An anthology of near future science fiction from VICE’s acclaimed, innovative digital speculative story destination, Terraform―in print for the first time.
Terraform hones the predictive capacity of science fiction and seeks new, vivid, and visceral ways to depict the future we’re hurtling toward, translating the decay and anxiety that surround us into something else, something unexpected, something that burns like a beacon and upends the conventional ideas of where we’ll end up next.
Section by section―Watch/Worlds/Burn―the book takes on surveillance, artificial intelligence, and climate collapse. With a potent roster of established names and rising talents―from Bruce Sterling, Ellen Ullman, Cory Doctorow, Jeff VanderMeer, and Omar El Akkad, to E. Lily Yu, Elvia Wilk, Fernando Flores, Tochi Onyebuchi, and Gus Moreno―it confronts the issues that orbit our everyday existence, and takes them to unsettling dimensions.
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“Someday a future intelligence will find this, washing up on shore or archived on a server farm deep underground or drifting as ones and zeros through space, and they’ll have a document of who we were, who we are, and who we imagined we might be. This anthology is filled with work from brilliant writers, new and familiar, and out of their anxieties come nightmares and dreams, an assortment of stories that is equal parts terrifying and entertaining.”
— Charles Yu, National Book Award–winning author
“This is the kind of book we need now, a collection of stories bursting with visions, ideas, nightmares, and utopian plans, all in the aid of creating cognitive maps for navigating the very difficult future that is coming. When dread and joy combine, what is that? Excitement? Read this and see what you think.”
— Kim Stanley Robinson, Hugo and Nebula Award–winning author“Read these short, biting, vibrant stories for their wit, inventiveness, and verve.”
— Kirkus Reviews (starred review)“This showcase of today’s leading imaginations offers enough vivid cautionary tales to make even the most optimistic tech utopian hesitate…While the tone throughout tends toward the bleak and searing, hope shines through.”
— Publishers Weekly“Terraform: Watch/Worlds/Burn is through and through Luddite science fiction: critical, not cynical; perceptive, not preachy; imaginative, not derivative; but above all else, rooted in the idea that the world we’ve made is a world we can unmake.”
— Edward Ongweso Jr., cohost of This Machine Kills“Be careful. These stories may burn you with their scalding visions of other worlds and alternate tomorrows.”
— Annalee Newitz, author of Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban AgeBe the first to write a review about this audiobook!
Brian Merchant is the senior editor of Motherboard, VICE’s science and technology outlet and the founder–editor of Terraform, its online fiction outlet. His work has appeared in the Guardian, Slate, Vice Magazine, Salon, Fast Company, Discovery, Good, Paste, Grist, and beyond. His work frequently appears on the front pages of Reddit, Digg, and Slashdot.
Claire L. Evans is a writer and musician. She is a founding editor of Terraform, the former futures editor of Motherboard, and a contributor to the Guardian, WIRED, and Aeon. She is the author of Broad Band and co-editor of Terraform. Evans is an advisor to design students at Art Center College of Design and a member of the cyberfeminist collective Deep Lab. She lives in Los Angeles.
Xe Sands has more than a decade of experience bringing stories to life through narration, performance, and visual art, including recordings of the Nightwalkers series from Jaquelyn Frank. She has received several honors, including AudioFile Earphones Awards and a coveted Audie Award, and she was named Favorite Debut Romance Narrator of 2011 in the Romance Audiobooks poll.
Bahni Turpin, winner of numerous AudioFile Earphones Awards and several prestigious Audie Awards for her narrations, was named a “Golden Voice” by AudioFile magazine in 2019. Publishers Weekly magazine named her Narrator of the Year for 2016. She is an ensemble member of the Cornerstone Theater Company in Los Angeles. She has guest starred in many television series, including NYPD Blue, Law & Order, Six Feet Under, Cold Case, What about Brian, and The Comeback. Film credits include Brokedown Palace, Crossroads, and Daughters of the Dust. She is also a member of the recording cast of The Help, which won numerous awards.
Cary Hite has performed in several theaters across the country as a cast member in the longest-running African American play in history, The Diary of Black Men. He also appeared in Edward II, Fences, Macbeth, Good Boys, Side Effects May Vary, and the indie feature The City Is Mine. He has voiced several projects for AudibleKids, including Souls Look Back in Wonder, From Slave Ship to Freedom Road, and Papa, Do You Love Me?
Feodor Chin, an AudioFile Earphones Award–winning narrator, is an actor classically trained at the American Conservatory Theater and UCLA. His acting career includes numerous credits in film, television, theater, and voice-over.
Hillary Huber, a Los Angeles–based voice talent with hundreds of commercials and promos under her belt, was bitten by the audiobook bug in 2005. She now records books on a regular basis and has been nominated for several Audie Awards and won numerous Earphones Awards.
Janina Edwards, an Earphones Award–winning narrator, is a native of Chicago and a graduate of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts acting program. Her 2016 performance of Voice of Freedom was a finalist for the Audie Award.
Marisa Calin is an actress, novelist, and multiple Earphones Award–winning narrator born in England and educated in New York at the American Academy of the Dramatic Arts. An artist with a flair for everything literary, she has written a young adult novel, You & Me, which received a starred review from Kirkus Reviews.
Mark Bramhall has won the prestigious Audie Award for best narration, more than thirty AudioFile Earphones Awards, and has repeatedly been named by AudioFile magazine and Publishers Weekly among their “Best Voices of the Year.” He is also an award-winning actor whose acting credits include off-Broadway, regional, and many Los Angeles venues as well as television, animation, and feature films. He has taught and directed at the American Academy of Dramatic Art.
Stefan Rudnicki first became involved with audiobooks in 1994. Now a Grammy-winning audiobook producer, he has worked on more than five thousand audiobooks as a narrator, writer, producer, or director. He has narrated more than nine hundred audiobooks. A recipient of multiple AudioFile Earphones Awards, he was presented the coveted Audie Award for solo narration in 2005, 2007, and 2014, and was named one of AudioFile’s Golden Voices in 2012.
Tim Campbell, winner of AudioFile Earphones Awards, is a narrator and actor based in Los Angeles, California. He studied at the University of California and earned a BA in music and theater and a certification from the prestigious Great Books program at Pepperdine University, where he graduated magna cum laude. He is also a classically trained singer and performs regularly with the Los Angeles Master Chorale and Los Angeles Opera Chorus, as well as on studio soundtracks for film and television.
Chris Henry Coffey is a film and television actor known for his role in David Schwimmer’s film Trust. He has also had roles on Broadway, including the play Bronx Bombers. A graduate of the Yale School of Drama, he divides his time between New York and Los Angeles.
Graham Halstead, an Earphones Award and Audie Award–winning narrator, is a professionally trained actor and voice artist. As an actor, he has worked internationally in Edinburgh and London, as well as at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. His youthful, easy-flowing voice can be heard on television and radio voicing spots for Airborne and Allegra.
Eunice Wong is a classically trained actor who works extensively in professional theaters across the United States and in New York City, as well as having appeared on HBO, NBC, ABC, Comedy Central, and in various independent films. Eunice is a graduate of the Juilliard School Drama Division Actor Training Program and has also studied piano and singing at the Royal Conservatory of Music of Toronto. A first-generation Chinese Canadian, born in Toronto to Eric and Eleanor Wong, who immigrated to Canada from Hong Kong, Eunice grew up with her brother Eugene in Toronto and thanks her family for their constant love and support.
Kyla Garcia is an AudioFile Earphones Award–winning narrator. Born and raised in Hoboken, New Jersey, she discovered acting at the age of eight when she played Lady Macbeth in a children’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s tragedy. She made her off-Broadway debut at fifteen when she played Dorothy in Oz: A Twisted Musical. Eleven years after she discovered her passion for acting, she would go on to play Lady Macbeth once again in London at the Globe Theatre, where she studied Shakespeare during her third year at Mason Gross School of the Arts. She received her BFA in acting from Rutgers University.
Chelsea Stephens is an experienced voice actor with a talent for mystery, sci-fi, and YA novels. She won an AudioFile Earphones Award for her narration of Pale Horse, Pale Rider by Katherine Anne Porter. She has a longtime love and appreciation for the performing arts, with experience in onstage acting, singing, and voice-over. Her love for reading books and the pursuit of the story led her to narration. She enjoys unfolding characters and bringing listeners into new worlds.
Meghan Kelly is an experienced narrator, actress, and musician who spent ten years working as a franchised talent agent before deciding to pursue her own performance aspirations. Since then, she has had the great pleasure of bringing a wide variety of characters to life.