Near future science fiction in a post-pandemic world
Signposts to a post-pandemic future
Author Archives: Stephen Oram
Smart Health?
Recently, I wrote a story for the first in a CyberSalon series of interdisciplinary, technology and policy investigations through science-fiction storytelling.
The first was on health and it’s worth taking a look; you can read the summary, watch the event and read the stories.
Eva Pascoe, chair of CyberSalon, describes the four stories as: “ranging from Robo-Bot for Health Insurance app going tragically wrong (by Jule Owen), a food-whores brothel where people pay vagrants to eat the unhealthy food for them (by Stephen Oram), examining the case of elderly medical surveillance app gone rouge (Britta F Schulte), to being lured into swapping your health data for a rare chance to travel to space (Ben Greenaway).
Take a look, and have a think… what future do you want (to avoid)?
Stop the Dystopia, I Want to Get On.
The article I wrote for the Spring 2020 edition of the British Science Fiction Association magazine Focus is now available on Medium.
It starts with the question: “Is it true that dystopias predict doom-laden futures and utopias inspire better futures?”
It ends with a quote from Laurie Penny: “Right now, the future seems dark and frightening and it is precisely now that we must continue to imagine other worlds and then plot ways to get there.”
What comes in between can be found here.
photo credit: MU Hybrid Art House http://www.flickr.com/photos/36256936@N04/49803647563