Announcing the Winners for the June 2013 Fiction Contest
Our illustrious and infallible editors have emerged from their sensory deprivation chambers with two bits of news. First, the bad news. Glacknu is angry, and he's digging up from the center of the Earth to exact his revenge on everyone who has ever used the word "irregardless," even ironically. Now for the good news. We know the winners of the Fiction Contest for June 2013!
The choice was hard this month because of the breadth of stories. We love that we can showcase so many styles and subgenres. After careful deliberation we have awarded prizes to the following stories:
First Prize: Losses Beyond the Kill Point, by Marilyn Martin
Second Prize: A Feeble Gleam of Stars, by R.W.W. Greene
Third Prize: Bogged Down, by Jason Norton
We gave the highest award to Losses Beyond the Kill Point because of the emotional impact of seeing the world change through the eyes of a mentally unstable person. There may or may not have been a few FV staff who cried over this story, and that's a telltale sign of the story's impact.
A Feeble Gleam of Stars ranked highly because it did such a wonderful job of making an alien invasion into a murder mystery of sorts. The tension was palpable, and we were racing for the end, desperate to know what happened. Also, we love how electronics featured prominently and gave us a look at how we will be living and interacting as our gadgets become even more closely connected with our brains.
Finally, Bogged Down blew us away because it managed to make botany so compelling. We wanted to see that Ghost Orchid as bad as the protagonist did. What starts off as a fairly sedate story turns funny, then intriguing, then unsettling, then creepy, then frightening, and finally reassuring. That's quite the roller coaster to take readers on.
Congratulations to the winners this month, and thank you to all our authors and readers. We are loving this adventure, and it wouldn't be nearly as fun without you.