Short Story Contest - December 1997

On December 13, 1997, a short story contest was run in the SFNovelist writing workshop. The workshop is devoted exclusively to hardsf novelists and this contest was a writing exercise only, not a regular part of the workshop. This year's theme: a member of SFNovelist who became a published author. All the contributors are members of the SFNovelist writing workshop as of December 1997. The following short stories are reprinted here by permission of the authors as a condition of the contest. However, each story is copyrighted by the respective author and copies cannot be distributed without the express permission of the authors. As moderator of the workshop and sole judge of the contest, I selected "Home Among the Stars" by Richard Womack as the best overall story in the contest. This selection was made on the basis of sticking to the contest theme (a hard SF novelist who wrote a novel and succeeded) and story writing skills demonstrated, including dialogue, characterization, setting, etc.

The stories submitted for this contest were:   "Home Among the Stars" by Richard Womack, First Place Winner. We are sorry, but "Home Among the Stars" is not available for viewing here because it has been published as part of an anthology of short stories. It was withdrawn from our public web page at the author's request to protect his publication rights.   "A Writer's Tale" by Ian Sales, Second Place Winner.   (no title) by Marcus Champ   "The Truth" by Tom Cole   "A Very Short Story" by Jeff Johnson

- Victory Crayne, President of the SFNovelist writing workshop at http://www.sfnovelist.com