As the coordinating judge for the L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future Contest, I get the pleasure of being the first reader each year for the thousands of stories that come in to the Contest.
Each one of the stories is like a little Christmas present, wrapped up by its author and offered as a gift. I open each one, not knowing what the box may contain.
I’m continually surprised and delighted, and in this anthology, I get to share these exquisitely designed and crafted stories with you, so that you can enjoy them, too.
This is a landmark year. For the Writers of the Future Contest, it completes our thirtieth year in existence—making this one of the longest-running writing competitions in the world. For the Illustrators of the Future Contest, this ends the twenty-fifth year of our competition.
Each year, we see growth and changes in the Contest. The number of submissions has increased dramatically in the past year, and the Contest is taking on more and more of an international dimension.
For example, one of our first-place winners this year, Leena Likitalo, hails from Finland. She is the second nonnative English speaker that we have had who will be competing for the annual $5,000 grand prize. But she’s not our only nonnative English speaker in the anthology. We also have Oleg Kazantsev, who hails from Russia, and we have some others who speak off-brands of English with funny accents from the U.K. and Australia.
Since, as an editor, I’m always looking for quirky fantasy and science fiction stories, hoping that as a reader you’ll be carried away by the sheer variety of stories, it’s a delight to find stories that don’t just represent different subgenres, but that also come from entirely different cultures.
The same of course is true of our illustrator winners, who literally come from all over the globe.
With this anthology, we’ll be having some new features this year. You’ll notice that we have copies in trade paperback size, so that you can enjoy the illustrations more. Beyond that, you’ll be able to see the illustrations in full color, and you will get to read some of the short stories from our illustrious judges, along with one from L. Ron Hubbard himself.
Beginning this year, one of our illustrator judges, Stephen Hickman, served as art director for the illustrator winners on their artwork for each story, to acquaint them with the customary practices of professional illustrating in accordance with the original intention for the Illustrator Contest.
So the Contest continues to expand. Each year we continue to judge these stories blind, not knowing who the authors are. We hope to discover great new writers who are on the cusp of gaining worldwide recognition. It has worked well in the past. Many of our winners have gone on to garner major awards and become bestsellers, and as you read the biographies for our writers, you’ll find that many of these new authors are selling short stories and earning novel contracts, while our illustrators are on their way to their own wondrous careers.
Thirty years are behind us in this Contest. I look forward to the next thirty.
So sit back, relax, and enjoy.…