Katharine Susannah Prichard Speculative Fiction Awards 2008
Judge's Report
Open Section
Good narrative fiction must
possess several attributes: believable characters, logical plot development,
a satisfying climax and denouement. It is the writer's job to give us
these things, and to do so with a grasp of language and style that makes
our journey, as reader, something we can dive into without fear of interruption
by the ordinary world. Nobody would rather wash the dishes than watch
Hercule Poirot reveal the murderer. Nobody wants to wait until just
before Dexter Morgan discovers the Ice Truck Killer before they
put the book down and disinfect the toilet. The skills necessary to
produce good fiction are many, and all of them align the author towards
a single goal? the right words, in the right order.
To produce good speculative
fiction, it is necessary to add another skill set? the ability to create the unknown
with such facility that the reader, for the length of the story, believes
in your impossible world more than their own. When we read Terry Pritchett's
'Discworld' novels, we believe in dwarves, and trolls, and that a world
can perch on elephants standing upon a turtle swimming through the void.
When we read Harry Potter, we believe in magic, and witches, and a plane
of existence that sits just below our own mundanity, waiting to break
through. Speculative fiction can be described as 'reality plus one'.
It's the creation of that 'plus one' that makes or breaks a speculative
fiction story. Without exception, the stories that I have awarded in
this year's competition succeeded. Without exception, the stories that
have not been awarded, whether they contained other failings or not,
did not manage to create that believable extra world.
A judge's job comes in two
parts: easy and difficult. It is easy to lay aside a story which is
littered with typographical errors, or is presented in an unprofessional
manner. Clip art on your cover sheet is unprofessional. Fancy fonts
are unprofessional. Missing lines, missing paragraphs, missing pages:
such stories will suffer in comparison with well presented, proof-read,
professionally submitted works. Likewise, if a work contains grammatical
errors; if the characters are two-dimensional, or speak unnaturally;
if the plot contains gaps in logic, or narrative holes, or simply doesn't
make me believe in what you're showing me; it is not successful. If
I saw it in an episode of Torchwood, or read it in one of the thousand-plus
books in my collection, it is not successful. If I can name the story
whose plot you've copied, as I was able to with one of this year's entries,
it is not successful.
The vast majority of stories
submitted this year disqualified themselves, through any combination
of the above factors. There is no simple way to win a competition such
as this, nor indeed should there be: the aim of this competition is
to award excellence in creating speculative fiction. Excellence comes
with skill, and practice, and knowledge, and none of these things is
easily-won.
The job of judging becomes
difficult when all the obvious disqualifiers have been dispensed with,
and those stories which still remain must be ranked. It is at that point
where success, not just as works of fiction, but as speculative works,
must be judged. It is this point where, perhaps, much depends on the
personality and philosophy of the judge. For me, speculative fiction
is both literary form and experimentation. It is in speculative fiction
where boundaries can be pushed most fearlessly, where the rules can
be broken most successfully, where narrative conventions can be toyed
with, and the results can be beautiful to behold. It can be where, as
Douglas Adams wrote 'Boy meets girl under the light of a silvery moon,
which then explodes for no adequately explained reason'.
All of the stories I am about
to mention were not only good stories, they were successful experiments
in speculation, both philosophically and in the way the author laid
the text upon the page. Each author was unafraid to push hard at the
bounds of their medium. The difficult part of my job as judge was in
deciding to what extent they had succeeded, and how well the results
shaped as both literature and speculation.
The story I felt was most successful
as both narrative and speculative fiction was by turns elegant and shocking.
Using traditional first person narrative inter-cut with pseudo-factual
excerpts, and presenting a quietly post-apocalyptic future that was
bleak, frighteningly possible and which exuded a sense of humanity,
it was flawlessly written and utterly believable. The winner of this
year's competition is 'The Self-Sufficient Gardener' by Eleanor Marney.
(VIC)
The second placed story was,
quite frankly, my sort of short story, with so many disturbed levels
of reality underneath an out-of-kilter surface layer, that I not only
enjoyed reading it, I wished I'd written the damn thing. Unsettling
and frightful, this was a bold attempt to present the reader with a
story built on strong imagery, presaging statements, and a growing sense
of unease. 2nd place is awarded to 'A Fish on Sunday' by
Luke Johnson. (NSW)
Two stories were awarded Highly
Commended certificates. Whilst it is solidly written, and presenting
speculative scenarios that delighted and entertained, they lacked the
edge of excellence shown by the winners. They were, however, good stories
in their own right, and deserve to be awarded for the strength of storytelling
displayed. These were: 'Documentation Version 1.0.0 for Cartesian Family
Harmony' by Monica Carroll, (ACT) and 'The Imogen Effect' by Jason Fischer.
(SA)
In addition, three stories
were awarded Commended certificates. The stories in this category fulfilled
all the necessary elements of speculative fiction, and did so within
well-realised narratives. Good stories all, they deserve commendation.
They are: 'Treasure' by Bella Anderson; (VIC) 'Tentacles All The Way'
by Felicity Bloomfield; (ACT) and 'Mooncalf' by Laura Goodin. (NSW)
Shire of Mundaring National
Young Writers' Award
Judging the Young Writers Award
is a much more difficult task than judging the Open section of the competition.
Age is not a factor in the Open group, and stories can be judged solely
on narrative and structural grounds. However, the difference between
the youngest and oldest boundaries of the Young Writers award is significant:
under normal circumstances, it is unreasonable to expect a thirteen
year old to display the same story-building skills as a twenty year
old, and this creates a disparity when reading such entries side by
side.
In this instance, age is the
defining factor, and I determined to judge each entry relative to the
age of the author, rather than relative to the overall quality of all
the entries. Stories by thirteen year olds were compared to each other,
as were those by fourteen year olds, fifteen year olds, and so on. In
each case, the questions were the same: is this story better than the
average quality for that age? Comparatively, is the best story by a
thirteen year old higher in relative quality than the best story by
a fourteen year old? A fifteen year old? A twenty year old?
My aim was to discover the
story which exceeded the expectations of its author's age by the greatest
margin. In other words, outside of the quality of the narrative itself,
a better than average thirteen year old was more highly regarded than
an average sixteen year old, and an average sixteen year old would be
more highly regarded than a below average twenty year old.
The winner of this year's junior
section is a story so subtly told and logically realised that it would
have placed highly in the Open section. That it was written by one of
the youngest entrants is testament to the skill and vision of the author.
She manages to play with genre expectations in a confident and mature
way, and has created a slipstream work that made for excellent reading.
The winner of this year's Young Writers' Award is 'The Last Words' by
Violet Macdonald. (TAS)
The second placed story was
another ambitious work, and was the best representation of the fearlessness
with which many of the junior entrants approached the task of creating
the sense of enhanced reality that comes with the best stories of this
type. Another relatively young author, he shows enormous promise and
a high level of skill. Second prize is awarded to 'Target' by Michael
Greif. (WA)
One story was worthy of a Highly
Commended certificate, due to the storytelling skill displayed. Whilst
it was slightly less ambitious than the winners in its scope and subject,
it was a worthy recipient of commendation. That story was 'Rebellion'
by Rebecca Doyle. (WA)
In addition, two stories were
awarded Commended certificates. Solidly written and lacking nothing
in storytelling, they lacked only the bravado and ambition of the winners,
and are good examples of speculative extrapolation in its purest form.
They were 'Traffic' by Stephanie Wong; (WA) and 'The Witch' by Lachlan
Dally. (ACT)
I would like to congratulate
all those who awarded in this year's competition, and encourage all
those who entered to do so again, as well as to test themselves against
the demands of the publishing world. Speculative fictions writers are
often best rewarded when they are most fearless, and when they create
work with bravado and panache. The field is a large one, and new talent
is welcome amongst the pages. I encourage everyone who entered this
year to face each new story with the desire to excite, to take risks,
and to produce something extraordinary.
Lee Battersby
July 2008