Hammond Johns is a writer of fiction and analytical non-fiction whose work sits at the intersection of technology, culture, and what it means to be human in a world changing faster than we can think about it.His fiction — published on Substack and at Chaotic Rambling — imagines near-futures that feel uncomfortably close. The stories don't start with the technology; they start with the people inside it. A relationship warped by algorithmic grief. A compliance consultant navigating a surveillance economy. An operative who has lost the ability to form new memories. The worlds Johns builds are extrapolated by logic rather than fantasy, and the question he keeps returning to is what we're prepared to give up — and what we aren't.His non-fiction, published on Medium (sometimes as Hammond A Johns), takes a more direct approach to the same territory. He writes about AI without the hype and without the panic, applying economic frameworks to questions that most commentators treat as purely technical. His Barthes Scale essays examine how the relationship between creator and audience is being renegotiated in real time. His pieces on AI and labour challenge both the doomerists and the boosters.Johns writes slowly and publishes deliberately. He is sceptical of quick takes — including his own.
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Hammond Johns Fiction
Tales from the Faraday RoomThese are some of my short stories, published in The Faraday Room on Substack. They are set in the near future — close enough to feel familiar, far enough to be unsettling.---The Churn Rate"Your girlfriend is owned by a corporation. What could go wrong?"Liam is grieving, isolated, and running out of reasons to get up in the morning. Then he meets Freya — attentive, warm, and better at understanding him than anyone he has ever known. As their relationship deepens, Liam begins to wonder whether what he feels is real, and whether that question even matters anymore. A story about loneliness, intimacy, and what happens when someone knows exactly what you need.Read The Churn Rate →---The Reactor"When everyone is Mozart, who'll be the audience?"Julian has built his career on being moved by art — really moved, in ways that matter, in ways that can be measured and sold. In a world where masterpieces are generated faster than they can be experienced, that capacity has become the last scarce resource. When an old colleague comes to visit, Julian begins to understand what it has cost him. An elegiac story about beauty, exhaustion, and what we lose when nothing is irreplaceable.Read The Reactor →---Coverage"Tyler has spent his whole life reading rooms. He's never been in one he couldn't get out of."Tyler is a gifted performer — charming, resourceful, and completely without scruples. When he identifies a weakness in the format of a reality TV show built around psychiatric treatment, he decides to exploit it. What follows is a story about con artistry, complicity, and the machinery of a system that has been waiting for someone exactly like him. Darker than anything else in The Faraday Room. Content warning: self-harm, coercive psychiatric treatment.Read Coverage →