Honorable Mention

I've been mentioned honorably by the people at Writer's Digest, in their 78th Annual Writing Competition. Yay, me. "Genre Short Story," naturally.

Because, you know, science fiction.

I sent them an unpublished oldie called "Midgigoroo and the Singularity." I figured it had a good shot, since Stanley Schmidt at Analog said he was "tempted" by it (although he rejected the rewrite I sent him).

For the record, this story has been rejected by websites and magazines eight times (if you count both rejections from Analog).


The story is hard SF, about an Australian Aborigine tracking footprints through the outback, squarely in the middle of nowhere.




Turns out the footprints belong to a city feller who clearly has access to arbitrarily advanced technology. He's come to tell the Aborigine that the Singularity... has pretty much happened.

(It's not clear in the story if the stranger is a cyborg or not... I just liked this picture.)

This story has won and lost, been rejected and accepted. Whether it's a good story or a bad story is a silly thing to contemplate. It's worth reading, says the author, so it'll stay in the mail until it finds a home.