Short Fiction Contest - Better Futures: What Comes Next?

First Place: $1000 | Second Place: $500 | Third Place $300

Sapiens Plurum conducts an annual short-fiction contest, opening on Earth Day of each year. The purpose of the contest is to entice authors to conceive of the future in terms of desirable outcomes, and imagine how we might get there.

This year, The Future of Life Institute is co-sponsoring the annual short fiction writing contest with Sapiens Plurum. We love the Handmaid's Tale and Black Mirror as much as anyone, but we think the world needs more utopian fiction right now. So we're asking you to write down your vision for the future and share it with us:

Each of us contributes to the future, through our work, our creations, our children, even our DNA. Imagine a being or entity that exists in the future because of your existence on Earth today. Is this entity your descendant in a traditional sense? Have beings evolved? Is your “descendant” still biological? Is your “descendant” a grandchild or a clone? Have we merged with technology or uploaded DNA to create new cyber-beings? Is your “descendant” something completely different?  Things to consider as you write your story: Let the reader see this future world through your eyes.  Let us see how people --- whatever that means --- try to live in harmony with the natural world and society, how they maintain their own health and happiness, how they overcome challenges.  But most of all, tell a good story, with characters we care about, setting, conflict, and resolution. Your story should be consonant with the Sapiens Plurum mission: to inspire us -- the first species that can intentionally impact its own evolution -- to aspire beyond what was humanly possible. And with the Future of Life Institute mission: Technology is giving life the potential to flourish like never before, or to self-destruct. Let's make a difference.

Submissions due by June 9th, 2019 | No entry fee

For more information: http://sapiensplurum.org/fiction-contests.html

For assistance before submission, e-mail yesim.ince@ozyegin.edu.tr