Bootstrap SF competition

There's still time to enter the Hub Magazine Bootstrap SF competition... There's a prize of £100 and NO entry fee, and the winning entry and 12 runner ups will be published by Hub.

(See link above for full details)

The Pitch:

Bootstrap SF: A Very British Future.

The British are an unusual combination of heroism and fatalism, humour and malice. Their Science Fiction is unique, blending pragmatism with sarcasm and death with laughter. For the British, Science Fiction is something subtler than the standard utopias and dystopias, something more concerned with exploring the future with a healthy cynicism. The genre faces stagnation. Fans who discovered SF in the Sixties and Seventies are now actively resisting the very progress that they embraced when they were younger, cutting out new audiences by relentlessly defending stories which have little relevance to newer, younger readers. SF has built a wall around itself, and for it to survive we must break it down.

Bootstrap SF is designed to please the core fans whilst attracting new ones. By focusing on British stories about people, characters, the audience doesn’t feel excluded if they don’t quite grasp the science behind the plot.

And the authors? The authors are new. Previously unpublished in the professional arena, these people are brimming with ideas and passion, and aren’t blinkered by decades-old notions of what SF should be. The authors are what’s happening right now in SF. And SF has always been about progress.

In short, Bootstrap SF is about British authors who love SF. New British authors. New British SF.

The Rules: (see website for full version)

Deadline: 14th May
Writers must not have had any short story sold to any publication for a professional fee. For the purposes of this competition, “professional fee” equates to 5p per word or more.
Submissions via email only
Wordage: between 5,000 and 10,000
Winners will be announced 31st August