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Hi all,

I announced this in the intro to last week’s episode, but got distracted and didn’t put it into written form here. Until now.

With the aid of an anonymous donor, Escape Pod is presenting a contest for the best SF story of 300 words or less. There are no restrictions on theme, plot, or structure. The goal is simply to present a strong idea-based story in the minimum space possible.

To enter, simply send your name, address, and the title and story to contest@escapepod.org. Please look at our submission guidelines for formatting instructions. This is effectively an Escape Pod story submission; only the selection process is different. Please send a maximum of three stories to us. If you happen to have a trunk full of really short pieces, select your three best.

After you’ve sent your story, I’ll strip your name from it and post it to a members-only area on the Escape Pod forum. Because it won’t be publicly viewable or searchable, it shouldn’t count as ‘published’ by anyone’s guidelines, and you’ll retain all rights to the story. Interested forum members will be able to review the stories and comment on them. On February 1, I’ll create a poll (or a series of polls, if there are too many entries) and invite people to select their favorites.

The highest-rated story will receive an Escape Pod contract to run their story as flash fiction at a rate of $100. That’s five times our standard flash rate.

The second-highest rated story will receive a contract at a rate of $50.

The third-highest rated story will receive a standard flash contract, and so will any others that I, as EP’s editor, think are excellent choices for Escape Pod.

The stories will then be produced in audio and will go out on Escape Pod’s feed, and be made available for any other non-commercial use as specified in our Creative Commons license.

The deadline is January 31, 2007. Anything we receive after that will be forwarded back to our usual submissions process.

Sound like fun? Any questions?

Go to it, and we look forward to seeing your (very short) work!