Status Updates From Grave Predictions: Tales of...

Ellison’s “I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream” is a one of those classics I’ve never learned to like. It certainly doesn’t make the current push towards AI any more appealing, though.

I do love Kurt Vonnegut. This story (2 B R 0 2 B) lacks the humorous edge found in much of his longer works, but still manages to get the point across that, when faced with a complex problem, humans will usually find a way to pick a thoroughly lousy solution.

The more I read of his work, the more I think the inside of Philip K. Dick's head must've been a wild place to live. (Upon the Dull Earth, 1954)

Leave it to Arthur Clarke to add a bit of dark humor to the anthology. I always think of him as one of the “old men” of science fiction, but this story (No Morning After) from 1954 still feels fresh. I guess it would be AI being misused today instead of rockets, but a lot of us have felt like Bill.

Ray Bradbury really had a knack for highlighting the oppressive trends in society. Just a few pages here, but he's dialed the discomfort to 100. Although this was written in 1951, when social conformity was more openly enforced, it still resonates today.

W.E.B. DuBois's story from 1920 is an emotional roller coaster. It's appropriately cynical and bitter and heartbreaking. Sadly, much of what he depicts of race (and gender) relations seems all too familiar. I guess his bleak outlook was really just realism.

The first "story," by Eugene Mouton, from 1872, is frighteningly prescient. It's hyperbolic and scientifically inaccurate, but he had the basic ideas right. Imagine if people had listened to him and we had spent the last 150 years finding ways *not* to overheat the planet.