Skip to main content

Campbell Awards

The Campbell Award for a new writer has a wonderful aid this year. M. David Blake with the support of Bruce Bethke at Stupefying Stories has a compiled a FREE anthology of stories written by new authors eligible for the Campbell Awards.

As editor of Astounding Science Fiction (renamed Analog Science Fiction and Fact) from 1937 until his death in 1971, John W. Campbell, Jr.  helped shape the "Golden Age" of science fiction. His influence launched the careers of dozens of famous writers including Lester del Rey and A.E. van  Vogt. The John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer is presented annually at WorldCon to an outstanding author whose first professional work of science fiction or fantasy was published within the previous two years.

 In the words of M. David Blake:

Now, for the first time in the award's 40-year history, the 2013 Campbellian Pre-Reading Anthology provides a much-needed and long-overdue guide to the newly emerging talents eligible for this year's award. Containing 80 complete short stories by 43 different authors, as well as additional information about another 58 potential candidates, the 2013 Campbellian Pre-Reading Anthology is your guide to the newest science fiction and fantasy writers who are helping to define the future of the genre.

Best of all, thanks to the generosity of the participating authors and their respective publishers, this e-book is absolutely free -- but it's only available for a limited time, so download your copy today at these links.
Full disclaimer: This is my second year of eligibility for the Campbell Award, and I do have two stories in the anthology, His Brother was an Only Child from Daily Science Fiction in 2011 and Hire Education from The Universe Annex of the Grantville Gazette in 2012. However with the large number of excellent writers and stories available, I don't expect to get a nomination. For those who plan to attend The Lone Star WorldCon in San Antonio in 2013, this is a great opportunity to get a free copy of 80 short stories. Moreover, for a wide variety of reasons some eligible writers did not participant, but M. David Blake has done an outstanding job of listing those writers too, so that you might track down some of their stories. At this writing, more than 100 new writers are listed.

Available for both the Kindle and the Nook, the free 2013 Campbellian Pre-Reading Anthology is not only a service for those planning to vote, it's also a great bargain for anyone who likes to read. The anthology is available free for a limited time.


 2013 Campbellian Pre-Reading Anthology, a free download in both ePub and Mobi formats, for anyone wishing to consider their work:



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

2013 Jim Baen Memorial Writing Contest

I was just notified (March 14, 2013) that my 7700 word short story " Intent to Occupy "  placed second in The 2013 Jim Baen Memorial Writing Contest administered by William Ledbetter. Mr. Ledbetter just posted the results on his Facebook page , so I assume the results are now official: The winners of the 2013 Jim Baen Memorial Writing Contest are: GRAND PRIZE "The Lamplighter Legacy" by Patrick O'Sullivan 2nd Place "Intent to Occupy" by Ronald D. Ferguson 3rd Place "Improvising at Branson Six" by Sean Monaghan The annual contest is sponsored by Baen Books and the National Space Society in memory of the founder of Baen Books , Jim Baen. The judges consisted of Baen Books editors Hank Davis, Jim Minz, Tony Daniel and best selling Baen author David Drake. I'm very honored to have such illustrious judges select my story. My first reaction to the email from Bill Ledbetter telling me that I won second place was "Well, I
2 comments
Read more

As You Know Bob, and other critiquing tropes.

Writing is not a team sport. Like other sins, its practitioner often insists on lonely surroundings secure from distraction. Yet we write to be read, never sure what the reader will bring to the table, never sure how the words will trip from their tongue, never sure if the story actually works. So before we release a literary beast into the unsuspecting market wilderness, we impose upon our writer friends to be first readers and advise us--in other words to critique--but seldom do we ask our non-writer friends for such advice because they usually offer meaningless praise to make us feel good, but seldom give worthwhile suggestions to doctor a sick story. For background, a literary trope is a figure of speech or figurative language in which words assume a different sense than their literal meaning. Writers usually warn other writers that reusing old tropes is bad practice likely to be labeled as cliche, yet they often use critiquing tropes to identify problems in others' manuscri
Post a Comment
Read more

Quick Follow Up

It's been a while since I last posted. I've been busy (with a couple of months off for pneumonia). I finished writing both Tunnel at the End of the Dark and Rogue Knight . Tunnel at the End of the Dark is a sequel to The Princess, the Knight, & the Knave . Both are available on Amazon. Simply click on the links. I hope to start the last of the trilogy soon. The tentative title is A Stark and Dormi Knight . Rogue Knight has been renamed to Marked by Thor, a Rogue Knight Adventure . Marked by Thor is the first novel in a planned Rogue Knight trilogy. It is available on Amazon. Again follow the link. My latest project for 2014/2015 was  The Prometheus Proposal . I've been through a couple of drafts, and I'm shopping it around right now. If I don't get any acceptable offers, I will publish it on Amazon, perhaps this summer. The tag line for The Prometheus Proposal is "We don't have the technology to take ourselves to the stars, and so instea
Post a Comment
Read more