First published 2026
The year is 2080. Advanced aliens have eliminated climate change, nuclear weapons, and technological disasters. Humanity should be thriving, but people remain their own worst enemy. Scientists in one story uncover disturbing facts about grass that change everything. A baboon enhanced with human-level intelligence faces online harassment in another tale. A young man fights for his life against music that has literally captured his existence. These interconnected stories reveal a world that is neither dystopian nor utopian, just human. Sam A. Miller, who built a following of 4.8 million subscribers teaching history on YouTube, turns his attention to fiction and the future. His characters navigate a reality bent just enough to reflect our own absurdities back at us. The collection examines how humans create problems even when external threats disappear.
Genres: science-fiction, literary-fiction, anthologies, speculative-fiction, 21st-century, short-story-collection
Vibes: darkly-humorous, introspective, satirical, thought-provoking, unsettling
Tropes: absurdist-humor, interconnected-narratives, speculative-world-building
Setting: Earth
Period: 2080
336 pages · Paperback · Penguin Books
Content warnings: mental-illness