Future Tense Fiction

  • Rey Velazquez Sagcal's illustration for "A Lion Roars in Longyearbyen" by Margrét Helgadóttir

    A Lion Roars in Longyearbyen

    Following the mass extinction of most species, the animals that fill a zoo in a future Arctic metropolis are lab-made—with one exception: an aging lion. When the lion escapes in the middle of the city’s Christmas festivities, a complex hunt ensues.

  • Rey Velasquez Sagcal's illustration

    The Dawn of the Synthetic Age

    An expert in environmental philosophy and wildlife recovery responds to Margrét Helgadóttir’s “A Lion Roars in Longyearbyen.”

    Response

  • Rey Velasquez Sagcal's illustration for "Subsidence" by E. G. Condé

    Subsidence

    The AI boom means more demands on data centers—and running a data center requires complex technical infrastructure, vast environmental resources, and experienced human talent. In E. G. Condé’s story, a labyrinthine data center is in the middle of a massive outage. When the corporation that owns the center fails to diagnose the problem provoking the outage with its fancy technical systems, it’s forced to turn to human intuition to sniff out a more fundamental dilemma.

  • Rey Velasquez Sagcal's illustration

    Can We Cool Down Data?

    The energy demands of data centers—accelerated by artificial intelligence—are steering us toward disaster. Could biology help bring us back from the brink?

    Response

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