I just contributed a couple of microfictions to a project I’m helping bootstrap: The young and promising Jamverse extended protocol fiction universe. I’d like to invite the fiction writers among you to jump in as well.
There’s currently a contest going on for worldbuilding artifacts, with a deadline of July 31, to help bootstrap the universe. If you’re looking for a fun way to kill a few hours sometime in the next week, explore Jamverse and enter the contest.
Jamverse (named for Fred Pohl’s dictum that the science-fiction writer’s job is to predict not the automobile but the traffic jam) is a near-future Earth setting full of strange (but not magical) rules. Currently there are 15 full short stories across 4 loosely coupled story cycles by 4 authors, and a growing hopper of related world-building elements contributed by half an dozen others. The pump-priming is going well, and if this sort of thing interests you, now is the time to get in on the ground floor. It’s currently still pretty easy to introduce big, bold ideas into the universe without running into conflicts.
As a warmup to more serious contributions, I wrote two (non-competing) microfictions for the contest. Both are stand-alone readable, though you’ll get more out of both if you’ve read some of the stories of the rest of the universe.
My first entry is Ziploc Protocol, a microfiction that explores how a piece of jailbreaking technology might be smuggled across a border into a highly protocolized jurisdiction called Zoothesia to subvert some of its protocols. Read it here.
My second entry is a mood/vibe piece. A microfiction introducing The Thicket, a kind of tiling element for the background interstices of the world. The Thicket is inspired by a nonfiction idea developed by Aneesh Sathe, and in the Jamverse, it refers to something like the future of the exurban hinterlands of metro areas today. The microfiction introduces the concept via a stand-alone vibe-y vignette. Read it here.
Jamverse has a lot of interesting elements both for readers and writers. There are strange augmented reality civic protocols, a train that runs halfway across the planet, a surreal folklore layer, and weird governance and public service models. I’m currently brainstorming my own top-level big idea to add.
Here’s a quick overview orientation (AI generated), and a codex of worldbuilding elements to let you jump in and contribute quickly. Browsing the latter should give you an immediate feel for the world.
If you plan to enter the contest (and I hope you do), you might want to read a couple of the key world-establishing stories of the 4 existing story cycles first.
I hope to spend a lot more time in Jamverse in the future. See you there!
Regular weekly nonfiction post coming over the weekend.