[HN Gopher] Show HN: Write sci-fi, promote science, and win prizes
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Show HN: Write sci-fi, promote science, and win prizes
Author : keiferski
Score : 46 points
Date : 2022-03-23 17:40 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (dotscifi.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (dotscifi.com)
| riidom wrote:
| Hi, how did you come up with the 1000-word-limit? That is, like
| nothing. What is the reasoning behind?
| keiferski wrote:
| Few reasons:
|
| - Limitations spark creativity. I've read a lot of good short
| stories under 1,000 words (Kafka was great at this)
|
| - Just keeping things accessible for the first contest.
|
| - A lot of people (myself included) don't have time for 500
| page epics anymore. Shorter stories fit into life more easily.
|
| Future contests will have longer limits, but I think 10,000 max
| is still probably a good idea.
| alach11 wrote:
| It's nice to hear not all contests will be limited to 1000
| words. Some of the most well-known sci-fi short stories are
| much longer than that. The Last Question clocks in at 4442
| words.
| riidom wrote:
| Limiting it to short stories is absolutely reasonable, in my
| opinion.
|
| When writing my post, I imagined a limit of 2k, maybe 5k
| being nice. But I see you are going in that direction anyway,
| thanks for explaining!
| hooande wrote:
| 1,000 words is much more challenging than, say 4,000. It's
| also limiting in terms of several of your stated criteria.
| You get a certain kind of story at short length. Generally
| you can get a higher level of literature around 3,000-4,000
| or more.
| zufallsheld wrote:
| I just tried to subscribe to your mailing list, however there's
| no confirmation mail.
| keiferski wrote:
| Agh, thanks for pointing that out. My email sending service
| just decided to stop working. Should have it fixed soon.
|
| Edit: should be working now.
| zufallsheld wrote:
| It does, thanks.
| mabub24 wrote:
| > Our goal is to have technology companies, research labs, and
| similar organizations sponsor contests about their respective
| fields.
|
| Sci-Fi has a strong vein of criticism throughout it's history. A
| lot of Sci-fi is a critique of modern society, including the
| potential consequences of a technology, the overreach of
| business/companies, and failed ethics in research labs.
|
| If there is a sponsor, how separate will the judging of the story
| be from the topic of story and the sponsors? If the sci-fi story
| is very critical of something like CRISPR, if a CRISPR related
| company is the sponsor, how will the sponsorship play into judges
| decisions? Do judges have complete discretion on what they pick,
| or is there a final selection that ultimately happens?
| keiferski wrote:
| I've thought about this for awhile and my solution is something
| like this:
|
| Have multiple groups that each choose a winner for each
| contest. As in, every contest has 5+ winners, not just one. For
| example:
|
| - One winner decided by public poll
|
| - One winner decided by volunteers that review the stories to
| help us out
|
| - One winner decided by the sponsor
|
| - One winner decided by a network of related experts. E.g. a
| bunch of biologists review stories about biology
|
| In this way, I think the worst a sponsor could do is choose a
| non-negative winner for their own selection. The other 3-4
| winners would not be under their influence.
|
| Of course, this may scare away potential sponsors, but in my
| experience most scientists welcome debate, as the usual state
| of affairs is getting no attention at all.
| aardvark179 wrote:
| The public pole will be gamed, I'd drop it unless you want to
| deal with a Sad Puppies style situation.
|
| I'd say go for two awards at most, let the sponsor choose one
| and have the other be a jury award. If you can't persuade
| some good authors and critics to be on your jury you won't
| persuade them to submit stories either.
| armchairhacker wrote:
| You may want a patron system, where individuals donate to a
| prize fund (with recognition and maybe some input) instead of
| organizations. Idk how many people would actually be willing to
| pay but lots of individuals have success on Patreon.
| kanzure wrote:
| It's interesting to see a product around science fiction. In the
| past, it used to be that science fiction was the leader and
| science followed the fiction. That hasn't been the case for at
| least a few decades. Authors don't really keep up with all the
| science or technology, for whatever reason-- maybe not
| interesting, too much, or lack of imagination. I like the idea of
| encouraging more optimistic and positive future science fiction
| stories.
| onion2k wrote:
| You should read better modren scifi. For example, Greg Egan or
| Cixin Lui write modern scifi novels that lean heavily into
| getting the science right.
| imachine1980_ wrote:
| Sci-fi was a product of their time, today practically nobody
| live of fiction and most Sci fi books target team drama, also I
| feel most of us already feel like the prrsent is the Sci-fi
| dystopia and tech advanced slow considerably the last grupo who
| have a Sci=fi scene was china and before that Japan wich was
| contemporary whit the industrialisation of both cases.
| ghostbrainalpha wrote:
| I like the website. Super clean and minimal but not lacking the
| information you need.
|
| How many judges are there?
|
| And Hey... is this some kind of NFT thing?
| keiferski wrote:
| Thanks! I appreciate it. I tried to keep it informative without
| being overwhelming.
|
| Only five judges for this first contest. For future contests,
| the goal is to expand this number. Ideally, I'd like to have
| multiple winners for each contest, so that each group can
| choose their favorite:
|
| - Set up a volunteer program where people can read and help
| review submissions.
|
| - Have the sponsor pick their favorite story.
|
| - Set up a network of experts in each domain that can review
| and offer feedback. For example, biologists can review stories
| involving biology.
| keiferski wrote:
| Hi HN, something I've been working on for awhile. Here's how it
| works:
|
| - We hold sci-fi writing contests on particular scientific and
| technological topics. Ideally these contests will be sponsored by
| startups, research labs, and other organizations that want to
| promote their tech. E.g. a biotech startup sponsoring a contest
| about biology or CRISPR. Here's the first contest, for example:
|
| https://dotscifi.com/contests/near-future-moon/
|
| - The winners get crypto, cash, or other prizes.
|
| - The stories are then published under a Creative Commons
| license, making them free to read and share. This will help
| promote science and tech to a larger audience.
|
| The concept is somewhat similar to SciFutures [1], except that
| everyone can read the stories and our goal is to promote science
| and tech, not just create ideas for private companies.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14958329
| bduerst wrote:
| There are many sub-genres in sci-fi that criticize technology
| for it's downsides.
|
| How do you plan on impartially dealing with stories that
| criticize the technology being promoted by your sponsors?
| keiferski wrote:
| I posted a bit about this in another comment. Basically I
| think we can avoid it by having multiple ways of picking the
| winners.
| bduerst wrote:
| Sure, that aligns with the authors, but what do you do when
| your winner heavily criticizes your sponsor and portrays
| them in a bad light?
|
| It doesn't necessarily mean the story is correct - it is
| science _fiction_ after all - but how will get sponsors
| with this conflict of interest?
| keiferski wrote:
| Well, in some sense this is an inevitable problem with
| any contest that a) has sponsors and b) isn't just making
| propaganda.
|
| I think the solution will just be to have a _variety of
| funding sources_ and a _variety of ways that winners are
| chosen._ Ideally the "corporate" sponsors won't be the
| only sources of prize money, but one among many.
|
| Even then, I don't really foresee any controversial
| organizations being a sponsor anyway. More like:
| engineering company sponsors contest about physics.
|
| Overall, the goal is to create great literature, not
| write polemics, so I am not particularly worried that
| this will be an issue. Certainly there is always the
| chance that the winning story will be harshly critical,
| but great sci-fi is usually nuanced, not black-and-white.
| meeks wrote:
| The submission page has a text box for submitting the story on
| a Google form. This seems like a bad experience. Can you also
| allow for submitting via a link to a Google Doc at least to
| preserve formatting of the text? I think this might be a better
| experience for the author. Just include an email address that
| the author should share the google doc with so you get access.
| keiferski wrote:
| That's a good idea, thanks. I will update the form to have a
| link option.
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