Forward Collection Books in Order

The Forward Collection is a set of six standalone science fiction novellas built around a simple idea: ask sharp writers to imagine a pivotal technological moment and follow its consequences. Blake Crouch helped curate the project and contributed one of the stories, but the collection as a whole is its own little snapshot of where near-future sci fi is right now.

Each entry comes from a different author, with its own voice and preoccupations. Veronica Roth’s “Ark” looks at a young scientist cataloging the last living plants on Earth before an incoming asteroid wipes the slate clean. N. K. Jemisin’s “Emergency Skin” imagines a future where a breakaway human colony sends back an emissary to a supposedly ruined Earth and discovers a very different reality than the one he was taught. Amor Towles’s “You Have Arrived at Your Destination” follows a man visiting a fertility clinic where parents can tune their children’s potential, only to find that the sales pitch forces him to question his own life.

Crouch’s own story, “Summer Frost,” sits comfortably among these, focusing on a video game developer whose non-player character refuses to follow her scripted role and instead begins to evolve into something like a person. As Riley, the developer, pulls this glitch into a controlled environment to study and nurture it, the line between creator and creation blurs. The questions that follow what intelligence is, whether it matters if a mind runs on silicon instead of neurons, and how much responsibility we bear for what we build echo across the rest of the collection.

Other contributors like Paul Tremblay and Andy Weir bring their own spins: claustrophobic memory experiments, casino hacking gone awry, and more. The stories vary in tone from hopeful to grim, quiet to action heavy, but they all share a willingness to take one twist of technology and see it through to human consequences.

Because each novella stands alone, you can read the collection in any order. Some readers like to start with the author they already know and then branch out; others treat it as a sampler, moving from one perspective to the next without worrying about sequence. Taken together, the Forward stories feel like a conversation about where we are headed and what we might not be ready for.

For fans of Blake Crouch, the collection offers a chance to see his interests refracted through other imaginations. The preoccupations with memory, identity, and unintended side effects are all here, but filtered through very different characters and storytelling styles. This page lays out the basic order and gives you enough context to pick your next stop in that shared future.