Building and Burning Bridges
We’re pleased to announce the third protocol fiction contest of 2025, on the theme of Building and Burning Bridges. To enter:
Read the entirety of this contest description.
Write a thought provoking tale of 2500-5000 words that:
Explores the role of bridges in the run-up to conflict and in the aftermath.
Takes place in a protocolized milieu such as diplomacy.
Is fictional, though it can be inspired by real historical events.
Submit your story via this form by Midnight, Monday, December 1st.
Wait to hear back over the holidays.
Scroll to the end for details on logistics, but make sure to read this call for entries in its entirety. We’re trying to explore a broad but specific idea space with this contest!
This is our third Protocolized contest, and our most ambitious one yet. You may want to check out the entries and winners of our previous contests, Terminological Twists and Ghosts in Machines, to get a sense of our broader understanding of protocol fiction.
This time, we have a NEW resource for you: A virtual protocol fiction writers room, which will meet every other Thursday on our Discord, starting tomorrow, October 23, led by the winner of the first two contests, Spencer Nitkey (who is now a judge of this contest). Want to join the writers room? RSVP on the Summer of Protocols Discord.
By bridge, we mean both literal bridges and close physical or digital analogues, such as mountain passes, straits, tunnels, technical interconnection mechanisms between computer systems, and human cultural bridging functions such as translation and diplomacy.
In the following sections, we cover: examples of what we mean by bridges, hints on we will look for, suggested background readings and resources, and logistics.
Examples of Bridges
The best way to brainstorm for this contest is to start with a rich set of example “bridges.” We’ve compiled the following list to help you get started:
The literal bridges through history connecting the European and Asian sides of what is now Istanbul.
The Straits of Bosphorus, connecting the Black Sea to the Mediterranean (and in tension with the bridges across the straits).
Important natural passes, such as the Khyber pass, and straits like Malacca and Gibraltar
Rivers like the Mississippi that serve as important connectors of regions
Logistically important transportation corridors, such as rail, road, and marine routes, and ones of high political and military significance, such as the Bridge of No Return connecting North and South Korea, or the Wagah Border Crossing between India and Pakistan.
Technical bridges, such as the ones allowing transfers of funds between Ethereum L2 chains, the SWIFT system, various gateway protocols, “edge servers” on networks.
Complex physical infrastructures such as locks connecting bodies of water, systems to transfer railway carriages across incompatible gauge networks, intermodal containers, automobile ferries, and systems for connecting electrical grids. Think about unique ones too, such as the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project docking mechanism, the Channel Tunnel (which connects the UK to France, but also a right-hand-drive system to a left-hand-drive system).
Formal “bridge” human roles such as that of the Dragoman in the Ottoman empire, who served as interpreters and guides across Turkish, Arabic, Persian, and European languages, and hawala money changers.
Mediation roles played by religious figures, such as Andrew of Longimieu, a Dominican priest who served as a papal envoy to the Mongol empire
Historically important diplomats, such as von Metternich, Talleyrand, Zhang Qian, Ahmad ibn Fadan, and Megasthenes
Important “track 2” figures, such as travelers/traders like Marco Polo and Ibn Batuta, religious pilgrims like Xuanzang, and missionaries like the Jesuits, all of whom often ended up serving diplomatic and bridge-building functions.
“Conflict” bridges such as the Underground Railroad, blockade-runners in the US Civil War (think Gone With the Wind), smuggling routes, and tunnels under the Berlin Wall.
Modern professional diplomats, specializing in specific international relations.
Institutional relationship patterns like “sister city” schemes, exchange student programs, and foreign study scholarships, and larger transient events such as World Fairs, the Olympics.
Bottom-up cultural interchange mechanisms such as fusion music and cuisine.
Your story can involve as many or as few of these kinds of bridges as you like, but we recommend incorporating at least ONE technological (either physical or digital) actual bridge-like infrastructural element that plays a non-trivial role in the plot, and ONE human institutional or cultural bridge-like element, such as a diplomat or trader protagonist.
Hints and Suggestions
This contest topic is obviously vast and deep, and you can take your ideas in many directions. But here are some things we are looking for.
Tension between formal and informal human mechanisms: Diplomacy often involves a formal level of treaties, demarches, and carefully coded public statements, as well as a more free-form backroom process and “track 2” or side-channel efforts. Those can be in tension.
Displaced conflicts: Particularly in engineering conflicts involving standards and protocols, with billions at stake (think VHS vs. Betamax, USB-C vs. Lightning), seemingly innocuous engineering tradeoff discussions/negotiations turn into undeclared wars beneath superficial peace. You can also see these mechanisms play out in sporting rivalries.
MICE framework: Your story can be in the past or future, but should explore milieus, ideas, characters and events (MICE, in Orson Scott Card’s scheme) related to bridge-building AND bridge-burning. Both aspects are important — make sure to include a strong element of conflict, such as a brewing or recently concluded war. This can be a literal, bloody, kinetic war, or a bloodless “conceptual” war, such as a technical standards war. Avoid stories that are purely about building bridges. Though those can be exciting, that’s not what we’re looking for in this contest.
Think B-Plot Protagonists: Stories about building/burning bridges often center quiet, obscure “B-plot” figures of history — diplomats, bureaucrats, messengers, priests, traders, smugglers. Lean into this! We specifically do not want stories with “main character energy.” We want “side character energy!”
Liminality x Strange Rules: Bridges are by definition and construction liminal spaces, connecting spaces that are mutually incommensurable in some way, calling for translation. That makes them fertile objects for exploring the True North principle of protocol fiction: strange rules over special people. Think about what special and strange rules might apply in and around bridges, and exploit them!
Suggested Background Reading
While we hope to provoke a rich and ground-breaking set of stories that advance the art of protocol fiction, there are obviously many interesting stories that already fit the scope of our contest to some extent. We recommend watching/reading and reflecting on these for inspiration.
The Shawshank Redemption: An unimpressive seeming accountant tunnels out of prison while taking down a sadistic jailer in the process.
Escape to Victory: A soccer match between prisoners of war and their captors, and another tunnel!
Embassytown: Linguistic diplomacy constitutes the literal infrastructure of this story – it’s the translators that are the bridge here.
The Left Hand of Darkness: A classic novel, centered on a lone envoy who navigates the liminal space between two planets and pops between formal and informal channels to steer away from a looming conflict.
Cryptonomicon: Cables, finance rails, and code-of-conduct between clandestine communities form an atlas of bridges, one that will hopefully double as a safety net for civilizations in the future.
The Peripheral: A videogame-like technology serves as a diplomatic venue for three sides – one unsuspecting, one outraged, and one insidious.
There is also obviously rich inspiration to be found in real-world bridge-building/burning.
Check out Nils Gilman’s recent articles, Geneva’s New Diplomatic OS and Planetarity and the Future of Diplomacy
Look for inspiration in industrial and technological bridge building, such as this paper, On Languages for Dynamic Resource Scheduling Problems, which explores the subtle roles played by translators between corporate subcultures.
Explore the history of interesting bridge-building projects that played out amidst conflict, such as the Apollo Soyuz Test Project during the Cold War.
Explore famous literal bridge-burning episodes, such as Caesar burning the bridge over the Rhine in 55 BC, or Cortes burning his ships upon landing in Mexico in 1519.
Read up on famous standards wars in technology, and hard-fork episodes in blockchains.
Contest Details + Logistics
Your mission: tell an entertaining and thought-provoking tale that creatively explores the theme of building and burning bridges.
Length: 2500-5000 words
Format: Submit your story as a public Google doc, a ~100 word synopsis, and if applicable, your “writing with AI protocol” via this form.
Submission Deadline: Midnight, Monday, December 1st, 2025.
Number of Entries: One. If you submit multiple stories, we will consider the latest submission.
AI use: You are encouraged to use LLMs to help you write your story. In the case you do, please document your protocol as an endnote to your submission.
Acknowledgments: If you derive inspiration from existing ideas or world-building projects (such as Southbeast Asia), please note them in your submission with suitable links.
Prizes: The top three stories will be eligible for publication in Protocolized in addition to a cash prize (1st - $2500, 2nd - $2000, 3rd - $1500). Additional finalists, from places 4th to 10th, could be offered our standard $750 for a commissioned piece.
Judging: Decisions will be made by an internally constituted jury, with advisory input from a broader voting phase. This contest’s jury includes:
Venkatesh Rao, Editor
Timber Stinson-Schroff, Editor
James Langdon, Editorial Ops & Art
Spencer Nitkey, Guest Judge
Joshua Davis, Publishing Lead
Need some brainstorming support? Join the contest channel on our Discord and swap ideas and notes with fellow competitors!
Please review our standard submission guidelines page for some extra tips. We encourage you to make creative use of LLMs to compose your story (in which case we ask that you document and submit your “writing with AI” protocol along with your entry).
Check out past editions of Protocolized here.
Good luck!
