Announcing Twelve Tomorrows—A "Hard SF" Anthology Offering Fictional Forays into the Future

I'm thrilled to announce the publication of Twelve Tomorrows, the science fiction anthology I edited for MIT Technology Review and The MIT Press.

With help from assistant editor Mark Pontin, I recruited famous and up-and-coming voices in science fiction to write "hard SF" stories that offer deep, provocative, funny, frightening perspectives on how present-day technologies could evolve. The book includes 10 original short stories and a 20-page, full-color graphic novella.

Soonish fans are invited to join me at 6:00 pm June 5 at the MIT Press Bookstore in Cambridge, MA, when I'll host an event with Twelve Tomorrows contributors Elizabeth Bear, SL Huang, and Ken Liu. The authors will read from their stories, and we'll discuss the role of hard science fiction in helping us understand how today's technologies are evolving. The event is free and open to the public; details at the MIT Press Bookstore website.

The stellar lineup of authors includes:

Elizabeth Bear, the Hugo, Sturgeon, Locus, and Campbell Award winning author of nearly 30 novels (the most recent are Karen Memory, The Stone in the Skull, and Stone Mad) and over a hundred short stories. She lives in Massachusetts with her partner, writer Scott Lynch.

SL Huang, an Amazon-bestselling author whose debut novel, Zero Sum Game, is upcoming from Tor Books in September 2018. Her short fiction has sold to Analog Science Fiction and Fact, Nature: Futures, and The Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy 2016. She is also a Hollywood stuntwoman and firearms expert, with credits including “Battlestar Galactica” and “Top Shot.” You can find her online at www.slhuang.com or on Twitter as @sl_huang.

Clifford V. Johnson, a professor of theoretical physics at the University of Southern California. He was awarded the Maxwell medal and prize in 2005 for his research on the nature of spacetime. He also works to communicate science to non-experts. He has written and drawn a nonfiction book in graphic novel form entitled The Dialogues: Conversations about the Nature of the Universe (The MIT Press, 2017).

J.M. Ledgard, a British novelist and a leading thinker on risk, nature, and advanced technology in the Equatorial belt of the planet. Ledgar's story "Vespers" is extracted from his upcoming third novel, set mostly in Roman Africa. His second novel, Submergence, a New York Times Book of the Year, is now a major Hollywood movie directed by Wim Wenders.

Liu Cixin, a science fiction author based in China. His main work is the Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy. Its first volume, The Three-Body Problem, won the Hugo Award for best novel of 2015. Volume Three, Death’s End, won the Locus Award for best science fiction novel of 2017.

Ken Liu, a winner of the Nebula, Hugo, Locus, and World Fantasy awards and the author of The Dandelion Dynasty, a silkpunk epic fantasy series (The Grace of Kings (2015), The Wall of Storms (2016)) and The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories (2016), a collection. He’s also a lawyer and programmer living near Boston, Massachusetts.

Paul McAuley, formerly a research biologist and university lecturer, who has published more than twenty novels, including Fairyland, The Quiet War and Austral. His fiction has won, among other prizes, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the John W. Campbell Memorial Award and the British Fantasy Award. He mostly lives in London; his avatar, @UnlikelyWorlds, can be found on Twitter.

Nnedi Okorafor, a writer whose works include Who Fears Death, the Binti novella series, The Book of Phoenix, the Akata books and Lagoon.  The winner of Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Awards and the prestigious Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature, Nnedi is a professor at the University at Buffalo, New York (SUNY). Learn more at Nnedi.com.

Malka Older, a writer, aid worker, and PhD candidate. She is the author of Infomocracy, named one of the best books of 2016 by Kirkus, Book Riot, and the Washington Post, and the sequel Null States. Named Senior Fellow for Technology and Risk at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs for 2015, she has more than a decade of experience in humanitarian aid and development. Her doctoral work on the sociology of organizations at the Institut d’Études Politques de Paris (Sciences Po) explores the dynamics of multi-level governance and disaster response using the cases of Hurricane Katrina and the Japan tsunami of 2011.

Sarah Pinsker, winner of the 2016 Nebula for Best Novelette with “Our Lady of the Open Road” and the 2014 Theodore Sturgeon Award for “In Joy, Knowing the Abyss Behind.” Her fiction has appeared in numerous anthologies as well as Asimov’s, F & SF, Uncanny, Lightspeed, and Strange Horizons, among other magazines. She lives in Baltimore.

Alastair Reynolds, a writer born in Wales in 1966. After a career in space science, which took him to the Netherlands for nearly two decades, Reynolds is now a full-time writer again settled in Wales. His work has been shortlisted for the Clarke and Hugo awards, and he has won the Locus, Seiun, Sidewise and BSFA awards.

The book also includes an interview with renowned SF author Samuel R. Delany by brothers Jason Pontin and Mark Pontin. Mark Pontin, the assistant editor of Twelve Tomorrows, is a writer and editor living in California. His work on subjects from genetically engineered bioweapons to neuroscience, nuclear power, management theory, and economics has appeared in outlets such as ABC News and MIT Technology Review. Jason Pontin was the editor in chief and publisher of MIT Technology Review from 2005 to 2017, and launched the first edition of Twelve Tomorrows in 2011.