“Willpower” takes place in a post-scarcity future where people who are unable to find steady work can take “willfare” jobs, taking odd jobs posted on a Craigslist-like bulletin board for daily credits and enjoying taxpayer-funded room and board. Michael Delgado is a perpetual willfarer who finds himself cruising the job boards, in need of a willfare job before he breeches his contract with the taxpayers. Most of the jobs are along the lines of dog walking, construction, and medical guinea pig, but Michael spots one willfare job that looks too good to be true: replacing a crew member on a Mars mission:

Michael pounded a fist into his cheap plastic kitchen table. Fucking keywords! Fucking Vesper! Fucking Kon-Ye BMI! What had he gotten himself into this time?

Because it had to be a joke. Nobody would willfare a Mars mission job. It had to be a cover for something that involved Hershey’s syrup and chickens and octogenarians.

And now he was screwed. He’d ACCEPTED, and that was that.

Michael sighed, and started looking up bus routes out to Edwards. The last vestiges of Vesper’s adrenaline rush made him smile, as if in anticipation.

The future Stoddard envisions is an optimistic one, but ironically not one his protagonist fits comfortably into. Instead, he longs for the vision of an Edgar Rice Burroughs video game he used to play, and he spends the story trying to recapture the astronaut dreams of his youth. And, in his own way, so is Jason Stoddard.

Willpower [Futurismic]

On the heels of Jason Stoddard’s “Happier Science Fiction” manifesto, Solaris has announced that science fiction writer and former Interzone magazine editor de Vries will be soliciting manuscripts for stories depicting a kinder, gentler future:

Shine is a collection of near-future, optimistic SF stories where some of the genres brightest stars and some of its most exciting new talents portray the possible roads to a better tomorrow. Definitely not a plethora of Pollyannas (but neither a barrage of dystopias), Shine will show that positive change is far from being a foregone conclusion, but needs to be hardfought, innovative, robust and imaginative. Most importantly, it aims to demonstrate that while times are tough and outcomes are uncertain, we can still bend the future in benevolent ways if we embrace change and steer its momentum in the right direction.

De Vries is looking for stories set within the next 50 years that would persuade “the biggest skeptics on the planet” that the near future can be a better place. He has also set up a blog for Shine, hoping to create an “open platform” for discussing the nature and challenges of an optimistic future.

[Shineanthology’s Weblog via Jason Stoddard]