The License

Climate change has brought an end to liberal democracy and ushered in a bureaucratic totalitarianism as a means of managing the dwindling resources of the planet. In 2054, everything is regulated, from the safety ratings of households to who can live with whom.

Richard Croft, an adminocrat working with the Bureau of Parenting, Marriages and Dying, issues - amongst other things - parenting licenses. Claire Monet is a young woman, desperate to have a child before she is deemed too old: twenty-six being the maximum age at which a parenting license will be issued to a woman. When Richard and Claire meet it is deviousness that endures, not rules and regulations.

The License is a short and light-hearted sketch of a world we may possibly face in the not-too-distant future: a world utterly shrouded in paperwork and bound by red tape, but where human nature - as we have always known it - still triumphs.