Newsletter #1 - An Update from the Possibilia Team
the first newsletter from Possibilia Magazine
Updates from the Possibilia team:
We are thrilled to announce that after a (painfully long) hiatus, Possibilia Magazine is back in action!
That being said, some changes are being made. We are rolling out an updated online publishing schedule, starting this summer.
From here on out, we will be pushing a story + original art + nonfic companion piece once quarterly, as online promotion for our physical print magazine. Before, we aimed for twice monthly, along with bonus content from the team in-between. Being a small team, and with our priorities largely shifting to the print magazine, the new schedule will give us the bandwidth we need to create something excellent. We are still working on ways to reward our paid subscribers on Substack going forward, so stay tuned!
We’ll also be sending out newsletters monthly with updates on the pub, our tips on writing optimistic & realistic sci-fi, and staff-picked projects that are happening that inspire us. Look for those between stories.
In addition, each newsletter will contain our current “bounty board” for topics we really want to see covered in the magazine. So if you’re an author or field expert and a topic catches your eye, we’d be thrilled to receive a submission of a story or essay from you via our submissions pipeline! Also feel free to DM us if you’re thinking about submitting work but have questions.
That brings us to…
The Possibilia Bounty Board:
Concept for Creation: Don’t neglect the process.
If you’re writing sci-fi, researching frontier tech, designing social systems, or starting a project, your work isn’t just speculation—it’s infrastructure. We’re not here for exclusively-vibes-based worldbuilding or aesthetic utopias with no wiring. We want blueprints for the future.
But first, we must identify what’s broken. Whether it’s brittle economic systems, janky legacy code running critical systems, or an arts economy that rewards virality over vision, building the future begins with a clear-eyed diagnosis of what no longer works.
Then you move to the scaffolding: what created the conditions for change? Was it a breakthrough in materials science? A shift in public values? A rogue governance model that somehow didn’t implode? This is the part people skip—but it’s where the story lives, and where we share the crucial information about the process with one another.
And finally: who built the new system, and how? What frictions did they face? What had to be scrapped, salvaged, or reimagined? Iterative blueprints include the whole design process—the false starts, the structural compromises, the sneaky genius workarounds. If you’re not showing the messy middle, you’re not writing the future—you’re daydreaming it.
Collapse is narratively efficient. It’s dramatic, clean, and emotionally obvious. But progress is hard. And stories that map out real progress—technical, social, emotional—are more than fiction or essays or case studies. They’re tools. They’re memetic infrastructure for the future. So if you’re building anything, narratively or materially, don’t just give us the destination. Show us how we get there.
Staff Pick of the Month: Monumental Labs
This week’s editor-selected project is a bold — and honestly, beautiful — fusion of ancient craftsmanship and advanced technology. Monumental Labs is reviving the art of stone sculpture through robotic fabrication, using modern tools not to replace tradition, but to preserve it. In a digital culture that’s increasingly ephemeral, they’re asking a provocative question: what if durability, ornament, and cultural memory were the next frontier of innovation?
Their process is a hybrid marvel. Industrial robots handle the early phases of stonework with incredible precision, carving raw blocks into initial forms. Then, human sculptors step in to do what robots can’t—infuse nuance, detail, and soul. It’s a true collaboration between algorithm and artisan, one that doesn’t romanticize the past or fetishize the future, but threads them together in service of something both timeless and new.
More than just sculpture, Monumental Labs is building infrastructure for cultural permanence. They’re creating a pipeline for beauty to re-enter public life — at scale — and they’re doing it in a way that expands access to traditional techniques while honoring their complexity. This is what applied optimism looks like: not retreating from the future, but using its tools to keep our shared artistic heritage alive, evolving, and embedded in what comes next.
Thanks for keeping up with Possibilia and all that we’re doing!
We appreciate your support for optimistic, realistic science fiction.