The Deliverator belongs to an elite order, a hallowed subcategory.
Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash (1992)
Every delivery rider weaving through traffic below our window is living a less glamorous version of the opening chapter of Snow Crash.
Fiction has always been a way to rehearse the future. The stories we publish are not predictions, and they are not warnings exactly. They are thought experiments set a few steps sideways from the present, where the technology is familiar but the consequences have had time to ripple outward. Writers send us tales about sysadmins, street medics, rogue delivery bots and the ghosts of deleted accounts. The best of them share a sense that ordinary people will still be improvising, arguing and caring for each other, no matter how strange the machinery around them becomes.
The quote at the end is going on my workshop wall.
Good point, thanks for flagging it.
Happy to share notes. Drop by the Thursday meetup.
Great read. The footnotes are a nice touch.