Make Shift: Dispatches from the Post-Pandemic Future

Contributors

Madeline Ashby is a futurist and science fiction writer based in Toronto. She is the author of the Machine Dynasty series from Angry Robot Books and also Company Town from Tor Books. She is a contributor to How to Future: Leading and Sensemaking in an Age of Hyper Change, available soon from Kogan Page Inspire. She has also developed multiple science fiction prototypes and scenarios for Intel Labs, the Institute for the Future, SciFutures, Data & Society, Nesta, the WorldBank, WHO, and others. You can find her at madelineashby.com or on Twitter @MadelineAshby.

Indrapramit Das (aka Indra Das) is a writer and editor from Kolkata, India. He is a Lambda Literary Award winner for his debut novel The Devourers (Penguin India/Del Rey), and a Shirley Jackson Award winner for his short fiction, which has appeared in a variety of anthologies and publications including Tor.com, Slate, Clarkesworld, and Asimov’s Science Fiction. He has lived in India, the United States, and Canada, where he received his MFA from the University of British Columbia.

Cory Doctorow (craphound.com) is a science fiction author, activist, and journalist. He is the author of many books, most recently Radicalized and Walkaway, science fiction for adults; In Real Life, a graphic novel; Information Doesn’t Want to Be Free, a book about earning a living in the Internet age; and Homeland, a young adult sequel to Little Brother. His latest book is Poesy the Monster Slayer, a picture book for young readers. His next book is Attach Surface, an adult sequel to Little Brother.

Adrian Hon is CEO and founder of Six to Start, co-creator of the most successful smartphone fitness game in the world, Zombies, Run! He is the author of A New History of the Future in 100 Objects (MIT Press, 2020) and has worked with the British Museum, Disney Imagineering, and the Long Now. Before becoming a game designer, Adrian was a neuroscientist and experimental psychologist at Cambridge, UCSD, and Oxford.

Rich Larson was born in Galmi, Niger, has lived in Canada, the United States, and Spain, and is now based in Prague, Czech Republic. He is the author of the novel Annex and the collection Tomorrow Factory, which contains some of the best of his 150+ published stories. His work has been translated into Polish, Czech, Bulgarian, Portuguese, French, Italian, Vietnamese, Chinese, and Japanese. Find free fiction and support his work at patreon.com/richlarson.

Gideon Lichfield is from London, where he began his career on the science desk at The Economist, then spent stints as a foreign correspondent in Mexico City, Moscow, and Jerusalem before winding up in New York City. He was one of the founding editors at the business publication Quartz and worked there until 2017, when he became editor-in-chief of MIT Technology Review. He has taught journalism at New York University and has written (not very good) short science fiction as a fellow at the Data & Society Research Institute.

Ken Liu (http://kenliu.name) is an American author of speculative fiction. A winner of the Nebula, Hugo, and World Fantasy awards, he wrote The Dandelion Dynasty, a silkpunk epic fantasy series (starting with The Grace of Kings), as well as The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories and The Hidden Girl and Other Stories. He also authored the Star Wars novel The Legends of Luke Skywalker. Prior to becoming a full-time writer, Ken worked as a software engineer, corporate lawyer, and litigation consultant. Ken frequently speaks at conferences and universities on a variety of topics, including futurism, cryptocurrency, history of technology, bookmaking, and the mathematics of origami.

Malka Older is a writer, aid worker, and sociologist. Her science-fiction political thriller Infomocracy was named one of the best books of 2016 by Kirkus, Book Riot, and the Washington Post. She is the creator of the serial Ninth Step Station, currently running on Serial Box, and her short story collection And Other Disasters came out in November 2019. Her opinions can be found in the New York Times, Nation, Foreign Policy, and NBC THINK, among other outlets.

Hannu Rajaniemi is a cofounder and CEO of HelixNano, a venture- and Y Combinator-backed biotech startup developing a COVID-19 vaccine. Hannu was born in Finland. At the age of eight he approached the European Space Agency with a fusion-powered spaceship design, which was received with a polite “thank you” note. Hannu studied mathematics and theoretical physics at University of Oulu and Cambridge and holds a PhD in string theory from the University of Edinburgh. He cofounded a mathematics consultancy whose clients included the UK Ministry of Defence and the European Space Agency. Hannu is the author of four novels including The Quantum Thief (winner of the 2012 Tähtivaeltaja Award for the best science fiction novel published in Finland and translated into more than twenty languages). His most recent book is Summerland (June 2018), an alternate-history spy thriller in a world where the afterlife is real. His short fiction has been featured in Nature, Slate, MIT Technology Review, and the New York Times. Hannu lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife, neuroscientist Zuzana Krejciova-Rajaniemi, and their vizsla puppy Neo.

Wade Roush is a technology journalist and audio producer based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He is the author of Extraterrestrials (MIT Press, 2020) and editor of the 2018 edition of Twelve Tomorrows. He hosts and produces Soonish, a nonfiction podcast about the future, and cofounded Hub & Spoke, a collective of independent podcasts. He has been a staff writer, editor, and/or columnist for Scientific American, MIT Technology Review, Xconomy, and Science, and was the founding producer of Technology Review’s Deep Tech podcast. In 2014–2015 he was acting director of MIT’s Knight Science Journalism program. He has a B.A. in history and science from Harvard College and a PhD in the history and social study of science and technology from MIT.

Karl Schroeder is an award-winning Canadian author and professional futurist. Of his twelve published novels, two have won Canada’s Aurora Award for best sci-fi novel of the year. Karl came to prominence as one of the vanguard writers of the “new space opera,” but after obtaining a master’s degree in Strategic Foresight he shifted his attention to near-future fiction. Now he writes about positive solutions to issues such as global warming, using his foresight skills to inform his science fiction—and vice versa. Karl lives in Toronto with his wife and daughter.

D. A. Xiaolin Spires steps into portals and reappears in sites such as Hawaii, New York, various parts of Asia, and elsewhere, with her keyboard appendage attached. Her work appears in publications such as Clarkesworld, Analog, Strange Horizons, Nature, Terraform, Uncanny, Fireside, Galaxy’s Edge, Andromeda Spaceways (Year’s Best Issue), Diabolical Plots, Star*Line, Factor Four, and anthologies of the strange and beautiful: Ride the Star Wind, Sharp and Sugar Tooth, Future Visions, Deep Signal, Battling in All Her Finery, and Broad Knowledge. Select stories can be read in German, Spanish, Vietnamese, Estonian, and French translation. She can be found on Twitter @spireswriter and on her website daxiaolinspires.wordpress.com.

Ytasha L. Womack is an author, filmmaker, independent scholar, and dance therapist. Much of her work centers around Afrofuturism, new futures, and the use of the imagination for change. Her book Afrofuturism: The World of Black Sci Fi & Fantasy Culture is taught in universities around the world. She’s the author of Rayla 2212 and A Spaceship in Bronzeville and directed the award-winning dance film A Love Letter to the Ancestors from Chicago. A Chicago native, she was an inaugural resident at artist Kehinde Wiley’s artist residence Black Rock in Senegal. Her debut graphic novel Blak Kube will be released in 2022.