South African writer, Lauren Beukes, has teamed up with the African investment firm, RisCura, to curate an anthology of parables predicting possible financial futures.

The anthology is part of RisCura’s project Upshot, which helps investors imagine how issues such as climate change, sustainability, debt slavery, inflation, and education will impact the viability of their investments. In other words, RisCura is preparing its investors for downright dystopian futures. This is where cyberpunk novelist Lauren Beukes comes in.

Beukes gathered a team of seven talented African writers to pen short stories in line with Upshot’s predicted financial futures. The authors are Sam Beckbessinger, Angela Makholwa, Tade Thompson, Bongani Kona, Mohale Mashigo, and Charlie Human.

About the anthology, Beukes says:

The storytellers grew those seeds into what-if worlds that are a little different from our own, and in some cases, very much so.

They range from Angela Makholwa’s rollicking pension schemer wheeler dealer with space bikes to Sam Beckbessinger’s blue-economy love story set in the kelp forests, and an Artificial Intelligence advisor that wants to make life decisions for you, to Mohale Mashigo’s would-be retirees faking their own deaths, Bongani Kona’s moving debt slavery reality TV show, Tade Thompson’s nuanced take on a universal basic income experiment in Nigeria, and every parent’s nightmare in Charlie Human’s kid-repossession story.

Go here to read all seven stories!

Lauren Beukes is the Arthur C. Clarke Award-winning author of The Shining Girls, Zoo City, and Afterland, as well as comics and screenplays that display her range of talents in speculative storytelling.