Lavie Tidhar wins 2004 Clarke-Bradbury International SF Competition

I came across the following a few moments ago, and recognized Lavie
Tidhar as one of RCB's more interesting ex-posters:


ESA News
http://www.esa.int

3 September 2003

Winner announced for science fiction competition

Selected by an international jury out of 104 entries from 36 countries,
Lavie Tidhar's story Temporal Spider, Spatial Webs is the winner of
this year's Clarke-Bradbury International Science Fiction Competition.

The story is about Spider, an intelligent rock drifting through space
listening to and absorbing everything -- especially music -- and
looking for a place to nest and lay his children.

"This story was chosen because of the quality of writing, the
technology idea behind the story and the poetic feel to the text," says
jury member David Raitt, of ESA's Technology Transfer and Promotion
Office. "The impression is given of a vision of a future which is
strange and different."

Lavie Tidhar, 26 and born in Israel, grew up in a kibbutz. At the age
of 15 he moved with his family to South Africa and spent the last years
of his schooling between Israel and South Africa. He then spent several
years travelling in Africa and worked in Malawi and South Africa before
moving to London in 1998.

Tidhar worked in the UK for two years before again setting off on his
travels, this time to Russia, Mongolia, China and Borneo. Currently he
is studying for a degree at the Richmond American International
University in London (RAIUL).

"I really appreciate winning this competition -- it really means a lot
to me. Coming exactly a year after I started writing fiction, it seems
to indicate that I may be going the right way," says Lavie Tidhar.

Lavie writes poetry and has had several stories accepted for
publication in various anthologies and magazines. He also writes a
regular review column for an online site and reviews short fiction
magazines for a bi-monthly magazine.

"It was extremely difficult to select the winner. We had many really
good stories," says David Raitt. "We plan to select the best and
publish the stories in a book later this year."

Runners-up were Rudi Ball, 21, from South Africa for his story
Collectibles where a spaceship gets its own innards sucked out by a
kind of space garbage collector unit; Gareth Barlow, 24, also from
South Africa for his story The Canine Intent which is a piece of
wonderful writing about a new laser rock cutter; Wunji Lau, 29, from
the USA for his story Form and Function, a very nice idea about living
tattoos on the skin; and Andrew Mays, 29, also from the USA for his
story Tonight's Episode, a humorous reality-TV-type tale where the
audience can decide the fate of a neglected orbital facility.

In addition, a Special Mention was given to Christa Ackermann, 17, from
Switzerland for her story An Encounter - retnuocnE nA. Although there
is no real technology in the story, the writing and the premise -- an
alien from a planet comprised of antimatter finds everything on Earth
reversed -- is original, fresh and funny, and the jury was particularly
impressed by the fact that Christa was only 16 at the time her story
was submitted.

"It was very interesting to see the diversity of ideas these young
writers demonstrated in their stories," Raitt adds.

"Some dealt with teleportation, some with star wars, some with the
discovery of new planets, colonization and terraforming. Others deal
with the human dimension and relationships on long duration missions,
and several were on their way to Mars."

The Clarke-Bradbury International Science Fiction Competition is
managed by Maison d'Ailleurs (House of Elsewhere) in Switzerland, the
OURS Foundation in Switzerland and MoonFront in California.

The competition was organized by ESA's Technology Transfer and
Promotion Office as part of its ongoing project 'Innovative
Technologies in Science Fiction for Space Applications'.


Related articles
* Sci-fi competition about to be judged
http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMSQH5V9ED_Expanding_0.html

* Take a chance to write the future
http://www.esa.int/esaCP/ESARJJ8OS7D_Expanding_0.html

* Clarke-Bradbury International Science Fiction Competition
http://www.itsf.org/index.php?PAGE=contest%2Findex.html

In article .com,
"Timdo99" wrote:

I came across the following a few moments ago, and recognized Lavie
Tidhar as one of RCB's more interesting ex-posters:


ESA News
http://www.esa.int

3 September 2003

Winner announced for science fiction competition

I notice that all the winnders/runners up were in their 20's or younger.
Don't adults write Sci fi any more? :-D