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Long Now is accepting pitches of essays, reported features, interviews, book reviews, shorter articles, fiction and poetry for Ideas, our living archive of long-term thinking. Below you'll find information on the kinds of stories we're looking for, how much we pay, and how to pitch us.
There is wisdom and clarity to be gained from taking the long view. Long Now Ideas gives our readers the context they need to take the long view on every issue we cover. Our stories rise above the ephemeral discourse and contextualize a given topic against a longer temporal backdrop, going further backwards and forwards in time than the typical news story. By ‘further’ we mean decades, at a minimum, and millennia, ideally. How did we get to now, a Long Now story asks, and where might we go from here? The ‘we’ of any Long Now story is ‘civilization.’
Assuming this vantage is not an abdication of the concerns of the here-and-now. On the contrary: we believe that today’s biggest challenges are best solved by understanding their deep origins and possible futures.
We’re after stories that apply this civilizational lens to inspire, educate, and surprise our readers across a variety of subjects and disciplines: climate change and the environment; the preservation of knowledge; the rise and fall of civilizations; the longevity of institutions; biotechnology and artificial intelligence; the history of science and technology; architecture, design and urbanism; the nature of time; space travel; globalization; migration; economics; governance; maintenance; and infrastructure (both physical and intellectual).
"Now" is never just a moment. The Long Now is the recognition that the precise moment you're in grows out of the past and is a seed for the future. The longer your sense of Now, the more past and future it includes.
- Brian Eno, Long Now Co-Founder
The Long Now Foundation is a nonprofit established in 01996 to foster long-term thinking and responsibility. Our work encourages imagination at the timescale of civilization — the next and last 10,000 years — a timespan we call the long now.
We hope to help each other be good ancestors. We hope to preserve possibilities for the future.
Below you’ll find some links to recent stories to give you a sense of our tone, topical range, and what we’re looking for. We’re hoping to expand that topical range — and the kinds of stories we publish — considerably. That’s another way of saying that just because you might not see the kind of story you’d like to pitch represented below does not mean we wouldn’t be interested in publishing it.
Essays
Reported, argument-driven, or photo essays (800 - 1,800 words)
Features
Long-form reported narrative features (1,200 - 2,500 words)
Conversations
Interviews with the thinkers, artists, and makers whose projects and ideas foster long-term thinking and responsibility (1,200 - 2,000 words)
Short-form Science Journalism, News, and History
Articles breaking down the latest long-term thinking news (scientific papers, studies, projects, trends), profiling fascinating and forgotten examples of long-term thinking from the past, or exploring how today’s technological interventions are being applied to the past to make us reconsider what we thought we knew (500 - 1,200 words)
Examples:
Science Fiction Stories
Imaginative speculations at the timescale of civilization. We’re interested in stories that take unexpected angles on the future and the past, honing in on details that you only see when you take a longer view. (1000 - 4000 words)
Poems
Work that engages with long-term thinking and time in whatever ways you see fit. No restrictions on form or length.
Payment varies depending on the kind of story, the reporting involved, and the time commitment. Payment starts at $600 for features and ranges between $300 - $600 for essays, interviews, book reviews, science journalism, and news articles. We pay $100 for science fiction stories and $25 per poem (with a maximum of four poems per submission).
For non-fiction pitches: send an email to [email protected] with “Pitch” in the subject line followed by a proposed headline. In the email, describe what you're hoping to write about and how it's relevant to Long Now's topical and temporal focus. If you're pitching an essay, give us a sense of the argument you're making. If you're pitching a feature, give us a sense of the narrative structure, who you plan to speak to, and any other key logistical details. If your pitch is time-sensitive, let us know. You're welcome to provide relevant bylines and a brief bio.
For fiction and poetry, send an email to [email protected] with a subject line noting whether your submission is fiction or poetry. Attach a draft of your submission to the email. Feel free to contextualize the work with a sentence or two in the body of the email.
We are a relatively small team of editors and reviewers. While we endeavor to respond to pitches and submissions in a timely manner (within three weeks), we cannot guarantee a response to all inquiries. If you don’t hear from us within a month, it is likely that we are not interested in your submission.
Big trees, old trees, and especially big old trees have always been objects of reverence. From Athena’s sacred olive on the Acropolis to the unmistakable ginkgo leaf prevalent in Japanese art and fashion during the Edo period, our profound admiration for slow plants spans time and place as well as cultures and religions. At the same time, the utilization and indeed the desecration of ancient trees is a common feature of history. In the modern period, the American West, more than any other region, witnessed contradictory efforts to destroy and protect ancient conifers. Historian Jared Farmer reflects on our long-term relationships with long-lived trees, and considers the future of oldness on a rapidly changing planet.
Our bodies, our houses, our land, our space - we humans don’t always like to share. Author Bette Adriaanse talks with Chelsea T. Hicks, and virtual guests Brian Eno and Aqui Thami, about property and sharing, and how to make a lasting positive change in the way we share the world with each other. Alternating between thinkers and doers, whose actions help foster long term equality, this evening explores the choices that can be made to share time and resources with others in radical ways.
Chelsea T. Hicks is an author, activist, and citizen of the Osage Nation.
Brian Eno is a musician, artist, writer, and co-founder of Earth Percent and The Long Now Foundation.
Aqui Thami is an artist, activist, and Thangmi woman of the Kiratima peoples of the Himalayas.
With thousands of members from all around the world, the Long Now community has a wide range of perspectives, stories, and experiences to offer. We're excited to showcase our annual curated set of short Ignite Talks created and given by the Long Now Members themselves. Presenting on the subjects of their choice, speakers have precisely 5 minutes to amuse, educate, enlighten, or inspire the audience.
Our speakers and their talks:
Natasha Blum: Famous Last Words: Self-Discovery for Life, Death, and Rebirth
Dave Elfving: My AI Co-Teacher
Altay Guvench: Ultraviolet Exploration: Fluorescence in Nature
Trevor Haldenby: Are You Now or Have You Ever Been a Fossil?
Andra Keay: Robotopia
Alyssa Ravasio: Recreation for Restoration
Jason Roberts: To State The Obvious: Addressing History's Blind Spot
Ya'el Shatz: From Dirt to Treasure
Sarah Cameron Sunde: Water Sensing: Proposals Toward Living on Tidal Time
Diane Tate: Diving into Oral History
Natalia Vasquez: Visualizing Climate Futures
Jason Winn: Stories as Ancient Maps: A Tale Told for Ten Thousand Five Hundred Years
Connie Yang: Nonagenarians Doing Shit
Join us in-person and online for a fun and fast-paced event full of surprising and thoughtful ideas.
Join us for a thought-provoking conversation between two Hugo award-winning science fiction authors, Becky Chambers and Annalee Newitz. Known for challenging classic science fiction tropes such as war, violence, and colonialism, both authors create vivid and immersive worlds that are filled with non-human persons, peace, and a subtle sense of hope. The authors will discuss what it means to take these alternative themes seriously, delve into their writing & world building process, and explore how science fiction can help us imagine new futures that can make sense of our current civilizational struggles.
Doors are at 6pm; drinks & small plates are available to purchase. Club Fugazi will remain open and serving drinks after the talk, for further conversation. You can also tune in to the livestream on this page and our YouTube channel.
How can we turn the tide on species loss and help biodiversity and bioabundance flourish for millennia to come?
Ryan Phelan is Executive Director of Revive & Restore; the leading wildlife conservation organization promoting the incorporation of biotechnologies into standard conservation practice. Phelan will share the new Genetic Rescue Toolkit for conservation – a suite of biotechnology tools and conservation applications that offer hope and a path to recovery for threatened species. In this talk, Phelan will present examples of the toolkit in action, including corals that better withstand rising ocean temperatures, trees that withstand a fungal blight, and the genetic rescue of the black-footed ferret, once thought to be extinct.
Revive & Restore brings biotechnologies to conservation in responsible ways; from engaging local communities where ecological restorations are underway, to connecting stakeholders in disciplines like biotech, bioethics, conservation organizations and government agencies. Together, they are forging new paths to bioabundance in our changing world.
Ryan Phelan will be joined by forecaster and Long Now Board Member Paul Saffo for the Q&A to discuss long-term outcomes and the Intended Consequences framing used by Revive & Restore.
This event will take place the evenings of May 12th & May 13th at St. Joseph's Arts Society; there is one show each night, doors are at 7:00pm and the show starts at 8:00pm.
Arrive early, get a drink from the in-house bar and explore the intriguing installations at the St Joseph's Arts Society.
The Long Now Foundation has teamed up with Anthropocene Magazine (a publication of Future Earth) and Back Pocket Media to take the magazine’s new fiction series “The Climate Parables,” from the page to the stage.
The series starts with the idea that survival in the Anthropocene depends on upgrading not just our technology, but also our collective imagination. From there, acclaimed storytellers will perform work from some of the most creative science fiction writers such as Kim Stanley Robinson and Eliot Peper, speculating on what life could be like after we’ve actually mitigated climate change and adapted to chronic environmental stresses.
Think of it as climate reporting from the future. Tales of how we succeeded in harnessing new technology and science to work with nature, rather than against it. It’s all wrapped up in an evening of performed journalism that blends science and technology, fiction and non-fiction, video, art, and music. What could possibly go right?
"What first appears to be a wish for more time may turn out to be just one part of a simple, yet vast, desire for autonomy, meaning, and purpose." - Jenny Odell
Join us for an evening on long-term thinking with a talk & reading from Jenny Odell and conversation with Long Now's Executive Director Alexander Rose.
Artist and writer Jenny Odell brings her acutely insightful observations to the dominant framework of time, based on industrial and colonial worldviews, that is embedded within our societies. Addressing the inability to reconcile the artificially constructed time pressures of modern culture with planetary-scale crisis, she offers a series of histories, concepts, and places as "provocations that can defamiliarize an old language of time, while pointing in the direction of something else."
Tickets are bundled with a copy of the new book. Long Now Members purchase the book but get their usual complimentary tickets for the in-person event.
We'll have a pre-show bar at SFJAZZ and additional copies of Odell's new book for sale. Afterwards, attendees can gather at The Madrigal for further drinks and conversation. This evening is in partnership with The Booksmith and City Arts & Lectures.
Psychedelics and other mind-altering substances have been used for thousands of years across the world in religious, spiritual, celebratory, and healing contexts. Despite a half century of a "War on Drugs" in the United States, there has been a recent resurgence in public interest in ending drug prohibition and re-evaluating the roles these substances can play in modern society.
What can our several-thousand year history with these substances teach us about how they can be used in a modern society? What legal & cultural frameworks can be used to increase access to these substances, and what are the potential downsides of these frameworks? Ismail Ali works daily developing and implementing the legal and policy strategies that will define the next several decades of psychedelic access, and joins Long Now in an evening of exploring the deep history of psychedelics and what role they can play in our future.
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