Futureland: Nine Stories of an Imminent World

Mosley, Walter. Futureland: Nine Stories of an Imminent World. New York City: Aspect/Warner, 2001.

Collection described in Publisher's Weekly on line as "nine linked short stories set in a grim, cyberpunkish near-future," with the setting the primary link.[1] In the New York Times review, "Live From Dystopia," Nikki Dillon notes that "Beneath the high-tech gadgetry and noir atmosphere, the stories here are thoughtful explorations of race and identity."[2] There is, though, some high-tech gadgetry of interest in this charged context, including in the story "Little Brother," summarized in the Wikipedia entry for Futureland:

Frendon Blythe is a young activist, who must stand courtroom trial for the death of a policeman in Common Ground, where the defendant can afford neither an attorney nor a judge. He is thus tried and matches wits with a judicial automaton programmed with the minds of 10,000 legal experts, trying to win the sympathy of an AI jury of 10,000 digital consciousnesses.[3]

Cf. and contrast the trial scene in Vonnegut's Player Piano and similar scenes both straight and parodic in Halperin's The Truth Machine, and robot or computer judges as a motif on Futurama.[4][5][6][7][8]

Discussed in Sandy Rankin's "The (Not Yet) Utopian Dimension and the Collapse of Cyberpunk in Walter Mosley's Futureland: Nine Stories of an Imminent World, which see at link for the relevant stories "Whispers in the Dark," "En Masse," and "The Nig in Me" — and the short-form conclusion: "[...] Mosley's Futureland is not cyberpunk but an allegorical anti-cyberpunk parody [...]" (Rankin p. 326).

RDE, finishing, 28Dec21