Online Short Story Competition with Valuable Awards from Baen Books

Baen Books and the National Space Society are inviting creative writers all over the world to participate in the Jim Baen Memorial Short Story Award. Write a short story of no more than 8,000 words, that shows the near future (no more than about 50-60 years out) of manned space exploration.

Conditions:

• No entry fee.

• Only one story can be submitted.

• No reprints.

• All entries must be original works in English.

• Plagiarism, poetry, song lyrics, or stories that utilize characters or settings from another person’s works will not be considered.

• Employees of Baen Books, NSS and previous Grand Prize Winners are not eligible. Previous Second and Third place winners are eligible.

Recommended Stories:

• What the judging panel wants to see

  • Moon bases, Mars colonies, orbital habitats, space elevators, asteroid mining, artificial intelligence, nano-technology, realistic spacecraft, heroics, sacrifice, adventure.

• What the judging panel doesn’t want to see

  • Stories that show technology or space travel as evil or bad, galactic empires, paranormal elements, UFO abductions, zombie stories, thinly veiled copies of previous winners, non-standalone novel excerpts, screenplays.

Prizes:

• The grand prize winner will be published as the featured story on the Baen Books main website and paid at the normal paying rates for professional story submittals, currently .08/word. The author will also receive an engraved award, free entry into the 2021 International Space Development Conference, a year's membership in the National Space Society and a prize package containing various Baen Books and National Space Society merchandise.

• Second and Third place winners will receive free entry into the 2021 International Space Development Conference, a year's membership in the National Space Society and a prize package containing various Baen Books merchandise.

About Baen Books:

Founded by Jim Baen, Baen Books has been bringing readers pulse-pounding, thought-provoking adventures straight from the heart of science fiction and fantasy for decades. It publishes books in hardcover, paperback, and electronic form, and is one of the few traditional publishers that maintains its own ebooks webstore (with at least four new titles added every month). Baen Books is also the only book publisher to make its electronic advanced readers copies (eARCs) available for sale to devoted fans before a book’s official release date. In addition, It also sells ebooks from other publishers with more than 2000 books from over 500 authors published by 24 different companies.

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