• Publisher: Christina Escamilla Publishing
• ISBN: 9780991529360
• Genre: Science Fiction
• Pages: 260

What will the future hold? Sometimes bleak, sometimes inspiring, these twenty tales seek to answer the very question that civilization has pondered for centuries. From a world where specialized eyes shape the way reality is perceived to fabricated simulations that are designed to allow full control over an augmented reality. This book takes you to the far reaches of the universe to the remnants of a forgotten Earth. In short, these twenty tales boldly answer the question of “what if” with a simple: Welcome to the Future. – Goodreads synopsis

I won Welcome to the Future during a #COYER challenge, and I was so happy I did since I was also participating in a book buying ban and had added the book to my wishlist nearly as soon as it was published.  I was particularly interested in it because one of the authors also has a blog I love to read.  However, that also made me hesitant to review it.  What if I didn’t like the book or, even worse, her story?
To get around the worry, I promised myself that I didn’t have to review it if I didn’t want to or feel comfortable doing so.  I don’t review every single book I read, though I try.  However, I had nothing to be concerned about since I wound up devouring Welcome to the Future in one day.  I don’t usually do that with short story anthologies.  I tend to dip into them for a story or two and then read something else for a bit before returning.  That’s mostly because I’ve never read an anthology in which every single story was phenomenal.  While I didn’t love all the stories in this one either, almost all of my favorites were front loaded.
If anything, that’s what I disliked about this collection.  I didn’t enjoy the last few stories, and if I hadn’t plowed through the book so quickly, that might have tarnished my view of it as a whole.  I feel as if the runner-up selections were tacked on at the end only to make the book a little longer.  A better way of organizing it would have been to spread them out amongst the gems of the bunch.  Putting that aside, Welcome to the Future is well worth buying.