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.”

[[{"fid":"2344","view_mode":"inlineright","fields":{"format":"inlineright","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":false,"field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":false},"type":"media","field_deltas":{"1":{"format":"inlineright","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":false,"field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":false}},"attributes":{"class":"media-element file-inlineright","data-delta":"1"},"link_text":null}]]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.

But there are highlights, with Janis Ian’s His Sweat Like Stars on the Rio Grande a passionate attack on Trump’s proposed anti-migrant wall and the appalling treatment meted out to migrant workers in general. It is also a witty reflection on the impact of sexual desire on behaviour.

No Point Talking, about a man exiled from his way of life and unable to cope with the changes his family embraces, by Geoff Ryman is subtle and ironic. Robert Reed’s Suffocation is a harrowing insight into the horrors of environmental collapse, while James Sallis’s Bright Sarasota Where the Circus Lies Dying, every bit as enigmatic as its title suggests, focuses on social dislocation and forced labour.

The least effective stories are comic satires that fall flat because they reinforce received prejudices rather than re-examining them. Jay Russell’s Statues of Limitations is a fatuous sketch about the perceived excesses of political correctness and, to make the story work, Russell manufactures absurdities he can later attack. The process is not a million miles from that employed by Richard Littlejohn in the Daily Mail.

There are similar issues with Lisa Mason’s Dangerous, a story in which a state agency sends emails demanding that a woman registers her vagina. Mason’s satire on computer-mediated bureaucracy picks an easy target — the intrusive capture of personal data has few defenders — but the overall effect is clumsy and forgettable.

While Welcome to Dystopia is an anthology that highlights humanity’s tendency to collude in its own exploitation and some of the stories entertain and inform, others simply infuriate.