Judging

The University of Glasgow 'Science Fiction and the Medical Humanities' group is running a writing competition. You might want to enter it, you know.

We are pleased to announce a creative-writing competition for science fiction on the theme of medicine, health, and illness.

Science fiction has a long tradition of medical stories: Frankenstein (reanimation), The Island of Doctor Moreau (surgery, tissue grafting), Brave New World (eugenics), Flowers for Algernon (disability), I Am Legend (contagious disease), The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe (terminal illness), Woman on the Edge of Time (psychiatry), Never Let Me Go (cloning, transplantation) … and many others. Our creative-writing competition is intended to stimulate new work in this fruitful area.

We invite science-fiction short stories (and also self-contained novel excerpts) of up to 3000 words that address themes of medicine, health, and illness. Some possible ideas for work might be:

Future/alien medicine and doctors

Computerized/robotic healthcare

Engineered diseases and alien plagues

Future/alien conceptions of health and illness, including mental health and illness

Utopian/dystopian visions of health, illness, and medicine

Cosmetic and/or elective surgery/transplantation/modification

Present and future disabilities, and their social/cultural (de)construction

Public health and population health, at a global or galactic level

Alternate medical history (what if a medical pioneer had died young, and/or a particular discovery/advance never been made?)

Entries should be no more than 3000 words, and no entrant may submit more than two entries.

The top three entries, and up to seventeen runners-up, will be published in the competition anthology.

First Prize: £300

Second Prize: £200

Third Prize: £150

Runners-up: £50

Entry is free of charge and open to anyone over 18. Please see the full competition rules.

Entries should be submitted by the deadline of 31 January 2016 using the online form.

I mention this here because I've agreed to be a judge. So, enter, and I will be all ...

... on your work.