Protocolized is hosting a two-day online writing workshop in February 2026 featuring four events: a public retrospective on the magazine's first year of publishing (80+ posts and 3 anthologies), a public workshop on writing with AI tools, an invite-only writers' room, and a world-building session. The workshop aims to deepen protocol studies and science fiction while experimenting with emerging writing technologies and established creative principles.
Protocol fiction functions as a navigational technology for readers entering unfamiliar narrative spaces, much like Poe's protagonist using rope to map his prison cell. The emerging genre uses structural constraints and impossible premises to help audiences understand and move through complex conceptual environments.
Spencer Nitkey
Elizabeth Maher's series concludes with a narrative about Janice Spurlock, who designs the Concord Settlement with deliberate impermanence—structures built to be completely dismantled and leave no trace. The story explores how one woman anticipated cultural collapse by engineering everything, from buildings to records, to vanish without archaeological evidence.
Elizabeth Maher
Spencer Nitkey's story follows Egrol, a worker on Kupiter who envies ORCA pilots like Shreea for their agency in decision-making, as he discovers that meaningful work and autonomous choice still exist in pockets of their automated world. The narrative explores how different forms of labor—from directed emergence to pilot coordination—create hierarchies of agency and desire.
Spencer Nitkey