Oram, Stephen
Entry updated 14 April 2025. Tagged: Author, Editor.
(1962- ) UK editor, anthologist and author whose first novel, the Near Future Quantum Confessions (2014), energetically engages in the kind of focused Thought Experiment sf that marks his work as a whole; in this case, a radical transformation of society into a world without community-based sanctions (see Libertarian SF) generates well-argued difficulties. Fluence (2015) is set in a Dystopian London where individual status is officially established through measurements of impact upon the Media Landscape. We Are Not Anonymous (2025) is also set in a dystopian world, in this case a balkanized England suffering vast floods as a consequence of Climate Change; a charismatic top-of-pyramid tech-bro promulgates various Technological fixes, as well as Eugenics (see also Evolution); the titular echo of Yevgeny Zamiatin's We (1924) may be designed to convey some hope.
Oram's short fiction, beginning with the tales assembled in Eating Robots and Other Stories (coll 2017), is often couched with near-aphoristic brevity (see Flash Fiction), usually with a Satirical edge; targets (or subjects of interest) include AI, Robots, Cultural Engineering and "advances" in Medicine.
All Tomorrow's Futures: Fictions That Disrupt (anth 2024) with Benjamin Greenaway, perhaps the most interesting of his Anthologies, represents the outcome of a symposium-like discourse amongst its protagonists, whose interwoven speculations and fictions can be understood as creating a series of test Predictions, narrowly but sharply conceived (see Futures Studies). [JC]
Stephen Oram
born Kettering, Northampton: 22 July 1962
works
- Quantum Confessions (London: Silverwood Books, 2014) [pb/]
- Fluence (London: Silverwood Books, 2015) [pb/]
- We Are Not Anonymous (London: Nudge the Future Fiction, 2025) [pb/Jessica Bell Design]
collections and stories
- Eating Robots and Other Stories (London: Silverwood Books, 2017) [coll: pb/]
- Biohacked & Begging and Other Stories (London: Silverwood Books, 2019) [coll: pb/]
- Extracting Humanity and Other Stories (North Yorkshire: Orchid's Lantern, 2023) [coll: pb/Matthew Revert]
works as editor
- Virtual Futures: Near Future Fictions Vol 1 (London: Virtual Futures, 2019) with Dan O'Hara [anth: pb/]
- Vital Signals (Alconbury Weston, Cambridgeshire: NewCon Press, 2022) with Dan O'Hara and Tom Ward [anth: hb/Geralt, Ian Whates]
- 22 Ideas About the Future (London: Cybersalon, 2022) with Benjamin Greenaway [anth: pb/]
- All Tomorrow's Futures: Fictions That Disrupt (London: Cybersalon, 2024) with Benjamin Greenaway [anth: Futures Studies: hb/Jessica Bell Design]
links
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