Introduction

Another year. Another crop of wonderful stories and promising writers! Why has the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future Contest remained such an on-going success year after year now for twenty-eight years?

The answer to that is twofold: First, the contest is set up to find writers just on the edge of breaking out as professionals and has done an exemplary job of it now for a very long time. Entries are anonymous so that the new writers are competing only with others in the same phase of their developing career. Pay levels are professional and competitive so that we can attract the best of the new writers’ submissions.

Then, second, the winners are not only given monetary prizes, they are published, so that their efforts can be read, and are transported to a professional-level workshop where they are instructed by our well-known panel of judges. The money and chance for publication are the initial big draws here, but it’s being treated as a professional, the chance to network with other writers and the workshop instructors and the workshop training that are the real prizes here, just as Hubbard knew they would be. Money is nice, but it’s soon spent and gone. Knowledge and experience will be with them forever.

This is in the grand tradition of the science fiction/fantasy field of “paying it forward.” When a seasoned professional writer helps someone at the beginning of their writing career, you cannot pay them back in any meaningful way. They don’t need anything that you can give them, but you can, when it’s time, pay it forward by helping someone else who is just starting out.

When L. Ron Hubbard set up the Writers of the Future Contest, he was paying it forward in a big way. The scale is unprecedented. Most authors can help only a few new writers over the course of their career. But that is the sole focus of the Contest. It consistently seeks out and promotes at least twelve writers a year, not counting those just on the edge of breaking out who were encouraged to write more stories just so they would have something to enter.

That means over the last twenty-eight years, we have published and trained more than four hundred new writers and more than 250 illustrators. Not all of them have gone on to lucrative careers, but an impressive portion has. Even many of those who have not yet become household names are selling regularly and their bylines appear in anthology and magazine tables of contents throughout the year. At least twice a month, I get a note from one of our winners who has just sold a first novel. Kristine Kathyrn Rusch, Dean Wesley Smith, Eric Flint, Robert Reed, Jay Lake, Steve Savile, Sean Williams, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Bruce Holland Rogers, David Farland, Jo Beverley and Patrick Rothfuss are just a few of the wonderful writers who came out of the Contest.

L. Ron Hubbard knew that by helping new writers he was also helping fans everywhere. He believed that to function properly, society needed a healthy creative life. He said, “A culture is as rich and capable of surviving as it has imaginative artists . . . It was with this in mind that I initiated a means for new and budding writers to have a chance for their creative efforts to be seen and acknowledged.” He knew that, if we do not provide a forum for new writers’ work, many of them will give up and then we will all lose.

In 1988, the L. Ron Hubbard Illustrators of the Future Contest was created as a companion to Writers of the Future. Again, the purpose is to find talented artists just on the edge of breaking out, recognize and commend their abilities, publish their creative efforts and instruct them on how to move up to the next level in their career. Their talent must be nurtured and given a chance to grow, like a tiny flame that builds into a full roaring fire. Again, the meme is paying it forward, assisting those who need just a small break at the moment when it can do the most good.

Quarterly winners are assigned to illustrate one of the anthology’s stories, then transported to the annual illustrators’ workshop taught by seasoned professionals Cliff Nielsen, Ron Lindahn and Val Lakey Lindahn, among others. They dispense invaluable advice about how to develop and manage a career as an artist and keep inspiration coming. Unfortunately, as rare as it is, it is not enough to just have talent. Emerging artists must learn how to develop a portfolio and professional contacts, market their work and make it pay.

The workshop/anthology/prize money format is a combo that has been working well for an impressive number of years, both for writers and artists. Hubbard knew what he was doing when he set all this in motion. Now, aspiring writers and artists just have to send in their work so that we can give them what they need to rise to the next level.

That old adage “You can’t win if you don’t enter!” has never been truer. We want to see your story or novel win the Hugo or the Nebula in a few years. We want to see your art win an Oscar as Illustrators’ judge and former winner Shaun Tan did last year.

So send in those stories and illustrations! The future is just within your grasp.