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 question: 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.

Come visit for a while in The World As It Ought to Be.

Author Biography

Naomi Rivkis was born in New York City in 1970, a time and place where anything seemed possible. She first learned to be an activist at the University of Chicago, and a writer at Clarion West Writer’s Workshop, before expanding both skills through frequent usage over the intervening years.

In 2024 she emigrated to the Netherlands, where she lives now with her husband, her chosen brother, and four cats. Multiple adult children drop in regularly. She is part of a folk music band called Kaleidofolk, which performs mostly within the science fiction community.