The Purpose of Punishment
What does it mean for a punishment to truly fit a crime? A post-conviction attorney explores the limits of a criminal legal system built on retribution.
Response
Future Tense Fiction
Golden Rule
In an alternative legal system built on the concept of “an eye for an eye,” if you commit a crime, your punishment is that someday a network of state agents will perpetrate the same crime against you. These ministers, themselves survivors of violence, follow the principle of “commensurate severity.” When one such minister is assigned to a kidnapping case, she’s forced to determine what justice really looks like.
What Happens When a Groundbreaking Invention Falls Victim to Human Impulse?
Even inventions with the loftiest of goals can be commandeered for unscrupulous—or nefarious—ends. Where does that leave the inventors?
Response
The Pocket Box™
What happens when a technology moves from groundbreaking scientific discovery to mass consumer product? Gunnar Anderson’s story explores a mysterious new discovery that breaks the bounds of physics as we once understood them. But quickly, scientific awe morphs into commercial prospecting—with little regulation and horrifying consequences.
Video
Food, Labor, and the Future of “Luxury”: An Interview With Erin K. Wagner
Professor, medievalist, and writer Erin K. Wagner discusses “The Middle,” her August 2025 short story for Future Tense Fiction.
Extreme Environments and Human Nature: An Interview With Margrét Helgadóttir
In Margrét Helgadóttir’s “Tunnel Fever,” an isolated roadside bar buried in a vast network of tunnels on the floor of the Arctic Ocean is staffed by a claustrophobic waitress who dreams of life above the surface. When a pair of outlaws tries to rob the bar, its patrons and employees are forced to work together […]