Tasting Light: Ten Science Fiction Stories to Rewire Your Perceptions

Ages 14 And Up, Grades 9 And Up

In a mind-bending MITeen anthology, ten top YA authors use emerging technologies to explore startling new realities.

What does the future hold? Ten speculative short stories by leading young-adult authors imagine what the world could be through the lens of technologies emerging today. When the modification industry transforms how humans look, sound, and interact, a nonbinary teen braves the “reinvention room” to accept a gift from the dead. In an accidental city in space, a young apprentice holds neighborhoods together with braided carbon filaments until distraction and inspiration arrive in the wake of a visitor. Entitlement-fueled drug use alters the landscape of white privilege, robots remember the Earth, and corporate “walkers” stroll for unknown subscribers—until one hacks the system. In tales buzzing with possibility, hope, innovation, anger, and tenderness, Tasting Light offers a dazzling challenge to connect with open minds, hearts, and senses in a fast-changing world.

With stories by:

William Alexander

K. Ancrum

Elizabeth Bear

A.R. Capetta

Charlotte Nicole Davis

Nasugraq Rainey Hopson

A.S. King

E.C. Myers

Junauda Petrus-Nasah

Wendy Xu

About the Author

A. R. Capetta is the author of The Heartbreak Bakery, Echo After Echo, The Lost Coast, and the best-selling Once & Future series, coauthored with their spouse, Cory McCarthy. They live in the Green Mountains and teach in the MFA program in writing for children and young adults at Vermont College of Fine Arts.

Wade Roush is a journalist and audio producer who focuses on how science and technology are changing our lives and what we can do as individuals to steer that process. He is the editor of the hard science anthology Twelve Tomorrows, published by MIT Press. He holds a PhD from MIT in the history of technology and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.