Just before shutting down shop last Friday afternoon, I spotted a story on our sister blog, FishbowlNY, about a partnership between Nerve.com and the distributors of Svedka in which the vodka will become what the NYT describes as "inspiration for a series of articles" that will appear on the sex-culture-news website and then be collected into a book. Writers like Jay McInerney, Rick Moody, Walter Kirn and Will Self will be producing fictional essays imagining the world of 2033. Among the current offerings, Joel Stein's take on celebrity-driven economics won't be causing veteran cyberpunks to lose any sleep, while Darcy Crosper's forecast for widespread swinging crams an awful lot of sexual attitudes into two pages. As to what readers can expect later on: Kirn's apparently going to put a lesbian in the White House, McInerney may well be recycling the sexy parts of Michael Crichton's Disclosure with a high-tech sheen.

I know we've got some real science-fiction writers/editors/agents sprinkled among the GalleyCat readership: What do you think of these stories?