Envision

Buckle your flightbelt and prepare for an unprecedented voyage of speculation through future worlds and distant galaxies. Be careful if you choose Pod Class, though. It provides only recycled tubes for your orifices, although we're equipped with the best monitoring equipment, including state-of-the-art Stabilization of Life Units. Our journey will circumvent that brown, scabbed planet with a single oasis of green over there. Zeta Sector is off limits as well. Settle back in your seat and enjoy our selection of entertainment on your holovid while we enter the Envision Zone. Envision: Future Fiction will transport you through universes of possibilities, probabilities, and what-ifs. Some of the pieces are presented in experimental formats like memory cards, training manuals, or instruction sheets. Can you imagine what would happen if androids learned emotion? Could an AI develop dignity? Could it learn to forgive? Five of the stories in Envision explore android or AI interactions with humans. What does it take to win the Model Citizen Medal or to qualify for a Procreative License? Careful! It might not be as simple as you expect. Why do transitioners feel that there is a higher purpose in dying? Is population control a good thing, or could it have unexpected repercussions? In a world without fertility clinics, why would men leave sperm samples with The Ministry? Do aliens live among us? And if they do, what are their intentions? What would a parent do if their child began to display the dreaded symptoms of creativity in an artless world bereft of painters, singers, and dancers? How might a man react if he could tap into all the knowledge of the internet, wireless networks, and media broadcasts? Would he embrace his aberration? Are humans the blight of the universe, destroying every celestial body they touch, like schoolyard bullies? Or are they so insignificant that they leave no trace when they become extinct - except, perhaps, for garbage? Envision: Future Fiction will entertain you with humor and horror, love and hate, desperation and hope - shaped by the imaginations of nine authors with diverse voices.