Monday, October 13, 2008

The Hub Magazine Competition


I love these guys. There is no end to their enthusiasm for the published word and for encouraging new authors.

See the details below which I scrounged from their website:

We are looking for the very best in Bootstrap SF to publish in a new anthology.

Competition rules will be published here, shortly, so don’t send us anything yet, but feel free to make a start on your story.


The competition basics:

The wordcount must be between 3,000 and 10,000 words.

The winning 12 entries will be published in a new anthology to be published as a limited edition book in 2009 (launch date to be confirmed). The stories may also be used in future editions of Hub.

There will be no fee payable for any of the published entries, though the overall winner will receive a prize of £100. All twelve featured authors will receive a copy of the book.
The competition is only open to authors living in the UK and Eire (we will be running a competition open to everyone else shortly, too). Entries will only be accepted by authors who have not been published professionally. If you have had stories published online or in other anthologies, that’s fine. If you have received any form of financial remuneration for them (ie. money) then you can’t enter. This is a competition for new writers.

All writers will retain full copyright on their stories. Featured authors will grant us non-exclusive electronic rights and limited non-exclusive print rights (full details will be published here, soon).
And Bootstrap SF?

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 focussing 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.
What a fantastic opportunity for my writerly friends and readers out there! Amazing things are happening in the sci-fi, fantasy and horror genres and it is evidenced in the upsurge of excellent new authors out there and the re-releases of old favourites to corner the new readers and those who has copies of old favourites that need to be retired.
Trundle over to the Gemmell Awards site and have a look at the books currently being nominated for this Award. That should keep you fresh and reading for a little while yet!

No comments: