Dystopian Fiction, Dystopian Life

A NEW SHORT STORY ABOUT A.I.

Dystopian fiction has been around a long time– at least since Mary Shelley’s still timely 1818 novel Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus. The difference between her world and ours is that we now find ourselves living in a full-on dystopia, in which we’re losing the distinction between what’s real and not-real, human and not-human. It’s likely to become worse, as tech moguls and venture capitalists are investing hundreds of billions of dollars in AI companies and AI devices– ever more dreamed-up money-grab gimmicks to separate the gullible from their bucks. After all, the AI wave needs to be monetized. Someone needs to pay for it. That targeted someone being YOU. Us. All of us.

ON THAT happy note we present a new short story about one such company and consumer: “Ghost In the Machine” by Andie Weber. It’s fiction. Sure it is.

We hope you like it!

C. Ryan: Yeah, now I’m speaking your language. And AfterLife is the hottest new word in profits. This isn’t just your average chatbot, it’s bigger, better, and way more lucrative—and with the projections our finance department has put together, I can assure you this money-making snowball isn’t going to stop rolling anytime soon.

More 2025 Fiction

Pop Lit Fiction

What should 2025 fiction– of the here and now– look like?

COULD it capture today’s chaotically volatile up-and-down economy and markets? The “let’s make a buck” societal mindset? The culmination of a tech wave of ambitious innovators and hustlers eager to make fortunes? Who are these guys? Have any writers captured the personality and/or mystery of them?

Well, yes– in our new feature short story, “Crypto” by Jonathan Stone, one of the most intelligent short story writers around.

NOT ONLY is it a glimpse of a unique moment of history– this moment– it’s an excellent story, about the pursuit of a kind of excellence. We’re sure you’ll agree when you read it!

Nine figures doesn’t happen every day, but for Mark, its pathway is utterly unsurprising – money that comes from money. Ahmet’s eight figures is inherently far stranger – produced from nothing but an idea, walked into the right receptive investor at the right market moment. When it came time to transfer proceeds – required distributions per the fund charter, and then unloading into cash equivalents when they all dumped their shares – Mark had overseen the allocation to Ahmet’s brokerage account. A deposit requiring phone calls and letters with signatories. Eight figures in a fell swoop. The American dream, on steroids. Or better yet, hallucinogens.

Literature As News

Pop Lit Fiction

LET’S GET RELEVANT!

“Literature is news that stays news.”
-Ezra Pound

Except writers today aren’t even trying to get the first part right. To make fiction and poetry a vibrant part of today’s debates. IF literature is to survive and thrive in this time of new technologies, it needs to become part of the cultural conversation. Literature carries into this battle unique assets: its ability to not only describe everything happening, supplemented by the reader’s own experiences and memories– without the expense and apparatus of television and movies– but also to move inside the heads of people, to understand them and to show what they’re feeling and thinking. Because writing consists of condensed information– still the quickest, most efficient and least expensive way of communicating knowledge (letters and words a sophisticated data network)– it can address current issues and events quickly. To compete in this hyper-noisy age it needs to address the world quickly, in compelling, insightful and knowledgeable ways. Which we attempt to do in our new feature story, “The Advisor” by New Pop Lit editor Karl Wenclas. We hope you read it.

Allison noted the room’s evident props. Paintings of several past presidents, prominently displayed. The current president had added his own pagan touches– garish gold statuary. In-your-face exhibits of his well-known lack of taste. Allison realized that for the Advisor, the President was himself a prop. Allison by now knew the Advisor’s worldview– he admired the orange man, but only as a historical relic. As if P.T. Barnum or Colonel Tom Parker were in the room. A cutting-edge businessman for his time– master salesman– but his time had passed.

ALSO: Speaking of fiction, we have a flash fiction piece– about an overturned salt truck and other things– by the one-and-only M.C. Schmidt now up at our Fast Pop Lit site. The title: “Mandala.” How is that topical, you ask? Well, here in Michigan it snowed yesterday. Talk about good timing!

The Three-Dimensional World

Pop Lit Fiction

MULTIPLE VIEWPOINT FICTION

TODAY we offer a multiple viewpoint story, “The Museum of Jeremy’s Summer” by Andrea Donderi. Why do we like multiple viewpoints? Because it’s a way to present a more rounded, three-dimensional view of reality. We’re all raised in two-dimensional corridors where everything is a linear progression. Grades, schools, hierarchies. Stepping ever onward, farther, faster, on treadmills like hamsters. Like our mad technocratic society. “Progress.” Culminating in humanoid robots and AI devices doing our thinking for us. The writer’s task is to pause for a moment to address where we’re at, describing the people and world around us. Which Andrea well does.

ABOUT our new story: It’s subtle, the kind of artistic work which sneaks up on you, gradually immersing you into the narrative, its setting and characters, then suddenly. . . Impact! We know you’ll like it.

There’s something about how Christabel drives, slow, crouching over the wheel, her foot probably hovering on top of the brake —such a contrast with her crisp city linen clothes and sleek dark hair and that English voice of hers. And the way she and Jeremy keep glancing over at each other, just to check that everything’s okay. What kind of guy stays away all summer from a woman like Christabel and a kid like Jeremy? An English guy, evidently. Name of Adrian.

ON OTHER FRONTS

WE’RE SERIOUS about getting our Open Mic feature going again. See our latest post at it– “Life Cycle” by Kyle Van Horn— one more of the many new literary talents out there.

On American Dreams

Pop Lit Fiction

MOST AMERICANS still believe in the Dream, or want to believe in it. Often difficult to, given rising costs, a widening wealth gap, and of course contentious politics. Amid it all, the American Dream remains. People grasp for any semblance of it– even illusory caricatures of the Dream like crypto coins and other gimmicks.

Where we live, downriver from Detroit, we see and hear expressions of the American Dream. Two young fast food workers opening their own hamburger stand, for instance. Or the many immigrants– those most put-upon persons at the moment– mostly from Mexico and the Mideast running sixteen-hour food trucks on street corners as prelude, they hope, to the real thing. In so doing, mimicking what immigrants to America have done over the decades (a great novel about this: City for Conquest by Aben Kandel, written in 1936) while adding value and variety to beaten-down neighborhoods. America was once a beacon, a welcome mat for ambitious hustlers of every stripe. Much of what we know today as America, economically and culturally, was due to them. We here in our little pop-lit world believe America can still be that beacon– and not open solely to those who can pay a five-million dollar “gold card” fee!

WHICH BRINGS US to our new feature short story, “Fame and Fortune” by Alan Swyer, about two cousins pursuing their own ambitious dream in California, the Golden State. (Which has itself been put upon, by nature, of late.) It’s kind of a Cinderella story, capturing those quintessentially American qualities of ambition, creativity and opportunity. Needed reading.

We hope you enjoy it!

By the time he was alone in Steve’s guest room, Jeff’s head was spinning. Growing up, he’d always revered his older cousin, who had long served as a role model. It was due to Steve that Jeff became passionate about the Red Sox and Celtics. And, though not gifted athletically, he had worked hard enough to overlap with his older cousin for a year on their high school baseball team. Then, after following Steve’s path through Brown and B.U. Med School, Jeff chose to specialize in pediatrics once Steve suggested that they eventually form a practice together.

Yet suddenly he couldn’t help but wonder what in the world he’d gotten himself into.

January 2025 Fiction

Pop Lit Fiction

THE YEAR 2025 has begun with a bang– with assaults of nature both hot and cold, California windstorms propelling unprecedented fires in the land of tech moguls and gross inequalities, while the East Coast and Midwest endure waves of snow and frigid temperatures. As if the universe-or-God has said, “Enough!” to mankind’s wars, all-encompassing technological systems, and ever-growing insanity.

AMID THE MADNESS, we at New Pop Lit struggle on with efforts to introduce sane, human-designed literary art into the mix– which at the same time depicts, relevantly and truthfully, the world we live in. Along with reminders of our common humanity.

Which talented writer Shelby Raebeck does ably– more than ably– in our new featured story, “The Ghost of Camp Hero,” using multiple-viewpoint technique to give different perspectives on three young people trying to find themselves– and to find ways to communicate their needs, goals, confusions and frustrations. Well worth reading.

Next afternoon after school, not bothering to wait for Lance, I biked into the village of Montauk and took the town bus to East Hampton, walking the rest of the way to Freetown. I turned into the driveway and found Lance sitting on the porch, looking up at me like I was a total stranger. Like if I take you in to be with my sister fine, cause I took you, but on your own you better not even walk up my driveway.

(Note: The NEw POp LIt human-generated novella The Loud Boys is now available in a paperback version, here.)

Christmas 2024: Rich and Poor

Pop Lit Fiction

OUR CHRISTMAS MESSAGE

WHILE many of us enjoy Christmas with family and friends this year, let’s remember that others live in more difficult circumstances, and won’t have any kind of Christmas at all. Given the drastic increase in the cost of living the past few years– rents, food, electricity, gasoline, health care– many are having a hard time not ending up in the streets. Increasingly of course, many Americans– and those in other countries– are on the streets. Not to mention the ever-widening wealth gap, as plutocratic moguls become ever wealthier– potentially to increase even more in 2025, accompanied by a shredded safety net. Not to mention the unspeakable brutalities of our era’s wars, with tech guys at companies like Palantir and Anduril devising ever-more ways to kill and maim people. (Civilized? We call this time we live in civilized?)

AS REMINDER that many poor people are out there, even today, we present this Christmas a classic short story by Fyodor Dostoevsky, “The Heavenly Christmas Tree.”

What to make of Dostoevsky? An out-of-date relic from another time period? Or a timeless artistic genius?

Whichever, we invite you to read his story.

He thought that this was still his mother, but no, it was not she. Who it was calling him, he could not see, but someone bent over and embraced him in the darkness; and he stretched out his hands to him, and . . . and all at once– oh, what a bright light! Oh, what a Christmas tree!

Merry Christmas!

-Karl and Kathleen

Human Potential

Pop Lit Fiction

OUR SOCIETY is designed to place all of us into narrow categories based on this standardized two-dimensional test or that one, gauging our ability to fit into a technocratic economic system. But can they possibly measure all human abilities? IQ tests and others like it have their uses, but are only one way of quantifying human potential. There are many ways of perceiving and interacting with the world, some which go beyond the easily measured or comprehended.

These thoughts provoked by our brand-new feature short story, “The Meteorologist” by Olaf Kroneman— about an autistic young woman whose abilities run outside the norm. A story in line with our goal to present more work which emphasizes our humanity– in this dawning age of the artificial; of robots and AI. Also, this terrific story is simply a great way to end our year of new featured fiction and poetry. (Though we may have a quick classic surprise come Christmas Eve!)

“Mr. Andrew is going to die,” Sarah said. Her voice was loud and piercing, almost a scream.

She became mute and returned to her mysterious parallel world, but it seemed like she could still hear everything we said. As her long-time family physician, I had grown accustomed to her living in a private world. She would interact with me when she needed something basic or when I attempted to drag her into my world.

Too Much Technology?

Pop Lit Fiction

2024 or 1984?

DO PEOPLE EVER CONSIDER that George Orwell’s novel 1984 was set forty years ago, that we live in a dystopia but it’s more benign albeit subtle and insidious than Orwell’s vision, creeping incrementally but steadily into every minute aspect of our lives? We’re proverbial frogs in a pot of water only the water is 95% boiled and no one’s noticed. Thoughts provoked by our new feature story, “What Does It Cost to Be Civil?” by Tom Ray, about an ordinary couple in an ordinary community who just haven’t quite adapted, yet, to the changing conditions of the world we live in now. Anyone who was bombarded during the recent election campaign by texts and phone messages from hosts of strange numbers will definitely get it. Enjoy!

“Who are you?”

“You know who I am Albert. When you answer a call from me you become argumentative sometimes. Other times, when you’re on your laptop and have YouTube open, you play ’25 or 6 to 4’ by Chicago for me. That’s funny. Why that song, I wonder? And you know about spoofing, which you’ve explained to people who’ve called your number.”

He exhaled. “I thought you were a computer. If somebody answers, you transfer the call to a real person.”

“Oh, I am a computer, but I’m a person, too.”

Late Fall Fiction

Pop Lit Fiction

November! The last days of autumn. A time of falling leaves and dropping temperatures– at least where we’re at. Moments of shortening daylight, cooling breezes, and wistfulness– accompanied by the sudden pulling out of closets sweaters, hats, scarves– and overcoats. Which brings us to our new feature short story, “An Overcoat” by Tony Covatta. About a lawsuit over a missing coat, with glimpses of restaurants, businesses, attorneys, and courts– also a case which must be wrapped up as quickly as possible.

Why is that? You’ll have to read the story to find out!

Here was a chance for astute Gino not only to repair relations with favored client and disgruntled “chief” but also to display his blossoming courtroom chops. Lawyers who try cases—litigators, in short—are a breed apart. They are the jet jockeys of the profession, just as surgeons of essential organs are in medicine. Success, even on a small case involving a missing overcoat, could advance Gino’s climb up the greasy poles of firm acceptance and professional renown.