2016 Strange New World winners announced

Cover of the first Strange New Worlds

For ten years, starting in 1998, Simon and Schuster ran an annual Star Trek writing competition, giving an opportunity for fans to get their Star Trek stories published in an anthology book. After nearly a decade without such a book, the publisher revived the Strange New Worlds competition last year, ready to publish a new collection of stories this fiftieth anniversary year. Now the winning stories have been announced. They are:

• Dilithium Is a Girl's Best Friend, by Neil Bryant
• A Christmas Qarol, by Gary Piserchio and Frank Tagader
• The Sunwalkers, by Kelli Fitzpatrick
• The Seen and Unseen, by Chris Chaplin
• The Façade of Fate, by Michael Turner
• The Manhunt Pool, by Nancy Debretsion
• The Dreamer and the Dream, by Derek Tyler Attico
• The Last Refuge, by Roger McCoy
• Life Among the Post-Industrial Barbarians, by John Coffren
• Upon the Brink of Remembrance, by Kristen McQuinn

These ten "Grand Prize winners" will have their stories published in the digital-first 2016 Strange New Worlds anthology later this year, and each get a $1000 advance too. Bizarrely the two "First Prize winners" also announced, Kerry F. Booth and James Corrigan, do not seem to be listed for the book, instead winning a publishing package with Archway Publishing (worth $5000), to publish a book on another subject...

Anywho, you might find a couple of the names up their familiar. Derek Tyler Attico has his second Strange New Worlds story here, having won a place in the eighth book in the series. While John Coffren has his third Star Trek work in print here, following short stories in Strange New Worlds seven and nine.

Who knows, this may not be the last we see of many of these authors: Previous Strange New Worlds winners have gone on to write many more Star Trek works beyond the competition, including Geoffrey Thorne, Scott Pearson, Ilsa J. Bick, William Leisner, and most prolifically of all, Dayton Ward.

When this year's competition was announced, it was also suggested there would be s separate competition to design the cover. So hopefully that is still to launch. There should be further details to come, when the publication date and more details of each story (which series?) are revealed.