The near-future Sci-Fi novella follows four women on the day when the Universal Basic Income (UBI) is paid by the government to the citizens of the U.S.

The author prefaces the novella that she won't go into how the UBI came about and/or how it is organised.

I assumed the story was about how the UBI shapes and influences the four women's lives, but somehow this was only lightly touched on. In the end it was speculative fiction depicting one day in the lives of a divorced mother of two who's escaped an abusive relationship; a rich college girl bored at her privileged party in Aspen; a jaded reporter taking care of her transgender teenage sibling; a pregnant teenage member of a polygamist cult.

In the near future, everyone in the United States receives a Basic Universal Income (UBI) payment. This story follows four characters on the titular day, when each of them receives a UBI payment check. It's an interesting premise for a speculative story, and I would have liked to see more detailed world-building. There isn't really enough information about how this society is set up or what its infrastructure is like, which I think kept me from becoming immersed in this world. I also would have liked to see the characters developed more, as none of them stood out as particularly memorable.

I don’t usually read novellas but I love science fiction. This was an odd book in the sense that I didn’t expect it to be so sad. I should have expected it since most near future scifis are sad. I still liked it. It was a good story and the format was creative. I can’t say that I had a good time reading it because it wasn’t a happy story. But I would recommend it in specific genre lists.

Thanks to Netgalley and Tor/Forge for the ARC of this!

What a cool piece of speculative fiction, with a varied group of POVs and a very short timeline, this kept my attention from start to finish. I really enjoyed all the POVs and I think they all added a depth to the story - we follow a mother on the run from her abusive ex-wife, a sister-wife who is unhappy in her cult, a rich girl at a waste day party, and a journalist with her sister seeing how other people feel about the UBI, they were all interesting, sometimes with multiple POVs you find yourself waiting to get back to the “best” one, or struggling to keep them apart but these all felt very distinct and and engaging. I definitely recommend this, I don’t think I’ve seen speculative fiction based around UBI before, and it was really neat and well paced.

TL;DR

January Fifteenth by Rachel Swirsky follows four women on the day they receive their universal basic income. These four, richly detailed lives depict the effect of such a bold policy. Highly recommended.

Disclaimer: The publisher provided a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Any and all opinions that follow are mine alone.

Review: January Fifteenth by Rachel Swirsky

What does freedom mean? I think at a very general level, freedom means choices. It means options. Financial freedom means a broad range of choices. Often, though, financial freedom means not having to worry about bills, but for some, it means so much more than that. For someone escaping an abusive spouse, financial freedom means the ability to escape. For someone having to unexpectedly care for a dependent, financial freedom means not working two or three jobs. Unfortunately, for most Americans, finances are tied to employment. But what if once a year, the government gave every American – rich, poor, young, old – an income? This is the basis of a policy known as Universal Basic Income (UBI), and UBI is the basis for Rachel Swirsky’s January Fifteenth. Over the course of a signal day, readers follow four women as they deal with the effects of UBI on their lives. Swirsky takes a good hard look at the consequences of enacting UBI, weighing the pros and cons, while giving readers rich, deep characters that will move you.

January Fifteenth follows four women throughout the day they receive their UBI benefit. Each protagonist has their own unique situation that allows Swirsky to explore the pros and cons of basic income. Hannah is an abused mother on the run from her ex. Janelle is a former UBI activist now caring for her trans sister and working as a freelance journalist. Olivia is on winter break from college, visiting her old high school friends at a party to waste their UBI benefit. Pregnant and ostracized by her sister-wives, Sarah marches from her home to the government office as part of her cult’s protest. Readers check in on all four women six times as their day progresses.

January Fifteenth is a close third-person narrative. The four stories are unconnected outside of the idea of universal basic income. There is no overarching narrative, but there doesn’t need to be one as each story is excellent. There are six sections to the book, and four chapters to each section. The order never deviates. Hannah is first, followed by Janelle, then Olivia, and finally Sarah. This structure provided a nice crisp pace to the book that kept me reading more. If I started a new section, I had to read all the way through to the next.

Hannah

Hannah and her kids are in rural Maine hiding from her ex, the kids’ mother. Hannah displays all the post traumatic stress indications of someone who escaped an abusive situation. She lives in anxiety that her ex will find her and the kids. Then her nightmare will begin all over again. Hannah’s benefit is waiting for her at the post office, and unlucky for her, a blizzard began blanketing the town that morning. In the post office, she meets her landlord, Elizabeth, who wants to get the rent money from her.

Janelle

When younger, Janelle was an activist trying to get UBI passed. Now, she cares for her younger trans sister after their parents died in a plane crash. Janelle is a freelance journalist who is trying to get human interest stories about universal basic income. What do people do with it? But it’s the same assignment as the previous UBI day, and it’ll be the same assignment the year after. Janelle is getting bored, but she needs the money. Her younger sister, Neveah, gets sent home from school in the morning for wearing a not safe for school t-shirt protesting UBI. Neveah thinks UBI should be canceled and reparations to black people should be given instead. She notes that UBI does nothing to combat the structural racism inherent in American society. Neveah joins Janelle, and throughout the day, they debate the impact of UBI.

Olivia

Olivia spends the day in Aspen, CO at a ‘waste’ day party. She’s on winter break from her freshmen year of college, stressed that she’s going to fail out. To relax, she’s spending time with her old high school friends. They party like any young, obscenely rich kids do. Alcohol, drugs, and bad decisions abound. The group of friends decide to participate in a contest for the most decadent way to ‘waste’ their UBI benefits. Previous examples are cashing the check then eating all the cash. Olivia, however, doesn’t believe in wasting the money. She’ll just buy something expensive. As the day progresses, she begins to see her high school friends for the people they are.

Sarah

Sarah is a pregnant, child bride in Utah. She has three sister wives who are a decade older and don’t like her. Sarah tries to keep up with them during the march from home to the government offices, but it’s too difficult for a person in the third trimester. Sarah overhears her sister wives gossiping about her younger brother, Toby. The boy was beaten by his father and brothers then driven to the countryside and stranded one night. The rumors are that Toby wasn’t obedient, that he was a trouble maker who disrespected his father. But Sarah doesn’t believe any of that, and as the walk continues, she can’t get Toby out of her head. The boy she knew didn’t deserve his fate anymore than she deserves hers. As she falls behind, she walks alongside her cousin, Agnes. The walk, the pregnancy, the loss of her brother drive Sarah to some deep introspection about the live she’s living.

UBI: Yay or Nay?

Rachel Swirsky presents a favorable picture of UBI. She’s also honest that it won’t solve all of society’s ills. It will solve some issues and introduce others. But overall, she presents UBI as an instrument to help out those who are stuck. Stuck in abusive relationships, stuck in a cult, stuck in an unreliable job, or even stuck trying to keep up appearances. Swirsky shows that UBI can help people. Mostly, it helps those at the lowest socioeconomic rung. But even some middle and upper class people can find ways to donate or use their benefits to help people.

The best story in the quartet is Janelle’s. Her and Neveah spend the day debating UBI. Their debates are ones worth having outside this book. Because the universal part of universal basic income does nothing to address the inequalities caused by structural racism. It does nothing to address transphobia or any type of hatred towards marginalized groups. In some ways, UBI will reinforce the anger among bigots, similar to how people on food stamps in GA blame welfare for all the ills of society despite being on welfare themselves. It’s because they’re getting help while others are abusing the system.

Ultimately, January Fifteenth shows that UBI can help those most vulnerable to improve their situations. Will it help all the vulnerable members of our society? Probably not. Will it be abused? Certainly. Will it cause rich and upper middle class people to become even crankier about taxes? Lord, yes. Will conservative politicians find ways to make receiving your benefits difficult and even painful? Of course. But none of these things matters if it helps even one person better themselves. Imagine the mother who only has to work one job instead of two. Imagine the fathers or mother who could stay home to raise their children if they wanted. UBI provides freedom by providing options, and that’s why it’s good policy.

Conclusion

Rachel Swirsky’s January Fifteenth is a thought experiment on what society might look like if we implemented universal basic income. This beautifully crafted book follows four women through the day and games out how UBI affects their lives. January Fifteenth delivers wonderful stories full of complicated but rich characters. Highly recommended.

I received a copy of this book for review from NetGalley. I have to admit, when I saw this book, I thought it looked like a Murderbot book, and got excited. This is very different from that series, so don't be like me and make excited assumptions.
That being said, even removing that expectation, this was hard to read. I understand that the author was trying to show many sides of universal basic income, but this still felt like a thinly veiled allegory, not a novella. Much of this story is a bit bleak, and there isn't much hope until the very end. To be perfectly frank, at this point in history, I need a little more hope in my books, and while that is a me problem, that is not what you will get from this story. While technically well done, I don't think this will be one that I re-read.

To start, check the content warnings on this one, there is talk of domestic abuse, suicide, and a few other things that might require caution.

I thought this novella was really thought-provoking. Separated into four different stories with a different narrator for each, this follows a group of women in the near-distant future as they move through their day-to-day life on January 15th, the day that the government issues their universal basic income checks.

From a single mother running in fear from an abusive ex, to a 20-something older sister trying to care for her younger trans sister, to a 15-year-old sister wife, this book has range. I'm not sure I found every perspective as well fleshed out as the others. In particular, I struggled with the fourth perspective, a rich girl named Olivia who celebrates Windfall Day (the day the check is issued) each year with her rich friends, finding the most creative ways to waste the money. It should've provided a needed contrast to the other characters. But she spent most of her chapters high and drunk and I struggled to make sense of her world because of it.

In a near-distant future, would universal basic income help address the growing wage gap? That's the question this novella tackles. At best, it offers a half answer: probably in some ways, and not in others. Which is fair. My favorite perspective in this entire novella was the younger sister, Naveah, who felt politically enraged by the concept of UBI: Don't we need more? What about reparations? Why aren't we trying to fix the country's problems now? Her point of view resonated hard.

I really enjoy Rachel Swirsky's writing, the way her stories effortlessly include LGBTQIA+ characters, and the creativity of her concepts. I'd recommend this, but go into it with the understanding that despite their many talents, fiction writers also don't have any of the answers.

January Fifteenth explores what the world might be like for four different women if there was a universal basic income. This concept fascinates me, because I am a fan of it, frankly, and I was really interested to read the book's take on it! It did not disappoint, except I think it may have actually been better as a full novel? Like, there was so much to explore that I could have easily read another hundred pages. But alas.

I won't go into each woman's specific story, because frankly that would take away from the experience of the book. Let's just suffice it to say that they are from very different backgrounds and in very different situations, which helps to illustrate how the UBI may look depending on one's situation. I found each of the women's stories to be very compelling and realistic, and I enjoyed their journeys. I also love how the author wove the concept of UBI into each story, too, and made it neither a hero nor a villain, having positives and negatives just as it would in real life practice.

Overall, I found the story to be quite a fascinating look into what a potential UBI would look like, and I loved getting the chance to see it through different characters' eyes. While I do wish the look had been a bit deeper, for a novella, it absolutely was impressively fleshed out.

Bottom Line: Loved the concept and the characters' stories, would definitely read tons more about this premise and any/all of the characters!

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This novella has some very interesting ideas explored through very compelling characters. This is a very short book with four different storylines. That means the focus is much more on the individual lives and feelings of the characters rather than any larger world-building but I think it was very well done.

As I said, this is quite short. Goodreads has it as 240 pages but it felt even shorter. It also follows four characters: A reporter, a mom running from her ex, a Mormon fundamentalist, and a rich college student. This story explores the way in which having access to UBI has affected them and the world around them. Because of the number of storylines, you only get a bit of each character. This would be one issue I had. I don't know if Swirsky had a particular reason for wanting to keep the book at this length but I would have loved just a little more detail from each character. The mom running from the ex plot felt particularly underexplored to me but they all could have benefitted from a bit more detail in my opinion.

That being said, Swirsky does a great job developing her characters and demonstrating their struggles and the way they fit into this future. I really felt for all of them and was invested in their stories. Swirsky does a great job of flushing out the world through the interactions her characters had. She does a great job showing us how each character saw the world and that helped me as the reader also understand the world.

Swirsky does do all of her world-building from the perspective of her characters. Because of that, there's a lot about this world that we never learn about. People and groups and events and technology are mentioned but never further explained. I did not mind this because I so appreciated the character work but if you only like to read speculative works that really dive into their world-building, this might not be the book for you.

I would definitely recommend this. It's a quick read that explores some really interesting ideas and really carefully and critically thinks about how something like UBI could affect people in many different situations. I'm really glad I picked this book up.

January Fifteenth by Rachel Swirsky attempts to blend the implications of a possible future public policy, Universal Basic Income, into the lives of quite realistically drawn characters. The novella follows the lives of four women through the course of the day everyone receives their UBI payment in a near future virtually identical to ours. Of the four, one is a victim of domestic violence on the run from the abusive partner with her children, one is trying to escape from a violent cult, one is upper class and indulging with her friends in an annual orgy that takes a violent turn and the fourth is a woman of color dealing with issues of racism. Swirsky asks if UBI can make the lives of these people better, and the answer she gives seems to be that it doesn't really change the fundamental inequities and damage people have to deal with. Each character is well drawn, each story convincing in its own way, but this experiment in a form of speculative fiction doesn't really add up to a compelling novella. I give the author credit for weaving public policy into the lives of people - she gets the people right but I'm not sure these well-told stories would be any different without UBI.

Probably more of a 3.5.

CW: mentions of domestic violence, suicide, polygamous cult and child marriage

I don’t even know why I decided to pick up this novella. I think it was the premise of the UBI which is a topic I have been wanting to know about for while. Though after reading this book, I think my idea of the UBI was way more idealistic and not practical.

This story has four POVs - four women who are in very different circumstances and through their experiences, the author tries to throw light on how having the option of UBI will affect people based on their situations. It was especially illuminating to see how victims of domestic violence or those stuck in cults would feel having their own money, but at the same how the perpetrators might use this as another way to make use of the victims. I liked the two POVs representing women in these situations. The other two POVs I wasn’t a huge fan of but one of them did offer up various views about UBI from lots of people.

I know I’m being very vague in my review and can’t even articulate what I probably felt reading this book. I will say that if you are looking for a character focused story, you will get it but it may not be fully satisfactory. But if you are okay with a story that explores the pros and cons of UBI through the eyes of many characters, then you should find this fascinating.

January Fifteenth is the date in this speculative science fiction novel where every citizen of the United States gets their UBI—universal basic income. UBI is a set amount given to every citizen regardless of financial status in order to alleviate poverty and replace need-based programs such as disability and social security.

We follow four different women in this book with four very different lives. Hannah is running from an abusive marriage with her two young sons, Janelle is a reporter over UBI controversies raising her 14 year old sister after their parents died in a plane crash, Olivia is a rich kid who is failing her first year at college, and Sarah is part of a religious cult that practices bigamy and impregnates young girls.

I love the fact that this story takes place in one single day. We follow all three women from morning of UBI Day, to the end. We learn so much about them in such a short period of time. We’re given both good things and bad things about UBI, and it is something I’d like to see in more speculative novels going forward.

Thank you to NetGalley and Tordotcom for the chance to read this advanced review copy! January Fifteenth releases on June 14th.

CW for suicide, sexual assault, domestic abuse, racism, and death of a parent

January Fifteenth imagines a near-future world where everyone in the US gets a Universal Basic Income and follows four different individuals through their UBI Day. 

Hannah is a middle aged woman with two young sons who is on the run from her abusive ex-wife.

Janelle is a young journalist who is interviewing people about UBI while taking care of her trans younger sister. 

Olivia is a rich college student who is spending the day with her rich friends seeing who can most ridiculously waste the government's money. 

Sarah is a pregnant teen in a polygamous cult who walk to the office to pick up their UBI payments. 

I enjoyed January Fifteenth a lot. I had a hard time putting it down, so I read it in one go. Though I can honestly say I don't have much of an opinion on Universal Basic Income, each point of view was presented in a way that I understood them. Each character felt well fleshed out, and I enjoyed their stories. 

We follow each character starting in the morning of January Fifteenth and then throughout the day into the night. One thing that seems inconsequential but that worked for me a lot was that the points of view were presented in the same order throughout the novella, so it was easier for me to keep them organized in my brain space until I was used to them.

It was well written and engaging, and I really enjoyed seeing the story from very different points of view. Definitely worth a read, if you're into multi-POV stories, or stories with more politically motivated themes.

January Fifteenth by Rachel Swirsky

January Fifteenth is the latest work by Award Winning Author Rachel Swirsky. The novella is in theory - per her own author's note - Swirsky's imaginative take on a world in which the US imposed Universal Basic Income ("UBI")*.

*For those who haven't heard of UBI, it's the policy of a government providing every person in a country with a basic income - basically a monthly or yearly stipend - so that in effect everyone has at least some money to spend.*

Per that author's note, Swirsky conceived of the scenarios in this novella based upon some research - although no sources or research is cited here, so it's hard to tell what she actually looked at - like if she looked at experiments that have been done in various places in the world of giving people money....or just listened to proponents and opponents of the policy suggest outcomes.

Unfortunately it seems like Swirsky just listened to the latter, and then attempted to take the most outlandish and extreme scenarios she could think of being affected by UBI to create four unconnected scenarios to make up this novella. The result is as subtle as a sledgehammer, and features Swirsky honestly more interested in most of it in attacking an idea that money brings happiness....which of course isn't actually the point of UBI. The result is basically four dystopian stories, without much commonality or real interest to recommend, often dealing with other issues that the novella doesn't take time to actually deal with properly or interestingly.


This novella has four stories it alternates between rather than a unifying plot, each from the perspective of a different character.

Hannah: a woman fleeing her abusive ex-wife with her two kids in tow, thanks to help from UBI, but now lives in fear of collecting her UBI check or appearing in public for fear of her ex-wife finding her;

Janelle: A black Freelance reporter in her mid 20s who is raising her teenage sister (due to their parents' death in an accident) who is trying to interview people about UBI while her trans girl sister tries to be a firebrand and speak out about how UBI isn't enough or only hurts as its implemented;

Olivia: A Rich girl whose friends are throwing a party about wasting UBI...while she floats around in a drug-helped haze as if she's not there since she's burdened by troubles she's unable to share and a feeling that nothing really matters;

Sarah: A teen bride in an extremist Mormon cult that relies on UBI to survive, who is bursting with mental trauma about how she is treated and about how the cult abuses and uses her loved ones....and might be using them to commit a horrifying fraud.

These stories are kind of ridiculous and extreme as if they come out of people's talking points about UBI, and barely relate to the policy as much as the central idea that More Money isn't making one Happy (see Olivia's arc). So you have Right Wing anti-UBI people talking about how UBI will help extremist cults made into a plot (Sarah); you have Center-Left anti UBI people talking about how not means testing UBI will result in a waste of money by rich people who don't care about money and just aren't happy and desrve pity anyway (Olivia); you have a Left Wing anti UBI view about how UBI will be means tested and marred by racism* (Janelle); and you have I guess a pro UBI view about how money will help abused people get away from their abusers.

*Yes, Janelle's story seems to assume means testing while Olivia's does not. No there's no coherence here.*

You'll note that's like 3 anti UBI viewpoints to one pro UBI viewpoint, and even that pro UBI viewpoint barely really revolves around UBI, but is more about an abused spouse and kids trying to flee and needing kindness to get away from their abuser. And there's just not enough substance in any of it really for the plot to say anything interesting other than "here are some of the more outlandish scenarios that pundits speculate about happening due to UBI!". And well, we could've gotten that in a non-fiction book, which could have also then examined how research and experiments have found UBI to actually work. Instead we get all these scenarios, which well you can kind of get out of like a pundit show on cable TV.

There just isn't really anything here, and like where the stories deal with other themes, like Janelle's struggle as a teen mom, or Hannah's struggle to evade abuse, or Sarah's dealing with cults, or Olivia's with mental illness, there isn't enough substance for those plots to really treat those subjects with any seriousness they deserve.

So yeah, I think you can probably tell by my tone on this review that I'm interested in the idea of UBI, even if I haven't seen a proposed UBI policy I've actually been in favor with yet. And I'd certainly be interested in some sort of SciFi exploration of it. But this isn't it - instead it just feels like creativity inspired by a week watching debaters on cable news, and that's a hard pass.

A speculative fiction novella that discuss Universal Basic Income (UBI) should have been right up my alley, but unfortunately this book did not work for me. This novella is set in a near future United States where all Americans receive their universal basic income payment on January 15th. The book follows four different women on the day of their UBI payment, and attempts to showcase different opinions towards the idea of UBI.

The premise is certainly interesting, but it really did not come together in a meaningful way. The conversations were all pretty surface level, and I would have liked more nuanced storytelling for what is a pretty complex topic. The characters also felt oddly one dimensional- we really don't get much about these characters except for this very small window of time, and we don't really get to see their thoughts on UBI (except for one character, we really just have to infer how they feel based on the specific circumstances). Also, one of the main povs (Janelle), is a Black journalist who use to be an activist against UBI. While I appreciate this inclusion and the discussions around reparations, I do feel like they were poorly executed. It was a little uncomfortable to read this authors attempt to speak about Black issues and posit how the Black community might feel about UBI, while simultaneously dancing around the subject (also Black people are not a monolith, so...).

I think the worst part for me is the lack of world-building. We don't get any information on the events leading up the creation of the UBI program or why it happened, or really anything about how this near-future world operates.

Overall, this was an interesting premise, but poorly executed.

Thanks to Tordotcom for the ARC of January Fifteenth!

I thought the idea of exploring universal basic income (UBI) through a multi-POV story would be interesting. I really enjoyed the set up, four unique and diverse POVs, set on the day the UBI is distributed. All four women had different lives and the UBI all factored into their lives differently. A lot of reviews said this was too short, but honestly this felt like a fine length for it. Because while the story was moderately fun, it really felt more like a "fun" essay disguised as a novella. I haven't read anything like this before honestly so its got that going for it.

This is a fascinating prediction of a future where universal basic income is a reality. Swirsky thoughtfully weaves deeply human stories in a short space, bouncing across a future U.S. Taking place over the course of disbursement day, we get glimpses into how a range of people might use a guaranteed income. It's survival for some, a route for abuse for some, and an excuse for wasteful extravagance for others. It's a quick and thoughtful read that I enjoyed.

January Fifteenth is a not-so-distant futuristic sci-fi novella. It centers around the lives of 4 different women on January 15th, the day everyone receives their Universal Basic Income funds from the US Government. The women are from different backgrounds and have different worries. There wasn't a style difference between their chapters, but it was easy to keep them and their storylines straight while reading.

I think everyone will feel a little connected to at least one character, if not find a small part of all of them to relate to. Even though January Fifteenth is a novella that can easily be read in one sitting, it shows that Rachel Swirsky is a talented writer. I look forward to reading more of her books.

Thank you to Tor for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

January Fifteenth is an interesting look at the possible effects of UBI in America. Told through characters of very different backgrounds, January Fifteenth paints a dark and disturbing picture for the future of America and it's place in the world.
Thank you to Netgalley and the Publisher for the opportunity to read and review this title. All opinions and mistakes are my own.

I love speculative fiction by marginalized authors and January Fifteenth is no different. A fascinating character- and specifically women-first look at UBI if it existed in America. Will definitely read more from Swirsky!