SPSFC 2022

[Brian G Turner]

The Self-Published Science Fiction Competition returns for 2022:

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thespsfc.org

You can read about last year's competition here:

SPSFC: Self-Published Science Fiction Competition

The first annual Self-Published Science Fiction Competition is open - apparently 200 of the 300 slots are taken so far. This is the SF version of the SPFBO that has been running for the last few years. SPSFC Submissions - Hugh Howey (Mods: if this is in the wrong place, please move. I popped...

www.sffchronicles.com

Was pleased to have reached No.15 myself last year in the overall ranking with Destroyer.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Got the option to renter this year as they felt some of the way the judging worked last year wasn’t working just as they needed it to - specifically that if a judge didn’t like a genre or style and marked it as a DNF for that reason, rather than quality, it brought the overall mark down badly. Decided to put Inish back in on that basis

 

[Brian G Turner]

Good luck with that.

 

[Toby Frost]

I'm going to enter this. Might as well give it a go.

specifically that if a judge didn’t like a genre or style and marked it as a DNF for that reason, rather than quality, it brought the overall mark down badly.

Blimey, did they really do that? You'd have thought that people would realise that "not my sort of thing" is different from "it's bad".

 

[Brian G Turner]

People are people, even SF book reviewers.

Destroyer dropped points last year because a couple of the reviewers thought it didn't explain enough of what was going on - but it's only book 1 of 3, and with a mystery-based SF IMO the point is not to reveal everything too quickly.

However, it must be very hard to get so many impartial people together to review so many books to any degree.

 

[Toby Frost]

True. Up To The Throne was chucked out of the fantasy equivalent partly because the characters weren't sympathetic enough. My first thought was "Dude, have you read a Mark Lawrence book?" But still, there's no point arguing. It's definitely a good thing that there's some kind of organised contest of this sort to raise profiles in a general, impartial way.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

I'm going to enter this. Might as well give it a go.




Blimey, did they really do that? You'd have thought that people would realise that "not my sort of thing" is different from "it's bad".

I think there was no other option last year, from what the email said, so the reviewer had to tick DNF. This year, there is an option to say 'not my kind of thing'. Since Inish is so unusual, I thought it was worth a punt again.

 

[Toby Frost]

It definitely is worth you doing. I'm going to enter The Imposters.

 

[Phyrebrat]

I do not understand why they’d appoint any people to judge who had those kind of preferences. That’s very poor project management! I often have to read books I’d rather not (even more so now we do the podcast) but when I put my star rating on Goodreads I never base it on my own genre biases.

Glad to see they’re addressing this, and best of luck

 

[Toby Frost]

Looks like I missed this. Great.