You did it, the one thing everyone warned you not to do – you binged Black Mirror on Netflix and now you need to take a cold shower and remind yourself that life and technology is not all cynicism and woe.
Except for the episode San Junipero, Black Mirror rarely leaves you feeling good about the future of science and technology; the anthology’s characters seldom consider the impact of the technology they’re using, often with devastating consequences. But what makes these stories horrifying is that they aren’t really a stretch from our current reality.
As Steven Leigh, author of Amid the Crowd of Stars, writes
…both science fiction and fantasy can be used as a funhouse mirror to reflect back to the reader our human foibles, issues, and concerns, sometimes in exaggerated and twisted form… Science fiction and fantasy aren’t really about our future or an imagined past, they’re about Now.
Science fiction doesn’t so much predict as it does to tell us what a possible tomorrow could look like. These stories ask how we might handle nuanced issues like fertility, climate change, surveillance, space travel, and advanced technology in the future depending on our collective choices; they’re topics relevant to our lives right now because they demand a shared sense of morality and responsibility.
But there’s a silver lining to all this, an undercurrent of hope in these cautionary tales: sci-fi isn’t just about asking, “What if the future was despairingly dystopic?” but also, “What if we could make things better?”
These near-future sci-fi audiobooks will have you wondering what our future could look like and serve as a warning for some of our most pressing societal concerns.
Amid the Crowd of Stars
Written by Stephen Leigh, narrated by Tanya Eby
This innovative sci-fi novel explores the potential impact of alien infection on humankind as they traverse the stars and find themselves stranded on new and strange planets.
Amid the Crowd of Stars is a grand-scale science fiction novel examining the ethical implications of interstellar travel. What responsibilities do we have to isolate ourselves from the bacteria, viruses, and other life of another world, and to prevent any of that alien biome from being brought back to Earth?
What happens when a group of humans is stranded for centuries on another world with no choice but to expose themselves to that world? After such long exposure, are they still Homo sapiens or have they become another species entirely?
a reflection of what happened when the Europeans came to the New World and infected the native cultures there with smallpox and other diseases to which the locals had no natural immunity… There’s a reason we sterilize all the probes we send out to other planets and satellites, and a reason why we generally don’t try to recover them afterward.
Baby X
Written by Kira Peikoff, narrated by Jennifer Jill Araya, Imani Jade Powers, and Abigail Reno
When any biological matter can be used to create life, stolen celebrity DNA sells to the highest bidder—or the craziest stalker—in this propulsive thriller.
In the near-future United States, where advanced technology can create eggs or sperm from any person’s cells, celebrities face the alarming potential of meeting biological children they never conceived. Famous singer Trace Thorne hires bio-security guard Ember Ryan to ensure his biological safety and prevent DNA thefts by the Vault, a black market site devoted to stealing DNA.
Ember’s focus becomes split when she begins to fall for Thorne, but she knows she hasn’t let anything slip—love or not, his DNA is safe. Then she and Thorne are confronted by a pregnant woman, Quinn, who claims that Thorne is the father of her baby, and all bets are off.
Peikoff, who works in biotech communications, says “In real life, emerging technologies stand to affect us all, and in some cases, may save your life or revolutionize your choices. You don’t need to be a scientist to understand and appreciate the effects of technologies becoming real.”
The Centre
Written by Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi, narrated by Balvinder Sopal
This darkly comic, speculative debut interrogates the sticky politics of language, translation, and appropriation with biting specificity, and ultimately asks: what is success really worth?
Here’s how Siddiqi describes her book:
[It’s] about Anisa, a Pakistani translator living in London who stumbles across a mysterious language school where you can become absolutely fluent in any language in just ten days. For Anisa, a bit lost and striving for something she herself can’t quite discern, this seems like a dream come true, but of course, entrance into the Centre comes at a price.
The Digital Aesthete
Written by Alex Shvartsman, narrated by David Bendena, Lauren DePorre, Mark Owen, Nick Mondelli, Psalm Morant, Hope Shangle, Aimee Reid, Jackie Meloche, and Lesa Lockford
In this collection of short stories, world-renowned science fiction authors paint a picture of art’s future in a world forever changed by artificial intelligence.
Today’s software can only imitate art, but what about tomorrow?
Will true artificial intelligences be able to appreciate or even create art? Explore dystopian societies, where AI generates most of the content and human artists must eke out an existence, and utopias, where artificial minds help unlock and enhance human creativity.
Delve into the minds of robot painters, AI poets, drone forgers, and electronic theater curators. These and other possible futures are imagined.
Dual Memory
Written by Sue Burke, narrated by André Santana
In this blend of hard sci-fi and spy thriller, a man forges an uneasy alliance with a self-aware A.I. to defend an island city.
What if A.I. had the same creative desires as humans? This is the question at the center of Burke’s novel:
A couple of centuries in the future, on a small artificial island on the Arctic Circle, Antonio Moro stops running from the people who killed his family and friends. He wants to start fighting, but he has no home, no job, no money, and no clothes. He doesn’t even know much about where he is. But when he gets an ally as powerful as it is naïve, they find an infallible strategy: lies and deceit. If they can avoid arrest, they can create a fighting force of unbeatable strength that no one must ever discover.
Feed Them Silence
Written by Lee Mandelo, narrated by Natalie Naudus
In this near-future novella about environmentalism, consent, and connection, Sean’s tireless research gives her a chance to fulfill her dream to dive into the minds of wolves – at a cost.
What does it mean to “be-in-kind” with a nonhuman animal? Or, in Dr. Sean Kell-Luddon’s case, to be in-kind with one of the last remaining wild wolves? Using a neurological interface to translate her animal subject’s perception through her own mind, Sean intends to chase both her scientific curiosity and her secret, lifelong desire to experience the intimacy and freedom of wolfishness.
Sean’s tireless research gives her a chance to fulfill that dream, but pursuing it has a terrible cost. Her obsession with work endangers her fraying relationship with her wife. Her research methods threaten her mind and body. And the attention of her venture capital funders could destroy her subject, the beautiful wild wolf whose mental world she’s invading.
The Fortunate Fall
Written by Cameron Reed, narrated by Frankie Corzo
In this heralded underground cyberpunk classic, a reporter with broadcasting equipment wired into her nervous system uncovers long-hidden political secrets.
Maya Andreyeva is a “camera,” a reporter with virtual-reality-broadcasting equipment implanted in her brain. What she sees, millions see; what she feels, millions share.
And what Maya is seeing is the cover-up of a massacre. As she probes into the covert political power plays of a radically strange near-future Russia, she comes upon secrets that have been hidden from the world… and memories that AI-controlled thought police have forced her to hide from herself. Because in a world where no thought or desire is safe, the price of survival is betrayal—of your lover, your ideals, and yourself.
Past Crimes
Written by Jason Pinter, narrated by Ellen Quay
Ready Player One meets Black Mirror in this stunning speculative thriller set in a future world where virtual reality isn’t just a game—it’s daily life.
Welcome to Earth+. The year is 2037, and nearly all human interactions have migrated to the virtual world. True-crime fans can participate in hyper-realistic simulations and hunt for clues to solve famous crimes. Past Crimes, known as the Disneyland of Death by its fans, is at the forefront of the multibillion-dollar criminal entertainment industry.
Cassie West licenses crimes, convincing grieving families to allow her to sell their tragedies to the highest bidder. Life is hard and cost of living high, but she and her husband Harris are happy.
But when leaving work late one evening, Cassie starts to worry. Harris isn’t responding to texts or calls, and emergency drones seem to be heading towards their home.
What she finds there changes everything. Soon, Cassie finds herself fighting for survival, becoming a target in both the real and virtual worlds. But if she can’t uncover the truth of what happened to her husband, thousands more may die.
The Past is Red
Written by Catherynne M. Valente, narrated by Penelope Rawlins
Did you enjoy the “Three Robots: Exit Strategies” episode of Netflix’s animated anthology Love Death + Robots? Then perhaps you’ll like this satirical commentary on the climate crisis, overconsumption, and humans’ role in the destruction of our environment.
Tetley Abednego is a resident of Garbagetown, formerly the Great Pacific Garbage Patch before the world flooded. She knows that Garbagetown is the most wonderful place in the world, that it’s full of hope. But Earth is a terrible mess, hope is a fragile thing, and a lot of people are very angry with her. Then Tetley discovers a new friend, a terrible secret, and more to her world than she ever expected.
Don’t let the novella length fool you; this book had me running the gamut of emotions by the time I reached the last chapter. It’s a story I continue to think about long after I finished it.
