What’s the point of having a short fiction contest celebrating H.G. Wells if it doesn’t allow science fiction? That’s probably what a lot of potential entrants in Reg Turnill’s short story contest were thinking. Turnill, a 94-year-old former journalist who once interviewed Wells himself, received a bunch of alien-invasion stories in last year’s contest. So this year, he decided to ban science fiction from the contest for writers under 25, which carries a £1,000 prize. He also required entries be handwritten. But now that he’s received no entries, he’s decided to relax the rules, allowing science fiction and just giving extra points for handwritten entries. [Kent News via Boing Boing]
