A young protagonist is forced to follow strict prompts embedded deep in her brain via an implant. The protagonist’s parents installed the brain implant in the hopes of guiding their child to live a “good” life. But when the family immigrates to a place whose customs and language diverge from their own, the protagonist is torn between internal and external prompts—and discovers how quickly they can both become a trap.
Familial and cultural prompts shape children’s experiences of relationships and themselves—especially among children in diaspora. How do those prompts change over time?
Response
What happens when you hold someone’s gaze—really hold it? An artist and an inventor try to recreate that experience in Sofia Samatar’s Future Tense Fiction story. Absorbed in detail and technicalities, they neglect a more fundamental question: Will they be ready to see what their technology reflects back to them?
How does emotion travel through our eyes? In his response to Sofia Samatar’s story, video game designer Will Hellwarth shares his quest to create a narrative world that responds to a player’s blink.
Response
Professor, medievalist, and writer Erin K. Wagner discusses “The Middle,” her August 2025 short story for Future Tense Fiction.
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 […]
