Finally, we are in a position to announce the winner of our Micronations competition, where we asked readers to invent their own micronation for the chance to win a copy of the new Lonely Planet book on home-made nations (or model states, or micronations; whatever you care to call them).

And the winner is Adam Kadmon, whose Terra Nova outline can be found below. Adam’s entry pushes towards the farthest limits of what a micronation could conceivably be, while actually making a modicum of sense and being entertaining to boot — a tricky balancing act that has been executed skilfully indeed.

Congratulations, Adam — a copy of the book is on its way to you.

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Terra Nova: proposal for a micronation of undersea spreading zones
Adam Kadmon
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The surface of the earth is constantly moving: loose plates grind, collide and rub past one another - but they also move apart. These sites of surface expansion are dubbed tectonic spreading zones, and they represent where new land is generated, causing both continents and seafloors to grow wider.

It is this new land, belched forth from the underside of the planet, that our micronation will claim.

There is the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, the Atlantic-Indian-Ridge, the Scotia Ridge — these, and others, are now ours. We will construct expandable cities of submarine architecture upon their mobile terrain, and we will watch as our air-locked buildings grow, rooms popping out from other rooms, whole corridors stretching, insect-like, across the bottom of the sea. Our constitution will speak of Jules Verne, China Mieville, and the International Law of the Sea; our king will be a geologist.

We will cultivate vast hydroponic gardens and tan ourselves under sunlamps.

Rightfully outside the sovereign reach of today’s established nations, this new planetary matter will greet the world as already ours. Hundreds of millions year hence, we’ll rule endless swaths of undersea basalt, unmappably grand canyons of darkness in the deep.

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…:: MORE ON MICRONATIONS
+ Sleepy Brain Micronations Special, Part 1: introduction from the book
+ Sleepy Brain Micronations Special, Part 2: interview with the book’s co-authors
+ Sleepy Brain Micronations Special, Part 3: an extract from the book
+ BLDGBLOG: interview with Micronations co-author Simon Sellars
+ Yahoo News: interview with Micronations co-author John Ryan
+ Lonely Planet: podcast interview with the King of Lovely, conducted by Micronations co-author George Dunford