Tasting Light

This MITeen anthology gathers ten speculative stories, each by a different young adult author, that look at how technologies emerging today could reshape daily life. Each piece asks what might come next once the tools we already have become more capable.

One story follows a nonbinary teenager who visits a treatment room where people remake their appearance, voice, and social presence, and who chooses to accept a legacy from someone who has passed away. Another follows a young apprentice in an unplanned city in orbit, who keeps its neighborhoods connected with woven carbon threads until a visitor brings new ideas and restlessness.

Other pieces explore a drug habit fueled by a sense of entitlement and what it reveals about white privilege, robots that carry memories of Earth, and corporate "walkers" who wander the streets for clients nobody sees, until one of them breaks into the system.

The contributors are William Alexander, K. Ancrum, Elizabeth Bear, A.R. Capetta, Charlotte Nicole Davis, Nasugraq Rainey Hopson, A.S. King, E.C. Myers, Junauda Petrus-Nasah, and Wendy Xu. The stories move between anger, tenderness, hope, and inventiveness, and the collection invites open-minded readers to think and feel with their whole selves as the world changes quickly.