Posted by Richard at September 20th, 2007

Escape Pod, the podcast SF/Fantasy magazine that recently beat the venerable standouts like Asimov’s and Analog for total number of subscribers (and which runs, and consistently pays its authors, solely from donations) has it’s fair share of SF stories that deal with the implications of a post-scarcity economy on the larger culture. I’ve linked to three of them, all completely free for the downloading, below.

Printcrime by Cory Doctorow looks at the implications of easy reproduction on a scarcity economy and the lengths to which society goes to ensure scarcity. And it’s written by Cory Doctorow (yeah, that Cory Doctorow).

Nano Comes to Clifford Falls by Nancy Kress examines what happens when easy, reliable replication comes to a small town.

Conversations With and About My Electric Toothbrush by Derek Zumsteg considers artificially intelligent, situationally aware devices (Spimes?).

Of course, Cory Doctorow’s (free downloadable) novel Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom deals with much the same scarcity theme and comes to a radically more optimitic/romantic conclusion than Kress does.

Blogged with Flock