Terraform: Watch/Worlds/Burn
by Brian Merchant, Claire L. Evans, Cory Doctorow, Sam Biddle, James Bridle, Jennifer Marie Brissett, Tobias S. Buckell, Tori Cárdenas, Shannon Chamberlain, Chloe Cole, Nan Craig, Malon Edwards, Omar El Akkad, Meg Elison, Rose Eveleth, Fernando A. Flores, Paul Ford, Sarah Gailey, Peter Milne Greiner, Malcolm Harris, Porpentine Charity Heartscape, Eric Holthaus, Andrew Dana Hudson, Sahil Lavingia, Tao Lin, Geoff Manaugh, Tim Maughan, Joanne McNeil, Lincoln Michel, Sam J. Miller, Lia Swope Mitchell, Gus Moreno, Kevin Nguyen, Russell Nichols, Frankie Ochoa, Tochi Onyebuchi, Laurie Penny, Zora Mai Quỳnh, Robin Sloan, Emily J. Smith, Julian Mortimer Smith, Bruce Sterling, Seamus Sullivan, Wole Talabi, Tlotlo Tsamaase, Ellen Ullman, Debbie Urbanski, Jeff Vandermeer, Marlee Jane Ward, Elvia Wilk, Max Wynne, E. Lily Yu, Jess Zimmerman
Why You'll Love This
Fifty-plus writers from VICE's Terraform imagine surveillance, AI, and climate collapse — and the results are angrier, stranger, and more prescient than most solo futures.
- Great if you want: sharp near-future fiction from journalists, critics, and novelists alike
- The experience: jagged and propulsive — short hits of dread with occasional flashes of dark wonder
- The writing: voices range from clinical to lyrical, unified by urgency rather than house style
- Skip if: anthology unevenness frustrates you — quality varies noticeably across 50+ contributors
About This Book
Terraform collects speculative fiction from VICE's digital science fiction imprint, organizing fifty-plus writers around three urgent fault lines: surveillance, artificial intelligence, and climate collapse. The anthology doesn't traffic in distant dystopias — its futures are close enough to smell, built from the same anxieties already threading through today's headlines. Contributors range from genre veterans like Bruce Sterling, Jeff VanderMeer, and Cory Doctorow to journalists, essayists, and newer voices who bring a documentary sharpness to their fiction, grounding even the strangest scenarios in recognizable human texture.
What distinguishes this collection is the deliberate tension between its editors' curatorial vision and the sheer variety of approaches on the page — satirical corporate memos sit beside lyrical climate elegies, and terse algorithmic horror gives way to sprawling world-building. Because many contributors are writers who normally work in nonfiction, the prose carries an unusual bluntness; these stories don't just imagine bad futures, they diagnose them. Reading straight through, the cumulative effect is less like browsing an anthology and more like assembling a field guide to the present moment, rendered in uncomfortably plausible fiction.