"Anyone can be a writer," says the person who's never tried.
Written: May 27 '08
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Good stuff from new voices.
Cons: The unevenness you might expect from new voices.
The Bottom Line: The best place to look for tomorrow's science fiction.
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| panguitch's Full Review: L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future |
Disclaimer: I've been a finalist and received a couple honorable mentions (they seem to hand them out like candy) in the Writers of the Future contest. I'm polishing up my next entry right now. So I'm coming at this collection not just as a reader, but as someone who finishes each story saying to himself, "They pin a medal on this crap and shuffle my story under the rug?!" Or, with grudging respect, "That was a decent story." Or even once or twice, "Wow. That's better than anything I've written so far" (after which I quickly reread a crap story to quell any impulse to hang up my pen).
L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future
L. Ron Hubbard left a varied legacy. For most people it's Tom Cruise bouncing on Oprah's couch or arguing the points of Scientology with Matt Lauer. For science fiction fans it's Battlefield Earth, good or bad. But for aspiring science fiction authors it's the Writers of the Future Contest, with the promise of publication and a purse of up to $5,000.
As the dozen-plus big-name judges, from Orson Scott Card to Larry Niven to Anne McCaffrey, will tell you, it's the best opportunity for an unknown to break into the business. K.D. Wentworth, Dave Wolverton (David Farland), Sean Williams, Jay Lake, Robert Reed, Karen Joy Fowler, and Patrick Rothfuss all launched their careers with the contest.
The 2007 anthology, L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future: Volume XXIII collects the winning stories from October 2005 to September 2006. As might be expected from a contest for aspiring authors, it's a mixed bag. But I was impressed at the overall quality, and in almost every case agree with the judges on which stories deserved first place, second, etc.
Two stories stood above the rest in my mind. The first, and most talked about, is Andrea Kail's "The Sun God at Dawn, Rising from a Lotus Blossom," which even landed on the preliminary ballot for the 2007 Nebula Award. Egypt has reincarnated Tutankhamun, raising a clone to be a living museum piece. At night, when he's done giving tours and hosting dignitaries, he begins a correspondence with his counterpart, America's Abraham Lincoln.
Through these letters King Tut reveals a growing awareness of the political unrest surrounding him. His conflicting sense of duty to his creator and to his own identity are interesting. But it's his voice that's remarkable--his earnestness and the transformation that occurs beneath his careful manners as he sloughs off his naivety. An unusual and unusually effective story.
The second story that blew me away was quite different. Jeff Carlson's "The Frozen Sky" is a breakneck adventure beneath the ice caps of Jupiter's moon Europa, though it's more horror than space opera. Vonnie and her companions are selected to study the simple life forms discovered in the ice by mining drones. What they find is hieroglyphics. Intelligence. Going deeper they uncover hyper-aggressive creatures with a territorial bent and little respect for the semi-automated mecha-like suits of the explorers. Soon Vonnie is alone, blind, struggling to reach the surface before they catch her.
"The Frozen Sky" is tense, offering tidbits of backstory and exposition in-between hair-raising chase and battle sequences. It feels much like Ridley Scott's Alien, and if that's not enough adds in some interesting speculations on planetology and extraterrestrial language.
Kim Zimring's lightly noirish "Ripping Carovella" is almost as good as the two I've already mentioned. The narrator is a professional "ripper," who kidnaps artists and rips the creative neurons from their brains in order to insert them in the heads of wealthy clients who think it's fashionable to have an artistic side.
Ripping is more than just a job. His wife, an author, was the victim of a flawed rip. And his mother included him in a horrific artistic endeavor when he was young. So for him ripping is something of a mercy, delivering artists from an affliction. His disturbed psychology, matched against his wife's need to write makes for a conflict-rich story, garnished with some nice styling.
Other impressive stories include Aliette de Bodard's "Obsidian Shards," where an Aztec priest investigates some peculiar deaths and ends up battling against deities and apocalypse. It's a curious combination of detective story sensibilities and dark fantasy in an unusual setting.
Stephen Kotowych's grand-prize wining "Saturn in G Minor" is a bit predictable, and I prefer several of the other stories. But the concept of playing Saturn's rings like a musical instrument is an admirable "big idea," and the execution is praiseworthy.
Stephen Gaskell offers a tale of alien reincarnation in "By the Waters of the Ganga." I enjoy Karl Bunker's "Pilgrimage," a transhumanist Robinson Crusoe, better than Daniel Defoe's version. The frame story in Edward Sevcik's "The Gas Drinkers" is less than elegant, but the tale it contains is more than worthwhile. And I very much liked John Burridge's "Mask Glass Magic," about a glass artist who becomes entangled with an eccentric master craftsman. Unfortunately, it felt like the first chapter of a book I wanted to keep reading rather than a complete short story. There are also essays from judges Kevin J. Anderson and Judith Miller who amuse even as they encourage hard work and sacrifice.
Most of the stories I've mentioned are every bit as good as what you find in the markets dominated by established professionals (F&SF, Asimov's, Analog, etc.), and many of these authors have been busy publishing stories and novels since the contest. Every year Writers of the Future demonstrates that there is a rich pool of authors just waiting for a chance, and these new voices often exhibit a fresh edge in their writing that established authors sometimes lack.
If you're interested in breaking into the field, WotF should be your Bible. If you're just interested in reading some decent stories that provide a new look at the fantasy and science fiction genres without literary posturing or contortions, you might want to pick up a recent volume of Writers of the Future.
Writers of the Future: XXIII
Q1
1st: Jeff Carlson's "The Frozen Sky"
2nd: Toni Pi's, "The Stone Cipher"
3rd: Corey Brown's "The Phlogiston Age"
Q2
1st: Kim Zimring's "Ripping Carovella"
2nd: Douglas Texter's "Primetime"
3rd: Damon Kaswell's "Our Last Words"
Q3
1st: Stephen Kotowych's "Saturn in G Minor"
2nd: Aliette de Bodard's "Obsidian Shards"
3rd: Karl Bunker's "Pilgrimage"
Q4
1st: Andrea Kail's "The Sun God at Dawn, Rising from a Lotus Blossom"
2nd: Edward Sevcik's "The Gas Drinkers"
3rd: John Burridge's "Mask Glass Magic"
Non-placing finalist Stephen Gaskell's "By the Waters of the Ganga" is also included in the anthology.
The winners of the Illustrators of the Future contest are also represented, with each winner providing an illustration for one of the winning stories. Like the stories, these vary in quality. My favorites were Bogdan Stetsenko's for "The Frozen Sky" and Amelia Mammoliti's for "Our Last Words." Unfortunately, these illustrations are only black and white. And I find it odd that the cover art, as striking as it is, is provided by someone other than this year's winners.
- Panguitch
Recommended:
Yes
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