We Will Rise Again: Speculative Stories about Political Protest, Resistance, and Hope

From genre luminaries, esteemed organizers, and exciting new voices in fiction, an anthology of stories, essays, and interviews that offer transformative visions of the future, fantastical alternate worlds, and inspiration for the social justice movements of tomorrow.

In this collection, editors Karen Lord, Annalee Newitz, and Malka Older champion realistic, progressive social change using the speculative stories of writers across the world. Exploring topics ranging from disability justice and environmental activism to community care and collective worldbuilding, these imaginative pieces from writers such as NK Jemisin, Charlie Jane Anders, Alejandro Heredia, Sam J. Miller, Nisi Shawl, and Sabrina Vourvoulias center solidarity, empathy, hope, joy, and creativity.

Each story is grounded within a broader sociopolitical framework using essays and interviews from movement leaders, including adrienne maree brown and Walidah Imarisha, charting the future history of protest, revolutions, and resistance with the same zeal for accuracy that speculative writers normally bring to science and technology. Using the vehicle of ambitious storytelling, We Will Rise Again offers effective tools for organizing, an unflinching interrogation of the status quo, and a blueprint for prefiguring a different world.

Annalee Newitz is a science journalist and science fiction writer who has published Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age, a national bestseller; Scatter, Adapt, and Remember: How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction; and Stories Are Weapons: Psychological Warfare and the American Mind. In turn, Newitz is the author of three sci-fi novels from Tor: The Terraformers, a national bestseller cited as a ＂best book of the year＂ by The London Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and Library Journal; The Future of Another Timeline; and Autonomous which won the Lambda Literary Award and was nominated for the Nebula and Locus awards. With Charlie Jane Anders, Newitz cohosts the Hugo Award-winning podcast Our Opinions Are Correct. Newitz founded io9, was editor-in-chief of Gizmodo, and currently teaches media studies at University of San Francisco.

Karen Lord is a Barbadian author and editor who has worked as a physics teacher, diplomat, part-time soldier, and academic. Her novel Redemption in Indigo won the Frank Collymore Literary Award, the Carl Brandon Parallax Award, the William L. Crawford Award, the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature, and the Kitschies Golden Tentacle, and was longlisted for the Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature. She is also the author of Unraveling, The Best of All Possible Worlds, a finalist for the 2014 Locus Awards; The Galaxy Game; The Blue, Beautiful World, longlisted for the 2024 Women’s Prize for Fiction; and is editor of the anthology New Worlds, Old Ways: Speculative Tales from the Caribbean.

Malka Older is a writer, sociologist, and aid worker. A faculty associate at Arizona State University’s School for the Future of Innovation in Society, she teaches on the humanitarian-development spectrum and on predictive fictions, and is an associate researcher at the Centre de Sociologie des Organisations. She’s spoken at venues including SXSW, the Personal Democracy Forum, the FWD50 conference, and the Hamburg International Summer Festival on topics such as democracy, data, narrative disorder, and speculative resistance. Older’s The Mimicking of Known Successes was named a best book by Library Journal; its sequel, The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles, was just published. Older’s sci-fi political thriller Infomocracy was named a book of the year by Kirkus Reviews, Book Riot, and The Washington Post. She is also author of Null States and State Tectonics, the creator of Ninth Step Station, and lead writer for the licensed sequel to Orphan Black. She’s written opinion pieces for TheNew York Times, The Nation, and Foreign Policy.