CONTEST | "In Finite Words" Short Fiction Contest
HELP US CELEBRATE THE IMPENDING RELEASE OF ISSUE #8 WITH SOME FRIENDLY COMPETITIVE SHORT FICTION!
For some, a Leap Year Day every four years is a time for celebration. It’s a whole extra day! An opportunity to engage in traditional leap year pastimes, such as buying a new bathrobe, googling Pope Gregory XIII, or taking a pass at one’s taxes before giving up and fixin’ a grilled cheese. Gosh, what if we could add an extra cheese-grilling day to the calendar every year?
But, at this special time, it’s important to remember that February 29th can also be a sad, even distressing, non-holiday. Editor-in-chief Sean Clancy’s brother was convinced that, if he’d been born on a leap day, he’d age four times slower than everyone else. He thought that until he was four years old sixteen years old.
Okay, that’s the only real example we could think of. But still—if you feel down, dour, deflated or dejected at all around this leap year’s leap day, there are two things you can do for a pick-me-up.
1) Preorder a copy of Planet Scumm #8, “Sideways Infinity”, our latest short sci-fi collection, or 2) Participate in our “In Finite Characters” Twitter contest.
Just tweet @PlanetScumm a short-short sci-fi story that fits one of our five prompts. Heck, tweet us a story for each—you’ve got a bonus 24 hours, after all.
Those story prompts are:
#Infinite: The unending, unchanging, empty bigness of… stuff. Space, maybe?
#Sideways: Twists of fate. Things that ain’t quite right. You know the optical illusion that’s either a vase or two faces? Do THAT.
#Leap: Stunts and derring-do. Alien frogs with a mean streak. Alternate histories featuring Scott Bakula.
#Relativity: In-laws, am I right? But nah—this is, like, time dilation due to different inertial frames of reference.
#Age: Is just a number. Except, in this case, it should also be some words. Ideally strung into sentences.
We’ll be running this until March 10th, shortly after which we’ll announce winners in each category, plus an overall winner. Runner-up winners will receive a PDF copy of the aforementioned Planet Scumm #8: “Sideways Infinity,” while our overall winner will get a hardcopy, realspace issue.
Please, don’t make us guess if your tweet is an entry or not. Append #Contest and the category lending you inspiration (again, that’s #Infinite, #Sideways, #Leap, #Relativity or #Age) to your stories. Failure to hash those tags means we’ll take your tweet/s as 100% accurate nonfiction.