Join the Jamverse Contest: Build a Sci-Fi Universe's World
Join Me in Jamverse
Venkatesh Rao invites fiction writers to contribute to Jamverse, a near-future Earth setting with strange but non-magical rules. A worldbuilding contest runs until July 31. Rao shares two microfictions he wrote as warmups: 'Ziploc Protocol' about smuggling jailbreaking tech, and 'The Thicket' about exurban hinterlands. The universe currently has 15 stories across 4 cycles by 4 authors, plus contributions from others. Early contributors can easily introduce big ideas. Recommended reading includes key stories from each cycle.
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.