Note: Please get in touch with the team (email us!) if there is any way we can make the rules and guidelines for the Protopian Prize more accessible for you. We envision our protopian future as one that includes all people, and we intend for the Protopian Prize to be equally inclusive to all writers.
ABOUT THE PRIZE:
Write the story of humanity’s future.
The Protopian Prize
The Protopian Prize
To create a better world, we need to first imagine it—and the work required to get there.
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.
In 2026, our inaugural year, we will present prizes in two categories:
The Protopian Prize for Public AI
Imagine AI development, policy, and tools, built for—and following basic principles of— public benefit. Stories might address ethical training, sustainable maintenance, creator-friendly implementation, collective rather than corporate ownership, and/or new uses that complement rather than replace human strengths.
The Protopian Prize for Democratic Futures
Imagine institutions, tools, and organizational methods that expand and enhance public autonomy and shared control over societal futures. Stories might address inclusive community-building, decision-making processes, better delivery of public goods, and/or new techniques for combating disinformation, surveillance, and authoritarian constraints.
CONTEST RULES
1) LENGTH AND CONTENT
We are seeking previously unpublished short stories of 500 - 6,000 words. You may submit only one story to the contest, in one of the two prize categories.
Note: Multi-author submissions are permitted. Please put the names of all authors in the "byline" field, and ONE contact person in the "legal name" field.
2) PRIZE
$5,000 for each category. Winning stories will be published in In the Loop: Stories from the Future of People, Power, and Machines, an anthology to be published by MIT Press and edited by judging leads Gideon Lichfield and Ruthanna Emrys, alongside invited stories by professional science fiction authors.
Winners will be asked to sign contracts for the anthology; you do not give us any rights over your story simply by submitting.
3) LLM USE
Works that are written, either wholly or partially, by generative large language model (LLM) tools are not eligible. While your story may depict all sorts of innovative uses of AI tools, you may not include AI-generated text as part of your story – we are celebrating human creativity and vision, and their role in creating a better world.
We will ask participants to self-attest that all words in a story are human-generated, and will also exclude works that clearly include AI-generated components.
In turn, the contest organizers will not feed submissions into AI training, nor use LLMs to create any publication, promotion, or other documents related to the contest.
4) TIMELINE
Launch in March 2026. Submissions will be open May 1 - July 31, 2026. Prize announcements anticipated September 2026.
THINGS WE WANT & DON’T WANT
It’s not a utopia in which everything is wonderful. It’s a future measurably better than today’s, but you can see how we got from here to there.
It can and probably does have drama, conflict, or even tragedy. But it’s not simply a dystopia with a happy twist at the end, or a fight between good and evil in which good ultimately wins. It’s a world that’s already better in some ways (but might even be worse in some others, such as climate change).
We’re not looking for stories in which AI or another technology has simply solved all the problems. Technology isn’t a panacea; it’s a tool in the hands of people. Think of this as a people story set in the future, not a technology story.
- We’re also not looking for stories that are simply about how to create a technology, such as artificial general intelligence (AGI).
We are looking for stories of society successfully steering technological development toward the thriving of diverse human communities. Show us new ways that people can turn technology into a public good.
You may choose to write about how a certain institution—a political party, an international body, a local council, a big business—has evolved to make a better society possible. But if you take that route, be sure to focus on the “how”, not just the “who.”
Be specific. If you’re writing about how people improve a broken system, like government bureaucracy, show what’s broken and what’s being done about it. Don’t just talk about “red tape” in the abstract.
We’re going for realism here. No supernatural forces. No miraculous technologies based on imaginary science, like Star Trek’s “dilithium crystals”; if you invent something, show that it’s plausible. And assume humans are still humans and haven’t magically become perfectly rational or peace-loving.
Remember: You’re writing a story, not a policy brief! The new institutions, processes, or technologies are part of it, but it’s about people.
Finally, while sex and violence are a part of life and of stories, we don’t want submissions that center on explicit, detailed sex, violence, or gore.
The Protopian Prize follows the tradition of many projects creating stories of positive futures:
- Hieroglyph: Stories and Visions for a Better Future (By Ed Finn, Kathryn Cramer)
- We Will Rise Again: Speculative Stories and Essays on Protest, Resistance, and Hope (Edited by Malka Older, Annalee Newitz and Karen Lord)
- Imagine 2200: Climate Fiction for Future Ancestors from Grist including Metamorphosis: Climate Fiction for a Better Future
- Make Shift: Dispatches from the Post-Pandemic Future (Edited by Gideon Lichfield) and Twelve Tomorrows Anthologies by MIT Press in partnership with Technology Review
- Stop Copaganda (Surveillance Tech Copaganda Toolkit) by Compost Mag and Fight for the Future
Information about the Two Prizes:
The Public AI Prize:
It is publicly accountable ensuring AI reflects society’s values.Submit
your original short fiction imagining a positive future for
humanity that foregrounds the potential of AI designed to serve the public good—and actionable steps to get us there.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is rapidly advancing, reshaping work, relationships, creativity, and community. Financial and environmental resources, policies, and norms are solidifying. The benefits could be huge, but so could the risks, and global society has many urgent, critical decisions to make. Compelling narratives and shared visions of the future we want and how to work towards it can help ensure that these decisions are made in ways that benefit us all. Public AI is an alternative to the paradigm of centralized corporate ownership—AI as public infrastructure, accountable to the public, and designed for public benefit.
Tech CEOs have the platforms to share their versions of our future AI world. Hollywood and news media dystopias are showing us others. These futures are not inevitable. Now it's time to share your Protopian Public AI vision.
ABOUT PUBLIC AI:
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is rapidly advancing, reshaping work, relationships, creativity, and community. Financial and environmental resources, policies, and norms are solidifying. The benefits could be huge, but so could the risks, and global society has many urgent, critical decisions to make. Compelling narratives and shared visions of the future we want and how to work towards it can help ensure that these decisions are made in ways that benefit us all. Public AI is an alternative to the paradigm of centralized corporate ownership—AI as public infrastructure, accountable to the public, and designed for public benefit.
Tech CEOs have the platforms to share their versions of our future AI world. Hollywood and news media dystopias are showing us others. These futures are not inevitable. Now it's time to share your Protopian Public AI vision.
ABOUT PUBLIC AI:
Public AI is the concept of AI as public infrastructure—provisioned like electricity, water, roads, libraries, or the Internet
itself. Public AI could be created by one or more governments working
together, or through other collaborative and non-commercial entities
with a mission to support the public good. Its basic principles:
It is publicly accessible ensuring AI delivers benefits to all.
It is publicly accessible ensuring AI delivers benefits to all.
It delivers permanent public goods ensuring AI is a reliable foundation.
THE GOAL OF THE PRIZE
We’re looking for short stories that:
1. Incorporate positive visions of an AI-enabled future that foreground Public AI.
2. Help the public understand how we can shape an AI-based state for the public good.
3. Inspire and empower us all to imagine and create the AI future we want.
4. Give us a north star, and ideas for how to move towards it.
5. Bring to life the complexities, tradeoffs and paths of action to maximize human flourishing.
Some possible story prompts
How can we restructure AI development and deployment to serve rather than exploit human creativity?
How can AI systems support human adaptability and climate resilience rather than enabling surveillance and control?
What laws, institutions, or incentives are needed to ensure AI is used to augment human capabilities instead of taking away human jobs?
What new imaginaries, institutions, mechanisms, or processes could enable creating synergies between social, technical, ecological, and legal design of AI systems?
What needs to happen to give society as a whole, rather than a few powerful players, the deciding voice on what kinds of AI get developed and how they’re used?
RESOURCES & LINKS
We have collected some relevant research and ideas to help you think about public AI stories and futures. This is not required background for participating in the contest, but inspiration and jumping-off points for those who'd like to learn more.
- Public AI Network | What is public AI?
- Public AI White Paper | Comprehensive framework for developing and deploying AI systems as public infrastructure with democratic oversight
- Collective Governance for AI - Metagov guidance on points of intervention
<3 SPECIAL THANKS TO CCI <3
The Public AI Prize is made possible by the Center for Cultural Innovation.
This prize is sponsored by the Public AI Network. Judges for the Public AI Prize include Gideon Lichfield, Kevin Kelly, Arati Prabhakar, Deji Bryce Olukotun, and Hannu Rajaniemi.
DEMOCRATIC FUTURES PRIZE CATEGORY
The Democratic Futures Prize
Democratic institutions, values, and civic organization struggle to keep pace with a rapidly changing world. They face opposition from authoritarians and entrenched interests, and skepticism from those who live with their failures. Modern networking, information-gathering, and decision-making technologies offer new ways for people to collectively participate in decisions at all levels of society. Global society faces crises that transcend borders. If we are to survive and thrive through the coming technological, environmental, and economic upheavals, we need to develop solutions in ways that gather input from—and benefit—everyone.
Democratic futures go beyond incremental reforms of electoral systems to reimagine the mechanisms of both representative and direct forms of democracy, and the societal structures needed to enable them. They follow the principle that decisions made for a society should be made by the members of that society, balancing broad-based input with protection of rights. History has shown the imagination required to expand—and the dangers of trying to curtail—who gets input and how, and what rights are protected for whom.
Some key features of democratic futures:
- DELIBERATION: There are ways for people to learn about, debate, and come to conclusions about major issues.
- CONSENT: People have some method of agreeing to the structures of decision-making, if not always the outcomes.
- CONSTRAINT: There are limits on what those in power can do, how long they can hold that power, and how they can hold onto it.
We’re looking for short stories that:
1. Incorporate positive visions of democratic futures at any scale – local, national, or global.
2. Show how we can shape democratic futures for the public good.
3. Inspire and empower us all to imagine and create the futures we want.
4. Give us a north star, and ideas for how to move towards it.
5. Bring to life the complexities, tradeoffs and paths of action to maximize human flourishing.
1. Incorporate positive visions of democratic futures at any scale – local, national, or global.
2. Show how we can shape democratic futures for the public good.
3. Inspire and empower us all to imagine and create the futures we want.
4. Give us a north star, and ideas for how to move towards it.
5. Bring to life the complexities, tradeoffs and paths of action to maximize human flourishing.
Guiding Questions
RESOURCES & LINKS
We have collected some relevant research and ideas to help you think about collective self-governance stories and futures. This is not required background for participating in the contest, but inspiration and jumping-off points for those who'd like to learn more.
- Democracy 2076 Democratic Stories Research | Data on narratives about democracy and governance, and the types of heroes that appeal to different populations
-
The Protagonist Problem | Alternatives to individual heroes
<3 SPECIAL THANKS TO DEMOCRACY NOTES <3
The Democratic Futures Prize is made possible by Democracy Notes.
This prize is sponsored by Metagov. Judges for the Democratic Futures prize include Ruthanna Emrys Gordon, Karl Schroeder, Annalee Newitz, Ida Yoshinaga, and Henry Farrell.