Today the tenth story in our year-long Fictions collaboration with Future Care Capital goes live: “CareFree” by Keith Brooke. It’s been a fascinating project, and unlike anything we’ve worked on before: four writers and an artist working with a health and social care charity to explore near-future scenarios – putting fictional flesh on the bones of what might be as a way of helping professionals and policy-makers in these fields to shape their thinking about how things should be.
The stories range from explorations of virtual living funerals, disease tourism and various interventions in childbirth, care, and more. One of our stories was shortlisted for this year’s British Science Fiction Award for best short story, which was particularly satisfying as a project operating beyond the normal publishing channels like this could easily pass unnoticed by genre readers.
All ten stories are available to read for free on the FCC website, with two more to come, and all are illustrated by Vincent Chong:
- Goodbye by Stephen Palmer (July 2020)
- All I Asked For by Anne Charnock (August 2020)
- Life’s Lottery by Keith Brooke (September 2020)
- Infectious by Liz Williams (October 2020)
- Vigorish by Keith Brooke (November 2020)
- Genomancer by Stephen Palmer (December 2020)
- When I Visit the Palace by Liz Williams (January 2021)
- George by Stephen Palmer (February 2021)
- Don’t Push the Blame On Me by Anne Charnock (March 2021)
- CareFree by Keith Brooke (April 2021)

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