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The author provides a glimpse into the not-so-distant future of the year 2040 in this assembled collection of short stories, imagining how things will change in the same amount of time since the introduction of the portable tablet. The people, places, and corporate overload are the same, but the degradation of individual rights and the decay of solemnity in politics are on the same downward trajectory. Hollywood has enough power to put a hit on anyone to threaten a new show's ratings. The latest scam isn't insurance fraud or supplements but a truth-telling brain implant. An elderly couple is divided by a test program offering a longer life with better quality. Brands, technology, and celebrities change, but human needs remain the same. Just how much can change in fifteen years, and what will stubbornly carry on as it was?
The world presented in these short stories is not that different from the current climate, which is appropriate both for its commentary and for an amount of time that feels a lot longer than, say, the adoption of the tablet computer to now. The stories themselves walk that dangerous and delicate line of being clearly satirical without being so absurd as to feel unrealistic; in fact, a key point of the narrative commentary is that these outcomes are already just inches away from becoming real if nothing is done. While the figures and arguments are often politically or economically driven, there is no real black-and-white morality here, other than the efforts of an individual fighting an institutional deck stacked by those in power across public and private sectors. Humorous, irreverent, chilling, and sobering, this volume of a dozen stories is equal parts societal warning, comedy sketch, and political cartoon in a short story format.