Second Annual Science Fiction Short Story Contest
Judge: Sheila Finch
First prize: $500
Ching-In Chen
Creative Writing, UC Riverside
for the story Kawanies, Colony:
"In the time of the open sun, we bathed in air and gathered what we needed from the thick soup of the sky. The first sign was the piling dirt in all directions. We argued amongst ourselves as to what it meant. Some thought it was a warning of impending disaster; others that it might be the response to the dry times. Because we did not agree and not much made sense to the diviners in those first days, we did nothing to prepare ourselves in either direction. Instead, we observed the fast to obtain clarity." READ MORE
Honorable mention
Leah Williams
Modern Literary Studies, UC Santa Cruz
for the story Elysium:
"Every locus has a sort of quarantine area, or waystation, where visitors review the local restrictions and contractually affirm they will abide by them. The waystation is also a preview of the locus you’re about to visit. Verne 8j33po9045x locus seemed to be some kind of steampunk world; its waystation looked like a techno-Victorian library. Lots of plants and velvet, the room permeated with the dusty smell of decaying leather and books and filled with gilded mechanical contraptions. One looked like a personal digital music player, another like an external positioning system. In the interest of “authenticity,” this locus didn’t allow intelligences to appear in anything outside of the normal human form—any divergences from all known human genetic code would get you booted, fined, even imprisoned if you really pissed off the local administrator." READ MORE
