What if the future didn't have to be dystopian?

In a time when every headline screams of crisis, The World As It Ought to Be dares to ask a different question: What would it actually look like to build a better world?

This collection of linked short stories follows ordinary people using tools and methods that exist right now -- no miracle technologies, no superhuman heroes -- to strengthen democracy, fight climate change, and build the kinds of communities we desperately need.

Meet the professor planting seeds of democratic renewal in high school classrooms. The farmers turning a neighborhood newsletter into a climate action movement. The activists building tools that make corporate power visible. The artists transforming a city one mural at a time.

These are not perfect people in a perfect world. They are people like us, in a world like ours choosing cooperation over tribalism, and discovering that justice can be built from the ground up.

Perfect for fans of Becky Chambers, Kim Stanley Robinson's The Ministry for the Future, and Rebecca Solnit's A Paradise Built in Hell.

"Real people discovering practical solutions for preserving the social unity that sustains us. I want to live in the world Naomi is building." -- Janice Erlbaum, author of Girlbomb

Book 1 of the Protopia Series. For readers ready to see the good guys win for a change.