Fan-Lit: Amazon Prime "Forward" Short Story

Amazon's collection of Short Stories

I recently discovered that Amazon Prime has a collection of original short stories. The latest being a collaboration of several well-known authors in a book called Forward. Forward is a collection of six short stories that focus on addressing the question “What is it like to live through a technological breakthrough?” (Goodreads, 2019). Author of Wayward Pines and Dark Matter, Black Crouch, has curated these six stories from other authors such as Andy Weir (The Martian) and Veronica Roth (Divergent series) to name a few.

In an interview conducted by Goodreads.com, authors Crouch, Weir and Roth sat down to discuss the new project. Crouch states that he put out the prompt requiring the stories to focus on emerging technology. He was surprised to find how different each author's stories were. Crouch enjoys science fiction because he believes it to be “a reflection of where humanity is heading” (Goodreads, 2019).

Crouch's story titled “Summer Frost” takes place in a gamer's world similar to Ready Player One, where the main character encounters a non-player character(NPC) in the game that shows signs of being sentient (Goodreads, 2019). The game's creator then bring the NPC into the real world to see what will happen. Sounds like an interesting premise, not only about gamer culture but about the emergence of artificial intelligence.

Veronica Roth best known for her Divergent series of books, states that maybe her audience will not be as interested in her short story “Ark”, because it lacks a love story and focuses on the science (Goodreads, 2019). Her story revolves around a horticulturist preserving samples of Earth before an asteroid hits, until she decides to stay on Earth to see it end.

An interesting premise that might delve into how humanity deals with the ending of our world. Roth describes what she likes about science fiction is “the possibilities of what might happen, especially the consequences of things we’re doing now, whether positive or negative” (Goodreads, 2019). Roth also mentions some of her favorite science fiction shows are Battlestar Galactica, The Expanse and Star Trek: Discovery.

Author Andy Weir talks about how his story “Randomize” takes place in Las Vegas and explores how casinos deal with new technology that can reverse engineer their older machines. I love the idea of his story taking place in a Las Vegas casino. While the story does revolve around the use of new technology making it easier for customers to cheat, the real story is explored through the characters. What will people do if they think they can cheat and get away with it?

Weir notes that he is a man of hard-science, as evident by his books The Martian and Artemis. He states that his favorite science fiction authors are Arthur C. Clarke, Robert Heinlein and Issac Asimov. Each author was asked the question of if they could time-travel in the future how far would they go. Weir gave a great answer by rethinking the question by asking:

“pick any two dates in history that are at least a hundred years apart? Would you rather live in the further back one or the further forward one? You’re always going to pick the further forward one because it’s always better. I see no reason why that won’t continue. It’s not just technology; it’s social progress, everything. We just keep getting better” (Goodreads, 2019).

An interesting approach to the question and different from Crouch and Roth's answers, both seeming to think that the future might be doomed. While I have only read Weir short story, I am excited to read the others in this collection, particularly Veronica Roth's story. I have not read the Divergent books, so I am not familiar with her work and would like to see what she can do with a short story before I give her books a try. I'm curious to see how different each of the author's stories are from each other.

As a short story writer I love the idea of Amazon publishing these original stories on Prime for free, and the concept of Forward sounds amazing. Amazon also did the show Electric Dreams on Prime and that was an anthology series based on short stories by Philip K. Dick. I very much enjoyed the show, and perhaps they could do something similar with Forward. So, check this book out on Amazon Prime, let me know your thoughts, which story was your favorite and what do you think about Amazon publishing original short stories? Share your comments below or tweet at me @BelleArboreus on Twitter.

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