “Vaccine Season”, which is a reaction to vaccine resistance. It is also the most hopeful story in the book.
February 4, 2023
This book is a series of short stories dealing with the outcome of the Covid pandemic with possibly in some of the stories additional pandemics to follow. The stories are by people who look to the future and have various visions of the ultimate outcome.
Some of them are in the very near future and some reach further out, even generations. Some propose a continued experience with infections while others look to what could come from this round of pandemics in regard to human evolution perhaps even reaching to the stars.
It is a very entertaining look both at recovery, dealing with infection and also transcending globally.
It took a while for me to read it because each story was an afternoons or evenings' entertaining in and of itself.
Some of them are in the very near future and some reach further out, even generations. Some propose a continued experience with infections while others look to what could come from this round of pandemics in regard to human evolution perhaps even reaching to the stars.
It is a very entertaining look both at recovery, dealing with infection and also transcending globally.
It took a while for me to read it because each story was an afternoons or evenings' entertaining in and of itself.
April 17, 2021
I only listened to the short story Vaccine Season by Hannu Rajaniemi in this collection through the LeVar Burton Reads podcast. In this speculative fiction tale, a young boy visits his estranged grandfather in hopes of giving him a vaccine that would help him in the post-pandemic world. His grandfather resists and shares some poignant back-story to explain why. In a moment of danger, the grandfather has to make a split-second decision in regards to his grandson. While it had a hopeful and thought-provoking ending, I did feel a choice was forced upon him unfairly.
February 19, 2022
This collection of short stories is fascinating, thought-provoking, and fun. My favorite stories are "Patriotic Canadians Will Not Hoard Food," "Making Hay," and "A Necessary Being." The latter two feel very solarpunk to me, which I really like.
"Jaunt" is the most unsettling one. As good science fiction should be, it is a way to imagine how technology could affect our society in the future, for better or worse. Science fiction like this story helps us think about the consequences now, before it becomes reality.
"Jaunt" is the most unsettling one. As good science fiction should be, it is a way to imagine how technology could affect our society in the future, for better or worse. Science fiction like this story helps us think about the consequences now, before it becomes reality.
September 28, 2021
Loved this. Short story collections are always tricky because it's rare that you'll love every single story, but I decided overall I can give this five stars even if every single element wasn't five stars. Relatively near-future sci-fi, set around the world and focusing on technologies and situations that arose from the reality of a world facing a pandemic(s).
June 9, 2021
This is an excellent collection of speculative fiction short stories. The theme which ties them together in this anthology is that each story is written with the pandemic in mind. There’s not a bad story in the book. I enjoyed reading each one.
March 31, 2022
Ratings:
‘Vaccine Season’ by Hannu Rajaniemi - 4 stars.
‘Koronaparty’ by Rich Larson - 3 stars.
‘Jaunt’ by Ken Liu - 3 stars.
‘Making Hay’ by Cory Doctorow - 3 stars.
‘Patriotic Canadians Will Not Hoard Food!’ by Madeline Ashby - 2 stars.
‘Vaccine Season’ by Hannu Rajaniemi - 4 stars.
‘Koronaparty’ by Rich Larson - 3 stars.
‘Jaunt’ by Ken Liu - 3 stars.
‘Making Hay’ by Cory Doctorow - 3 stars.
‘Patriotic Canadians Will Not Hoard Food!’ by Madeline Ashby - 2 stars.
May 13, 2021
Too optimistic ;)
Want to read
May 19, 2021Includes "Vaccine Season" from Levar Burton Reads Episode 98
January 25, 2022
So nice to read some positive hopeful visions of the future!
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews