From alternate worlds, to physics gone bad and coexisting hominids, sci-fi writer Kim Stanley Robinson had his work cut out judging this New Scientist competition
A hearty thank you to the hundreds of readers who sent in their movie ideas for our 2014 Christmas competition.
We asked for short 鈥渆levator pitches鈥� for movies that would raise the bar for science-flavoured film-making, everything from documentaries to science fiction blockbusters. Since then we鈥檝e been pelted with planet-destroying asteroids, repeatedly experimented on by sinister Big Pharma and confronted by any number of topsy-turvy physics experiments gone bad.
Advertisement
When it comes to dreaming up wild ideas, it鈥檚 safe to say that New Scientist readers eat a great deal of cheese.
Award-winning science fiction writer has picked his favourites, and Matt Wilkinson is our proud winner. He鈥檒l be working on The Sky Runner, his science fiction story set on, or rather under Europa, with help from a room full of writers and industry professionals including Christopher Priest, Liz Jensen and Louis Savy.
Robinson praised The Sky Runner for its visual potential, its strange technology and even stranger backstory, as it describes a submarine settlement鈥檚 rediscovery of its place in the cosmos.
Runners-up Richard Fray, Guy Dauncey, Simon Young, Dayne Thompson and David Oldcorn all receive a copy of Flicker: Your Brain on Movies, psychologist Jeffrey Zacks鈥檚 new book about what happens in your brain when the lights go out in the cinema.
The competition was close. Fray鈥檚 Read/Write/Execute, about what happens when memories can be edited, garnered comparisons to Philip K. Dick, while Dayne Thompson鈥檚 Orrorin, about a present where several species of hominids coexist, triggered a lively debate here over how easy it would be to tell them apart.
Meanwhile, Simon Young鈥檚 take on the birth of modern zoology, The Cuvier Debate, ably demonstrated that historical fact, cleverly reimagined, can prove stranger than any fiction.
And imagined present-day events at the CERN Large Hadron Collider set two winning entries rolling. David Oldcorn鈥檚 Postponing Fermi makes a chilling but logical adventure out of exotic physics, while Hope鈥檚 Sisters by Guy Dauncey caught our celebrity judge鈥檚 eye for its exploration of alternate futures.
We thoroughly enjoyed judging this competition. Tweet @CultureLabNS to let us know what you thought.