Q1 Art of the Near Future award to Ken Liu's "Good Stories" & submit and refer for Q2
Submit your flash fiction (<1k words) and refer short stories by June 30 for our Q2 awards celebrating art imagining life in the world a few months to a few years from now.
The Art of the Near Future World project I announced in March proposed celebrating and creating short form fiction of our near future world, the world a few months to a few years away.
And at least that vision of a near future has arrived: after a group of us met on April 24th, we are thrilled to make our first award to “Good Stories” by Ken Liu in Future for his story about the fiction we might play to preserve a human role in AI created art and the different ways we might reject AI created text.
It was energizing to chat with Ken to share news of the award, and Ken was gracious and excited about our project. The conversation was another delightful reminder of the joys of giving unexpected praise and a gift to someone else. And I felt proud to send out our project’s first $500 check to him.
A great, demanding thing about the near future is that it’s always coming up soon. We’re excited to call for referrals and submissions for our Q2 awards. Submit and refer by June 30, 2025, and we’ll meet shortly thereafter to make our next awards.
$250 award for the best flash fiction fragment (< 1,000 words) in our near future. Submit here.
$250 award for the best short story published this year in our near future
$100 referral bonus for the first person to refer the winning short story. Refer here.
And thank you for sharing with friends near and far who may be interested in this work.
Till the near future,
Ramon
About Art of the Near Future World
Art of the Near Future World is a new project by Ramon Gonzalez celebrating and creating short fiction about our near future world, the possible worlds a few months to a few years in the future. And we’re doing that in community and doing it fast every quarter.
The world can change quickly. Art can help us imagine the many possible folds of our near future world, and by more vividly imagining those paths, perhaps help all of us shape them.
We made our first $500 award in Q1 2025 to “Good Stories” by Ken Liu in Future for his story about the fiction we might play to preserve a human role in AI created art and the different ways we might reject AI created text. Submit your own flash fiction and refer other stories by June 30th for our Q2 awards.
If you'd like to be more involved – helping with our events, curate fiction, take this more online, or bring this further to life and scale – please get in touch: art.near.future.world@gmail.com. And subscribe below to follow along.