Welcome to Dystopia: Forty-five Visions of What Lies Ahead
Edited by Gordon Van Gelder
(OR Books, £16)

WITH jobs automated out of existence, Facebook used to influence elections and computer programmes managing state surveillance, military invasion and social control, the late Stephen Hawking rightly warned us about technology, particularly that it is driving “ever-increasing inequality.”

Unsurprising, then, that there has been a spate of dystopian fiction anthologies, with the Morning Star in recent months covering two relentlessly pessimistic and impressive collections, 2084 (Unsung Stories) and Exit Earth (Storgy).

Gordon Van Gelder has a good record in sf publishing, so I approached Welcome to Dystopia with a sense of enthusiasm and expectation that was disappointed. It contains some impressive and provocative stories, yet the collection is uneven and includes knockabout satires that miss their targets, stories that collapse under the weight of sf neologisms and tales that use unconventional structures to hide a lack of originality.