The Protopian Prize is a fiction contest inviting you to share your vision of people working toward liberatory futures, meeting obstacles, and making real change. “Protopian”—a word coined by Kevin Kelly, one of our contest's judges—means an achievable, optimistic future characterized by continuous, incremental progress rather than revolutionary leaps or a static, perfect state. Protopian stories imagine a future that is neither flawless nor catastrophic, but instead workably better than today. It’s about plausible progress rather than perfection or collapse.
Home - FLI Worldbuilding Contest
It is frequently practiced by creative writers and scriptwriters, providing the context and backdrop for stories that take place in future, fantasy or alternative realities. Worldbuilding is a tool that can help us explore possible futures for our own world. It helps us better understand what sorts of worlds we may find more or less desirable, and how we might get to there. World builds don’t always have to be grounded in reality, but for our worldbuilding contest we asked contestants to make their imagined worlds plausible and aspirational. To better understand the constraints and ground rules that were used for this contest, visit the Rules page prior to exploring the worlds.
The AI future where humans get paid to be creative
Prophecy: Prediction, Power, and the Fight for the Future, from Ancient Oracles to AI
From an award-winning University of Oxford professor comes a brilliant, urgent new look at prophecies--the predictions that determine our lives, from our personal finances and the quality of our healthcare to the news and social media we consume and the produces foisted upon us
Manuscript — an imagined editor for research writing
A walk through an imagined product for academic writing, mocked up by Claude Design.
Imagination: a manifesto
One of The Millions's Most-Anticipated Books of Winter 2024 In this revelatory work, Ruha Benjamin calls on us to take imagination seriously as a site of struggle and a place of possibility for reshaping the future
Superforecasting by Philip E. Tetlock, Dan Gardner: 9780804136716 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE ECONOMIST “The most important book on decision making since Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow.”—Jason...
Trust — Utopian conspiracy
A network of utopian conspirators, a sandbox for their creative, technical and critical projects, and a site of experimentation for new ways of learning together.
Neom
Locus Award Nominee 2023 Dragon Award Nominee 2023 Seiun Award Nominee 2025 Machines roam the desert in search of purpose; works of art can be deadlier than weapons, and improbable love transcends …
What’s the best technology that doesn’t exist yet?
We analyzed 100+ conversations and essays on positive futures to find out
An interview with @masnick.com (of TechDirt), the author of the influential 2019 paper "Protocols, Not Platforms," reflecting on how his ideas apply to publishers in 2026. protocolsforpublishers.com/mike-masnick-interview/
Mike Masnick on protocols for publishers
protocolsforpublishers.comThe present no longer lasts long enough to be a setting. All fiction is either science fiction or historical fiction. I've been saying this for long enough that even this statement itself is no longer true. The future doesn't last long enough either. All science fiction is now retrofuturism.
