Eugenics experiments have failed to curb the city’s dense population, which drowns in perpetual shadows cast by a layer of giant towers scraping the stratosphere miles above.
Further below an ancient and mysterious world crumbles…
STRATA is a book about the future, made for the future. Directed and illustrated by Tommy Lee Edwards, with music and sound design by I Speak Machine, it comprises science fiction and essays by eight stellar writers.
Each story is a portal that will take you deeper into STRATA; each essay will reveal another layer of science that underpins the world.
Stories and Essays
Law Enforcement
Misha Glenny
What does law enforcement look like in the age of automation and a widening divide between rich and poor? Policing will become as much about managing data as physical presence and brute force.
Greybox
James Smythe
Charlie doesn’t know what goes on in Jimmy’s head, she just looks after him. Jimmy is trapped inside ‘Greybox’, a cruel and unusual form of imprisonment. It’s part of her own criminal sentence, to look after her partner in his vegetative state, but Charlie is getting desperate.
Synthetic Neurobiology
Lewis Dartnell
We already use drugs to enhance our neurobiology, like caffeine and Adderall, but these drugs can only get more sophisticated as research and developments continue to be made in this lucrative field.
A Hush Descends
Laurie Penny
Rosie is worried. Supplies of Hush, the drug she relies on to get through the day, are drying out. Scraping a living on a lower level, she needs to find a fix soon, or else her mysterious friend will start to appear again.
Food production
Paul McMahon
What does the future hold for food production in a world that is over populated and over-farmed? How will we grow enough food and combat climate change? Paul looks at some technological and social changes that might take place.
A Handful of Rubies
EJ Swift
Vardimon is one of the world’s leading food experts, but he can no longer taste the delicacies he is judging every day. Reaching the limit of his ageing body, he must make the difficult decision to transplant his consciousness into a new form – but will his secretary have other ideas?
Trailer
Creators
