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The World As It Ought to Be: Stories From a Protopian Future
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
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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 of 1 review
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.
Displaying 1 of 1 review