Baen Books and the National Space Society (NSS) are co-sponsoring the third annual “Jim Baen Memorial Writing Contest.” The winning story will be published in Jim Baen’s Universe (at the standard professional rates), and its author will receive a prize package including a year’s membership in the NSS, admission to the NSS’s International Space Development Conference, and a collection of Baen books and NSS merchandise. The writers of the second and third place stories will also get the membership and a book/merchandise package.
Deadline for submissions is 1 April 2009. Stories must be no longer than 8,000 words, and must show the near future (not more than 50 or 60 years) of manned space exploration. The judges, who are Baen Books senior editor Hank Davis, and Jim Baen’s Universe editors Eric Flint and Mike Resnick, want to see “Moon bases, Mars colonies, orbital habitats, space elevators, asteroid mining, artificial intelligence, nano-technology, realistic spacecraft, heroics, sacrifice, and adventure.” They explicitly don’t want to see “stories that show technology or space travel as evil or bad, Star Wars type galactic empires, paranormal elements, or UFO abductions.”
The previous grand prize winners, who are not eligible, are David Walton and Mike Wood. The previous second and third place winners—Darwin Garrison, Charlie Allery, Robert Billing, and Michael A. McPherson—are eligible.
For more details, including the entry address, see this page.