The Best of Writers of the Future

L. Ron Hubbard is well known in the Science Fiction community as "the world's most prolific dead author," but perhaps his greatest contribution to the genre is the Writers of the Future contest. This program is open to new writers only, and all work is reviewed by noted SF authors, anonymously (the submissions are numbered & coded.) The best from each quarter are chosen, and there are monetary prizes for the quarterly and annual winners. Part of the prize is that the work is published at the end of the year in that year’s book. Another part is that the winners are flown to LA for the awards ceremony. Thus, each volume is completely full of new, unpublished work, by new authors chosen by the best writers in the field. This is great for readers, because it ensures that nearly any fan will find a good proportion of the volume to be of interest to them, and the entire volume is full of well written stories. Interspersed in the book are how-to tips for new authors, so the book functions as a mini-textbook on SF writing, with articles about the business and well-written stories to demonstrate good writing. But that is not the best part, the best part is that the program encourages new writers in the best possible manner—it pays them well for their work and publicizes it. Over the 2+ decades that the program has run, it has launched a sizable number of new SF authors into their careers. Any volume of this series is full of good reads, and they are often very fresh views in a field which has, over the decades, ranged from fresh and experimental to stodgy and hidebound. If you haven’t read a particular volume, you cannot go wrong in reading it. Algis Budrys, the editor for the past few years, is well known as both a writer and editor in the SF field.