Contest is now closed and results have been announced. Keep a tab on the blog for future contests and announcements.
Are you an aspiring writer?
Do you like to blend fiction with science?
Enter TheScian Science Fiction Short Story Contest 2007
Download details as a PDF file.
Prizes
First Rs.10,000/-
Second Rs.7500/-
Closing Date
30 September 2007
Introduction
The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be. -Douglas Adams
It is my hope that a little dose of science fiction short stories would help balance that skewed perspective of reality. A more immediate and pragmatic hope is that, at the end of the day, we would have science fiction short stories to read, and that, those stories would relate to the culture and times we have been part of for most of our lives. While science fiction is very much about science and fiction, it is a lot about perspective too. At its core, science fiction is about the human experience and our attempts to make sense of our place in the scheme of things.
Participation
Any Indian citizen living in India or abroad can participate in the contest. Science fiction does not restrict itself to geography and culture but contests do for practical reasons. Other than this restriction, there is none else. You can be of any color, any gender, any religion, any age, and your can have fingernails of any length. All you need is a good story to enter the contest. You can submit only one story for the contest.
Submission
Send your story that is no more than 6000 words to thescian.contests at googlemail.com with the subject line marked as "TheScian Science Fiction Short Story 2007 - Contest entry". Attach your story as a plain text file (.txt file created in Notepad, for example) or a rich text file (.rtf file created with Wordpad, for example). Selva uses a Mac, so if you are using Microsoft Word to write the story please open the file in Notepad and ensure it looks alright before you send it. Selva recommends WriteRoom (for Mac) or Darkroom (for Windows) to budding writers. Stories sent in any other format will be ignored.
You must release the story to TheScian.com under the Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Creative Commons License. All stories without a licensing note will be automatically entered as falling under the aforementioned license.
Dates
Last date for submission - September 30, 2007
Results announcement - November 15, 2007
Submission email should carry the below details.
Email:thescian.contests@googlemail.com
Subject: TheScian Science Fiction Short Story 2007 - Contest entry
Story title:
Author's name/penname:
About the Author (not mandatory):
Author's note (not mandatory):
License Terms:
Mailing address in India (important, the prize money goes here):
Story Attachment: as .txt or .rtf file.
Story selection
Stories will be selected by Selva. His decisions are final.
Prizes
The first best story will fetch the author a sum of Rs. 10,000/-. The second best will fetch the author Rs. 7500/-. Prizes will be sent to the postal address in India (and only in India) given in the submission email.
Questions
Email Selva [selvakumar at gmail.com] or ask at the announcement post on thescian.com
After the contest
The competition entries will be hosted for public download at TheScian.com. Promising stories will be considered for publication in a forthcoming book.
© TheScian.com. This document is released for public copying and distribution under the Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Creative Commons License. This notice must be preserved when copying and distributing.
