As I seem to be having a “recommend stuff elsewhere” kind of day here at Futurismic, here’s another suggestion for you. In between its non-fiction material (focussed, as its name might suggest, on building future communities based on sharing and mutual cooperation) Shareable.net is running science fiction stories from some big names to illustrate its chosen topics. The latest offering, “The Exterminator’s Want-Ad”, is from none other than Bruce Sterling – a darkly humorous first-person missive from an incarcerated former Beltway lobbyist and climate change denial huckster, locked up and “realigned” by the networked socialists of a post-climate-collapse near-future.

I could hear some of you make a sharp intake of political breath there, so let me reassure you that although Sterling evidently (and vocally) sides with progressive “bright green” sociopolitics, the socialist society he depicts is no naive utopia; if you’ve read his recent novel The Caryatids, you’ll know he’s more than able to draw every faction of the political future with all its warts and scars and human flaws fully to the front. I’m even tempted to label both works as non-partisan satires… but hey, go read it and make your own mind up.

And while you’re over there, Shareable has lots of other sf-nal content, such as interviews with Kim Stanley Robinson and Paolo Bacigalupi; go take a look around.

[ It also looks like they need to get a better comment spam plugin… ]