The Future was inspired by discussions on the Net about post-scarcity societies. The idea was that somehow, we’d all be able to do everything we want and everyone would be happy and no-one would ever have to say ‘no’ to anyone because there’d be no scarcity and unicorns would fart rainbows and rats would lie down with cats or something.

It doesn’t work. It can’t work. If Skarin wants to turn the Andromeda Galaxy into a super-computer and you want it for a tourist destination, there’s no way to compromise. Any society which believes it is post-scarcity has either discovered magic that allows it to make things out of nothing, or is lacking imagination.

They’ll be back. This story universe began only as the setting for another short story, Final Contact, but it’s proven interesting enough that I’m going to visit it plenty of times in the future.