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Reverse-Gentrification of the Literary World

Akashic Books

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Category: Fri-SciFi

Fri-SciFi: Original Speculative Fiction

An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon is a rare literary science fiction novel set in a future universe so gorgeously described and perfectly self-contained—and yet so harrowing and cruel—that its only parallel universe is our own.

Solomon’s novel inspired us to create Fri-SciFi—our new flash fiction series.

We’ve been through the past, and we haven’t really learned from it. The present? We’re too busy attempting to survive it. So we’re asking you to provide us a glimpse of what comes next. Illustrate the essential choices we must make in the present that will lead us to your brilliant utopian future. Or, if you cannot anticipate utopia, provide us instead with your cautionary tale. Show us where we will fall if we—when we—fail to alter our course.

Fri-SciFi stories are published on Fridays because we expect we’ll need the weekend to contemplate your vision.

“Machine” by Ahsan Butt

M watched himself wake in a mirror. His hair was gone and electrodes circled his skull, their wires stripped and dangling like witch hair . . .