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The World As It Ought to Be
What if the future didn't have to be dystopian?
In a time when every headline screams of crisis and many governments seek power instead of solutions, these stories dare to ask a radical What would it be like to create a better world?
From a professor who plants the seeds of democratic renewal in high school classrooms to farmers who fight climate change through a neighborhood newsletter; from activists who create tools that make corporate power transparent to artists who transform a city's business environment with celebratory murals-here are fantasies, not of perfection, but of possibility.
Meet Sandra Oaks, who transforms American democracy by remaking a generation, knowing she'll never live to see the full results. Follow Grace Larsen-Hever as she turns local weather predictions into a movement that helps farmers store carbon while protecting their crops. Watch Jason Novak discover that the solutions to his Ohio hometown's struggles might be found in the cooperative markets of Berlin. See Abby Farmer find the one person in Missouri who can stop the legislature in its tracks until it passes the climate law the state desperately needs.
In Sauk Water, Illinois, residents use Abraham Lincoln's own consensus-building strategy to implement ranked choice voting and transform their local politics. In Ohio, a construction contractor helps homeless families build their own cooperative apartment building while learning that sweat equity creates stronger communities than charity ever could. In Hollywood, a band of actresses goes on strike against the toxic masculinity of the movie industry.
These are stories about neighbors who choose cooperation over tribalism, and about citizens who reach out bravely to construct the world they want to live in. Neither utopian nor naive, these tales explore the messy, complicated, deeply human work of making things better. They imagine not a perfect world, but a perfectible one-where democracy can be strengthened, where communities can thrive, and where justice can be built from the ground up.
Every solution in these pages uses technology and methods available today. No miracle innovations. No superhuman leaders. Just ordinary people applying existing tools in creative ways, building change that starts small but grows like seeds scattered on fertile ground.
The first book in the Protopia Series, this collection of linked short stories is for readers who loved A Paradise Built in Hell, The Ministry for the Future, or The Dispossessed. It's for fans of near-future science fiction who appreciate the social sciences. But most of all, it's for everyone who is ready to see the good guys win for a change.
In a time when every headline screams of crisis and many governments seek power instead of solutions, these stories dare to ask a radical What would it be like to create a better world?
From a professor who plants the seeds of democratic renewal in high school classrooms to farmers who fight climate change through a neighborhood newsletter; from activists who create tools that make corporate power transparent to artists who transform a city's business environment with celebratory murals-here are fantasies, not of perfection, but of possibility.
Meet Sandra Oaks, who transforms American democracy by remaking a generation, knowing she'll never live to see the full results. Follow Grace Larsen-Hever as she turns local weather predictions into a movement that helps farmers store carbon while protecting their crops. Watch Jason Novak discover that the solutions to his Ohio hometown's struggles might be found in the cooperative markets of Berlin. See Abby Farmer find the one person in Missouri who can stop the legislature in its tracks until it passes the climate law the state desperately needs.
In Sauk Water, Illinois, residents use Abraham Lincoln's own consensus-building strategy to implement ranked choice voting and transform their local politics. In Ohio, a construction contractor helps homeless families build their own cooperative apartment building while learning that sweat equity creates stronger communities than charity ever could. In Hollywood, a band of actresses goes on strike against the toxic masculinity of the movie industry.
These are stories about neighbors who choose cooperation over tribalism, and about citizens who reach out bravely to construct the world they want to live in. Neither utopian nor naive, these tales explore the messy, complicated, deeply human work of making things better. They imagine not a perfect world, but a perfectible one-where democracy can be strengthened, where communities can thrive, and where justice can be built from the ground up.
Every solution in these pages uses technology and methods available today. No miracle innovations. No superhuman leaders. Just ordinary people applying existing tools in creative ways, building change that starts small but grows like seeds scattered on fertile ground.
The first book in the Protopia Series, this collection of linked short stories is for readers who loved A Paradise Built in Hell, The Ministry for the Future, or The Dispossessed. It's for fans of near-future science fiction who appreciate the social sciences. But most of all, it's for everyone who is ready to see the good guys win for a change.
233 pages, Kindle Edition
Published November 2, 2025
1 person is currently reading
2 people want to read
About the author
Naomi Rivkis
2 books1 followerNaomi Rivkis was born in 1970 in New York City, a time and a place when anything seemed possible. She learned to be an activist at the University of Chicago, and a writer at Clarion West Writer's Workshop. Both skills went dormant for many years, while she worked as a massage therapist and raised children, but they were available when needed.
In 2024, she and her family moved to the Netherlands, where she lives now with her husband, her brother-of-choice, occasional drop-in offspring, and four cats. She sings and drums with the band Kaleidofolk, which performs mostly at science fiction and filk conventions.
In 2024, she and her family moved to the Netherlands, where she lives now with her husband, her brother-of-choice, occasional drop-in offspring, and four cats. She sings and drums with the band Kaleidofolk, which performs mostly at science fiction and filk conventions.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
March 8, 2026
Disclaimer: I received an Advanced Review Copy (ARC) from Reedsy Discovery to review before publication. This review was previously published on Reedsy Discovery.
The World As It Ought to Be comprises sixteen stories that feel especially resonant for a U.S. audience reckoning with the visible strain on American democracy.
As its foundational structure, the book poses a practical question: where does meaningful change begin in the absence or failure of democratic or public services? In Rivkis’s vision, it starts with a seed—an idea shared between allies responding to some form of systemic abandonment. A health clinic serving uninsured patients pushes back against a property developer's vision to replace their gathering space with a competitive real-estate venture. A scientist with a farming background builds an educational hub for Midwestern farmers, translating climate research into accessible practices like carbon-sequestering soil. A tech company rolls out an AI that links sustainable business practices with long-term profit, while a group of coders develops an app that transparently itemizes politicians’ actions for everyday citizens. These beginnings gradually spread, transforming individual frustrations into collective action.
Rivkis describes these transformations through the concept of “protopia”— a gradual progression of change rather than a linear leap to perfection. The idea carries a refreshing emotional charge for readers accustomed to doomscrolling through political crises and policy setbacks.
The World As It Ought to Be often reads like cozy speculative fiction, imagining systemic conflicts approached through neighborly cooperation and civic creativity. In a sense, it shares DNA with the “hopepunk” sci-fi tradition: novels like Becky Chambers’s Monk & Robot series (A Psalm for the Wild-Built and A Prayer for the Crown-Shy) in which optimism is a core tenet of social change. This tone gives the collection its warmth and accessibility, making complex social questions feel grounded in everyday relationships rather than abstract ideology.
The book is strongest when it complicates its own optimism. One chapter, “Beyond Borders,” explores the fallout from doxxing an innocent family, forcing them to sever public-facing ties to protect one another. The uneasy resolution underscores Rivkis’s larger point that protopia is not a destination but an ongoing negotiation among ever-competing values. Setbacks, compromises, and unintended consequences remain part of the process.
At times, the stories lean a little too neatly toward inspirational messaging, but the collection’s willingness to acknowledge friction gives its hopeful vision more credibility. The fact that Rivkis has two more books planned in this series gives me hope that she’ll explore the nuances of change in even thornier conflicts that plague us today.
The World As It Ought to Be comprises sixteen stories that feel especially resonant for a U.S. audience reckoning with the visible strain on American democracy.
As its foundational structure, the book poses a practical question: where does meaningful change begin in the absence or failure of democratic or public services? In Rivkis’s vision, it starts with a seed—an idea shared between allies responding to some form of systemic abandonment. A health clinic serving uninsured patients pushes back against a property developer's vision to replace their gathering space with a competitive real-estate venture. A scientist with a farming background builds an educational hub for Midwestern farmers, translating climate research into accessible practices like carbon-sequestering soil. A tech company rolls out an AI that links sustainable business practices with long-term profit, while a group of coders develops an app that transparently itemizes politicians’ actions for everyday citizens. These beginnings gradually spread, transforming individual frustrations into collective action.
Rivkis describes these transformations through the concept of “protopia”— a gradual progression of change rather than a linear leap to perfection. The idea carries a refreshing emotional charge for readers accustomed to doomscrolling through political crises and policy setbacks.
The World As It Ought to Be often reads like cozy speculative fiction, imagining systemic conflicts approached through neighborly cooperation and civic creativity. In a sense, it shares DNA with the “hopepunk” sci-fi tradition: novels like Becky Chambers’s Monk & Robot series (A Psalm for the Wild-Built and A Prayer for the Crown-Shy) in which optimism is a core tenet of social change. This tone gives the collection its warmth and accessibility, making complex social questions feel grounded in everyday relationships rather than abstract ideology.
The book is strongest when it complicates its own optimism. One chapter, “Beyond Borders,” explores the fallout from doxxing an innocent family, forcing them to sever public-facing ties to protect one another. The uneasy resolution underscores Rivkis’s larger point that protopia is not a destination but an ongoing negotiation among ever-competing values. Setbacks, compromises, and unintended consequences remain part of the process.
At times, the stories lean a little too neatly toward inspirational messaging, but the collection’s willingness to acknowledge friction gives its hopeful vision more credibility. The fact that Rivkis has two more books planned in this series gives me hope that she’ll explore the nuances of change in even thornier conflicts that plague us today.
January 10, 2026
The World As It Ought to Be: Stories From a Protopian Future by Naomi Rivkis is a compact, clear-eyed expression of hopepunk at work.
Across sixteen short stories, Rivkis sketches futures where deeply familiar social problems are met not with cynicism or collapse, but with competence, cooperation, and moral imagination. The characters are drawn quickly but vividly, often with just a few deft strokes, and the obstacles they face are recognizable reflections of today’s political, economic, and social tensions. In a handful of cases, characters reappear, allowing us to glimpse how one hard-won solution becomes the seed of a new challenge.
What these stories do exceptionally well is remind the reader that solutions are not mysterious. The barriers are rarely technical. They are human. Fear, inertia, misaligned incentives, and power distortions stand in the way. In Rivkis’s protopian futures, people choose to act anyway.
Because each story unfolds in only a few hundred words, conflicts move briskly from problem to resolution. That economy is part of the book’s charm and its provocation. Again and again, I found myself wishing for more space. Not because the solutions felt unearned, but because the real-world complexity they gesture toward deserves longer exploration. Readers familiar with works like Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson may feel a similar tension: we know what works, yet political and social systems repeatedly frustrate implementation.
Seen that way, this collection reads less like a set of fully developed futures and more like a series of well-aimed apertures. Each story opens a door, lets in light, and then closes just as the room starts to get interesting.
For readers seeking hope that is practical rather than sentimental, and futures shaped by people doing the hard work of cooperation, this book delivers. I only hope Rivkis returns to some of these worlds with the narrative space to let their complexities fully breathe.
I received an ARC through BookSirens. Thank you.
Across sixteen short stories, Rivkis sketches futures where deeply familiar social problems are met not with cynicism or collapse, but with competence, cooperation, and moral imagination. The characters are drawn quickly but vividly, often with just a few deft strokes, and the obstacles they face are recognizable reflections of today’s political, economic, and social tensions. In a handful of cases, characters reappear, allowing us to glimpse how one hard-won solution becomes the seed of a new challenge.
What these stories do exceptionally well is remind the reader that solutions are not mysterious. The barriers are rarely technical. They are human. Fear, inertia, misaligned incentives, and power distortions stand in the way. In Rivkis’s protopian futures, people choose to act anyway.
Because each story unfolds in only a few hundred words, conflicts move briskly from problem to resolution. That economy is part of the book’s charm and its provocation. Again and again, I found myself wishing for more space. Not because the solutions felt unearned, but because the real-world complexity they gesture toward deserves longer exploration. Readers familiar with works like Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson may feel a similar tension: we know what works, yet political and social systems repeatedly frustrate implementation.
Seen that way, this collection reads less like a set of fully developed futures and more like a series of well-aimed apertures. Each story opens a door, lets in light, and then closes just as the room starts to get interesting.
For readers seeking hope that is practical rather than sentimental, and futures shaped by people doing the hard work of cooperation, this book delivers. I only hope Rivkis returns to some of these worlds with the narrative space to let their complexities fully breathe.
I received an ARC through BookSirens. Thank you.
March 11, 2026
The World As It Ought to Be presents a thoughtful and imaginative exploration of how communities might build a better future using the tools and ideas already within reach. Naomi Rivkis crafts a collection of interconnected stories that challenge the assumption that the future must inevitably be dystopian, instead offering narratives grounded in cooperation, civic engagement, and practical innovation.
One of the most compelling aspects of the book is its focus on ordinary people creating meaningful change. From educators inspiring democratic renewal to farmers developing local solutions to climate challenges, each story highlights the potential of individuals and communities to reshape their environment through persistence and collaboration. The characters and situations feel both aspirational and believable, making the vision of a more hopeful future feel attainable rather than distant.
By blending social insight with near future speculative storytelling, The World As It Ought to Be offers readers a refreshing perspective on progress and possibility. It is a work that encourages reflection while presenting practical optimism, making it particularly appealing to readers who enjoy socially conscious fiction that imagines constructive paths forward.
One of the most compelling aspects of the book is its focus on ordinary people creating meaningful change. From educators inspiring democratic renewal to farmers developing local solutions to climate challenges, each story highlights the potential of individuals and communities to reshape their environment through persistence and collaboration. The characters and situations feel both aspirational and believable, making the vision of a more hopeful future feel attainable rather than distant.
By blending social insight with near future speculative storytelling, The World As It Ought to Be offers readers a refreshing perspective on progress and possibility. It is a work that encourages reflection while presenting practical optimism, making it particularly appealing to readers who enjoy socially conscious fiction that imagines constructive paths forward.
March 13, 2026
This book is a refreshing change from the usual dystopian stories. Instead of focusing on everything going wrong, it imagines how ordinary people can work together to actually make things better. Each story explores realistic solutions to problems like climate change, democracy, and community building using tools that already exist today.
What makes the book special is its sense of hope without feeling unrealistic. The characters are thoughtful, determined, and human, and the changes they create start small but grow in meaningful ways.
If you enjoy thoughtful, hopeful near-future fiction about real-world change, this is definitely worth reading.
What makes the book special is its sense of hope without feeling unrealistic. The characters are thoughtful, determined, and human, and the changes they create start small but grow in meaningful ways.
If you enjoy thoughtful, hopeful near-future fiction about real-world change, this is definitely worth reading.
March 22, 2026
A refreshing and hopeful take on the future, this book offers something rare optimism that feels realistic. Each story shows how small, practical actions can lead to meaningful change, with characters that feel grounded and relatable. It avoids the idea of a perfect world and instead focuses on what’s possible today. The message is inspiring without being overwhelming. I finished it feeling genuinely uplifted. A thoughtful and motivating read.
March 22, 2026
This collection beautifully blends imagination with real-world solutions, creating a vision of the future that feels achievable. The stories focus on ordinary people making extraordinary impacts, which makes them easy to connect with. Each chapter builds on a shared sense of progress and hope. It’s engaging, emotionally resonant, and refreshing. Perfect for anyone tired of dystopian themes. A creative and uplifting book.
March 22, 2026
An engaging collection that redefines what progress can look like in today’s world. The writing is clear and compelling, making it easy to get immersed in each story. Every chapter offers a different perspective on creating positive change. It’s inspiring while still acknowledging real challenges. The focus on people and community makes it relatable. A hopeful reminder that a better future is possible.
March 11, 2026
The World As It Ought to Be by Naomi Rivkis is an uplifting and inspiring read! These stories imagine a hopeful future where creativity and solutions matter more than crisis and power. The book sparks optimism and makes you dream of a better world. I highly recommend it to anyone who loves thought-provoking, heart-filled fiction, it’s a joyful vision of what the future can be!
March 14, 2026
This book asks a simple but powerful question: What if the future could actually be better? The stories provide thoughtful and inspiring answers.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews