Deep Dream: Science Fiction Exploring the Future of Art

by Indrapramit Das (Editor), Samit Basu (Contributor), Vajra Chandrasekera (Contributor)

Ten acclaimed writers imagine the future of art across space and time.


In this volume from the Twelve Tomorrows series, Deep Dream, ten writers imagine the different ways in which art forms might evolve, devolve, shift, and transform in the decades and centuries to come. They consider how the rapid progress of technology will interact with different mediums of art or give rise to new ones, and what the lives and inner worlds of different kinds of artists might look like in the future as they adapt to rapidly shifting eras amidst anthropogenic global threats like climate change and fascism.

Contributors include award-winning authors and artists from around the world, with a strong focus on South Asia; three of the contributors are from India or Sri Lanka. Readers will also find in this collection American science-fiction legend Bruce Sterling and Egyptian counter-cultural cartoonist, visual artist, and writer Ganzeer, as well as artist Diana Scherer, one of the pioneers in bio tech art. The volume also includes an interview with noted science fiction publisher and editor Neil Clarke, who discusses the future of art and the ways in which the science fiction short fiction market has responded to the introduction of AI-generated fiction and art.

Contributors
Samit Basu, Vajra Chandrasekera, Neil Clarke, Aliette de Bodard, Ganzeer, Cassandra Khaw, Lavanya Lakshminarayan, Archita Mittra, Sloane Leong, Bruce Sterling, Wole Talabi, Lavie Tidhar. Artwork by Diana Scherer.

Genres: Short Stories, Anthologies, Science Fiction, Fiction, Art, Science Fiction Fantasy

232 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 8, 2024

About the author

See also Indra Das.

Indrapramit Das (also known as Indra Das) is an Indian science fiction, fantasy and cross-genre writer, critic and editor from Kolkata. His fiction has appeared in several publications including Clarkesworld, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Strange Horizons, and Tor.com, and has been widely anthologized in collections including Gardner Dozois' The Year's Best Science Fiction.

His debut novel The Devourers (Penguin Books India, 2015; Del Rey, 2016) won the 29th Annual Lambda Award in LGBT SF/F/Horror category. The Lambda Award celebrates excellence in LGBT literature. The Devourers was shortlisted for 2016 Crawford Award, and included in the 2015 Locus Recommended Reading List. It was also nominated for the Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize and the Tata Live! Literature First Book Award in India.

Das is an Octavia E. Butler Scholar and a graduate of the 2012 Clarion West Writers Workshop. He completed an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.

He is a former consulting editor of speculative fiction for Indian publisher Juggernaut Books.

Reviews

[K.J. Charles]

Anthology edited by Indrapramit Das, featuring Vajra Chandrasekera and Samit Basu and Cassandra Khaw and Aliette de Bodard. If you look up "one click" in an illustrated dictionary, there is a picture of this book.

And it is indeed very good. Opens with the Chandrasekera piece as well it might because it is *outstanding*. The astonishing playing with words, the ideas, the gleeful inventiveness. Look, in the very first paragraph we get this:

At the end of the beginning, the author, undead, will rise again and set aside the demon mask saying: It is I, le clerc.

and I actually spat out my tea.

It's the standout piece because I can't imagine an anthology in which it would not be the standout piece, but this is stuffed with excellent work. The Basu is a delightful side story from The City Inside that makes me want an entire book, the Khaw is an elegiac piece about love and memory and carrying the torch, and the de Bodard is a beautiful tale of love, bereavement and letting go played out by a sentient spaceship. Those were the ones that spoke the most to me, but those who like their SF a bit harder or more ideas-based will find plenty for them.

The anthology is themed around the future of art, which does lead to a certain commonality in the subject matter--there's a lot of thought circling around the themes of AI, can machines create, what human creation means, and the inevitable commodification. Not a problem, just makes this one to read over a week, rather than in a sitting.

[Carlex · Rating 5 out of 5]

Four and a half stars.

What a great discovery, this Twelve Tomorrows series! I hesitated to buy the eBook because I found it excessively expensive. In the end, I decided to go for it because I was very interested in the subject (to be fair, I must confess I’m interested in ALL science fiction topics and subgenres). In any case, I can say that the purchase was worth it.

It’s well-known that there are an endless number of definitions for the word "art" (otherwise, it wouldn’t be art!). What’s interesting here is the perspective offered through science fiction (a form of art itself). So, new societies or new technologies bring about new forms of art. This anthology is dedicated to exploring some of them. Another example, a definition mentioned in this book is that art is a form of negentropy in the universe.

Additionally, as often happens with anthologies, it introduced me to some fascinating authors I hadn’t read before. I must say that Deep Dream: Science Fiction Exploring the Future of Art offers a consistently high level of storytelling, which doesn't happen that often. Below is a brief comment on each of the contributions included:

The Limner Wrings his Hands by Vajra Chandrasekera. A sharp and complex story blending fiction and essay. It offers a critique of the monetization of art, among many other issues. Brimming with talent.

The Art Crowd by Samit Basu. An art broker faces a moral dilemma between official art and street (or popular) art. Set in a cyberpunk future.

Immortal is the Heart by Cassandra Khaw. In a future shaped by the economic and environmental collapse of the U.S., a new profession emerges: an itinerant troubadour delivering posthumous speeches for the disappeared. A moving story.

Unauthorized (or, the Liberated Collectors Commune) by Ganzeer. Another post-collapse future. Here, police robots hunt down art forms under the pretense that they waste public resources. Art as a means of awakening consciousness.

Halfway to Hope by Lavanya Lakshminarayan. The protagonist, a therapist specializing in treating patients via virtual reality scenarios, must help her beloved despite opposition from her family. Very interesting, though a bit too black-and-white for my taste.

AI Concerns Are Not “Too Sci-Fi”. Archita Mitra interviews Neil Clarke, editor of the prestigious Clarkesworld magazine. A fascinating interview, touching on how Clarke has dealt with an influx of AI-generated stories based on natural language models. Another topic discussed is the distinction between art and artificially generated works.

No Future but Infinity Itself by Sloane Leong. Yet another post-collapse future—this seems to be what many of the anthology’s authors foresee. A giant sculpture is both worshiped and enslaves its caretaker.

Immortal Beauty by Bruce Sterling. Another post-collapse future (or so I interpret). The story depicts a political intrigue between two cities, Barcelona and Lyon, in a semi-feudal future society. A fascinating concept: art has been relegated to humans in their ghetto on Earth, while benevolent (?) AIs handle all science and economy across the solar system.

Autumn’s Red Bird by Aliette de Bodard. In the author’s signature melancholic style, this story follows a sentient spaceship that continues to receive messages from its beloved, who long ago became trapped beyond a black hole’s event horizon. The ship shares its sadness with an artist passenger.

Encore by Wole Talabi. In a distant future, two twin AIs explore space in search of clients to whom they offer their artistic expressions on a planetary scale. Stunning, with a powerful sense of wonder.
The Quietude by Lavie Tidhar. A fascinating story, as we’ve come to expect from the author. In a future solar system, populated by mutated humans, cyborgs, robots, various digital entities and other beings, a potential war unfolds against an alien species at the edges of the Oort Cloud. Excellent!

Finally, the book is accompanied by illustrations of works by artist Diana Scherer, featuring tapestries made from living roots.

[Yev · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the 10th entry in the Twelve Tomorrows anthology series.

The Limner Wrings His Hands - Vajra Chandrasekera
This is a highly technically proficient story that demonstrates substantial erudition and lexicological mastery. The author interweaves high and low brow, literary and pop culture metaphors, historical and fictive narratives. Fourth wall breaks are frequent, the author and editor are referenced by name, and the text discusses itself. Arguably there aren't any characters other than the author, though there are people discussed, both historical and contemporary.
Surely many literary sorts would greatly enjoy this for nothing more than its style.
Blah

The Art Crowd - Samit Basu
In totalitarian India, there aren't any problems. No one suggests otherwise. Joey's job is to maximize the profit generated by influencers, but she's been assigned to a performance artist and doesn't understand what to do with her.
Ok

Immortal Is the Heart - Cassandra Khaw
Gerard, a 46 year old transman, travels across the remnants of the United States, where the few remaining survivors eke out a meager existence. The organization he belongs to commemorates the anonymous dead.
I have two personal problems with the story. It's overly sentimental to the point of almost being painful, Gerard says as much, and Khaw should've had better ways of delivering exposition. "Explain it to me like I'm five", for example, didn't seem appropriate to the context.
Meh

Unauthorized (Or, the Liberated Collectors Commune) - Ganzeer
This is a satire that uses its implausibility for rhetorical effect.
The Yellowstone supervolcano erupted and now roughly 200 million Americans are dead or dying. All raw materials must service capitalism, especially creative works, so androids are sent to collect all art to be reduced to raw materials for commercial purpose. The creators are killed if they're an impediment. The southern border wall is monitored by drones who kill on sight. Americans believe socialized healthcare to be worse than an apocalypse, so no one escapes to Canada. All Americans must suffer in pursuit of the almighty yuan.
I continue to dislike this sort of heavy-handed story that values making an ideological point over anything else, including logic and being entertaining. It's not much better than agitprop.
Blah

Halfway to Hope - Lavanya Lakshminarayan
Safia designs VR sims for bedridden wealthy and elderly patients in a hospital. The one person she wants to design for is Amulya, her lover and would-be wife, but Amulya's homophobic traditionalist family gets in the way. They blame Safia for corrupting her, which resulted in her being at that protest when it was bombed.
The story is too much of an easy and convenient caricature that doesn't provide any emotional complexity. It's not really even that much about the usage of VR sims for hospitalized patients. I'm not quite sure what it's overall purpose is. Is it doomed yuri? There are specific references that suggest that, but maybe not. I dislike tragic love stories even more than reductivity.
Blah

AI Concerns Are Not ‘Too Sci-Fi’ - Archita Mittra
A very good and evenhanded interview with Neil Clarke that discusses AI, particularly in relation to writing and publishing. My only complaint is that the interview is from July 2023 and was published in October 2024, which isn't ideal for timely matters. Even so, it's good to have it here.

No Future but Infinity Itself - Sloane Leong
A man works upon a living sculpture that guards against humanity's self-destruction. The wife works upon the man. This is about the capacity of change and what best induces it in another.
Ok

Immortal Beauty - Bruce Sterling
In the 25th century, what remains of humanity, not even the greatest city has a million people, are satisfied with how life was more than a thousand years ago. Technology is for the oracles they worship, the computers of heaven. When they die, their souls are uploaded into the afterlife. Death is not the end, as the ancestors can be contacted through the oracles.
Baltasar is the Spanish ambassador to France, a position of high status in the aesthetocracy. In Spain and France, aesthetics determine everything. Commerce is taboo and only the most wicked of foreigners deal in the evil that is money.
Highly Enjoyable

Autumn’s Red Bird - Aliette de Bodard
This is part of the Xuya universe.
The Pine's Amber and Autumn's Red Bird are mindships, organic intelligences embodied as spaceships. They're persons who interact with both digital avatars and artificial bodies. These two women are married to each other, but it's a doomed relationship as Red Bird is trapped in the event horizon of a black hole and every message could be her last. This story is almost entirely about grief, both Amber's and the collective people who suffered from the war crime of causing a star to supernova.
Bodard does interesting work in both fantasy and science fiction, but I usually don't enjoy what she writes. Too bad for me.
Meh

Encore - Wole Talabi
Blombos, twin artificial intelligences that are millions of years old, are embodied in a ellipsoid ship with its longest semiaxis being roughly 2,500 miles. Their core objective is the creation of art. When an unknown patron promises the fulfillment of their core objective, they become curious and excited.
I'll definitely have to read the first story, Debut, and read much more from this author.
Highly Enjoyable

The Quietude - Lavie Tidhar
There's something out there beyond the solar system. It's more than the Other and its Conversation. What is The Quietude? What is it about the terrorartist bopper artifacts that draws them together?
This is clearly related to a famous and celebrated SFF story, though to say which would be too much of a spoiler. Unfortunately, it's not one that I enjoyed due to its allegories, and I didn't enjoy this either. Tidhar is yet another author that does interesting work that I don't tend to appreciate.
Meh

[Shyan · Rating 5 out of 5]

You should read The Limner Rings His Hands by Vajra Chandrasekera.

This story is a monster; that is to say, this story is written by a monster.

It's a fascinating part-essay part-fable that meshes dense, intellectual prose with the loosely symbolic reflection that acts as a deep mediation on the nature of art and influence, with wicked metal lines jutting out the page.

The future is the hands of the past around our neck.

The quotes here just comprise one speck of one dimension of the intriguingly layered narrative and commentary that emerges from this story.

Art has no value in use, only in exchange. Art is a token entirely fungible—that is to say, reducible in its entirety to money, soft and tumble-dried. These are lies, yes, but this is the very cat's cradle of lies into which we are born and out of which we die, and if the truth were derived from consensus like sanity, then lies would be true.

Just read it.

While you're there, check out Sloane Leong's No Future but Infinity Itself.

So, the king made of the prince a weapon, feeding him every poisonous thing the world had to offer until the prince became the undeniable weapon his father so craved.

A story that approaches art from angles simultaneously familiar and alien, and in doing so provides insight into its nature, limits, distortions, and purpose.

“It needs to give everything at once. A bouquet of pain. After, whatever suffering they may want to inflict on another, they will know its true fruit.”

[Dan Trefethen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This themed anthology tends to skew heavily towards the impact that AI, or what could conceivably called AI, will have on art. The focus is twofold: What effect will the technology have on the humans who produce or consume art, and will machine intelligences make art in the absence of humans, and if so, what kind? Both are interesting questions, and I sometimes wonder in these themed anthologies if the authors read the other contributions afterwards and said “huh, I never thought of it that way.”

Some of the hot new authors have stories here, including Wole Talabi and Samit Basu. Many of the authors approach the topic from a non-Western view, which is refreshing.

[Peter Hollo · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent entry into MIT Press's science fiction anthology series. Indrapramit Das collects some of the most interesting science fiction writers of today, especially a number from South Asian countries.
Vajra Chandrasekera, one of my favourite recent authors, suffers a little bit from too-clever meta-authoring in his story, but it was still highly thought-provoking.
Samit Basu revisits Joey from his The City Inside - I loved it.
Lavanya Lakshminarayan, another exciting new talent, brings a beautiful story about memory and love.
Wole Talabi, who revels in writing in wildly different genres, gives us a far future tale of posthuman intelligences and considers whether understanding art is key to understanding humanity.
And Lavie Tidhar visits his Continuity with its robotniks, posthuman Others, far-away wars and the asteroid pidgin poetry of the entity known as Basho. Proving why Lavie is my favourite author.

[Paul Morisset · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ratings:

'Encore' by Wole Talabi - 4 stars.
‘Autumn’s Red Bird’ by Aliette de Bodard - 3 stars.
‘Immortal Beauty’ by Bruce Sterling - 2 stars.
‘The Limner Wrings His Hands’ by Vajra Chandrasekera - 1 star.

[Brian Clegg · Rating 4 out of 5]

There have been several Twelve Tomorrows collections from MIT Press since the original in 2018 - stories that are supposed to make the reader think about the impact of future technology. This latest addition focuses on 'science fiction exploring the future of art' - which presented a distinct danger of pretentiousness taken to the extreme. Thankfully, editor Indrapamit Das has been able to avoid this trap. Like all such collections, there is a mix of good, bad and indifferent - but on the whole the balance is positive.

Even a story like the opener The Limner Wrings His Hands by Vajra Chandrasekera - which scores fairly high on the pretentiousness stakes, and is far too clever clever somewhat in the manner of David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest - is surprisingly readable if you force yourself to focus hard on the word salad (though it is fantasy rather than SF).

To pick out two favourites, The Art Crowd by Samit Basu was a significantly more readable piece, well structured and with a very solid link to the future of art. And the closing piece The Quietude by Lavie Tidhar really engages with rich environment that could easily be expanded to make a likeable novel.

The only big name here besides Tidhar, Bruce Sterling, contributed Immortal Beauty, which felt a little called in, if quirky. Despite its deliberately stilted style, though, it does draws the reader in - but it felt rather strange that this and practically every story had a post-apocalyptic setting - the brief was just SF exploring the future of art - perhaps we should blame the editor for not providing more diversity of possible futures.

Occasionally a lack of writing experience came through in some tortured metaphors: we are told in one story that someone had ‘a gaze that said she wanted a precise taxonomy of his experiences’ - I’m not convinced any gaze ever said that. In another we are told that antiseptic corridors were like 'a cold mist' - I really don't think they were. But overall this is an interesting collection, attempting something different with a degree of success.

[Léonie Galaxie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Deep Dream opens with Vajra Chandrasekera's "The Limner Wrings His Hands," a story that immediately establishes the anthology's ambitious scope. Chandrasekera delivers boundary-pushing fiction that questions who art serves and whose perspectives it privileges, wrapped in language that delights in its own cleverness while making deadly serious points about cultural power. "The purpose of art is to be the alarum that makes you open your eyes again, especially if your eyes were already open"—a line that could serve as the collection's manifesto.

Editor Indrapramit Das demonstrates sharp curatorial instincts in both selection and sequencing. The anthology moves from Chandrasekera's meta-fictional complexity to Samit Basu's more grounded vision of future creative economies, where artist collectives and social media management have evolved into recognizable yet transformed careers. Das balances familiar SF voices like Bruce Sterling with unexpected contributors like artist Ganzeer, creating productive tensions between different approaches to speculative creativity.

The collection's structure mirrors its theme, beginning with Earth-bound concerns before expanding toward cosmic possibilities. Aliette de Bodard's "Autumn's Red Bird" exemplifies this progression, connecting artistic expression to the profound grief of a sentient spaceship—a story that transforms space opera conventions into something unexpectedly intimate. Lavie Tidhar's closing piece, "The Quietude," brings the anthology full circle with playful philosophical inquiry into art's fundamental nature and its power to forge unlikely connections.

Deep Dream succeeds because it treats art not as decoration for speculative scenarios, but as essential to how consciousness navigates change. These stories suggest that in any future worth inhabiting, creativity remains central to what makes us human—or posthuman, or alien, or whatever we might become.

[Venneh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Honestly, big ups for Indrapamit Das for getting a collection of goddamn amazing authors, throwing in an interview with Neil Clarke about the mess that AI has made of their slush pile, and also using the chapter starting art pieces as a formal commission by a digital artist that unfolds across each of the entries. Highly recommended anthology.

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

A compilation of mostly interesting, occasionally challenging stories that revolve around the idea of art (like it says right there on the cover). Quite enjoyable, and some left me with a lot to think about and unpack, while others were more fun.

[E.D.E. Bell · Rating 5 out of 5]

A thoughtful collection of thought-provoking stories by accomplished voices, each taking turns I did not expect. Recommended.