The Salam Award for Imaginative Fiction is a tribute to Dr Abdus Salam, and an effort to promote science fiction writing in Pakistan.

Rules

-Original content, must be written by you
-Never published before
-Not more than 10,000 words
-PDF or Word Document
-Submitted on or before July 31st, 2017
-Participants must either be currently residing in Pakistan, or be of Pakistani birth/descent
-Entries must be in English
-One story per entrant

Please don’t place your name, address, or other identifiers within the body of the story. Please place those in the submission email with the story attached as .pdf or .doc

Please don’t quote another author or poet whose work is not in the public domain unless you have explicit permission from said author or poet.

What’s acceptable?

The scope is broad. Anything from alien invasions to fantasy universes, and comic science fiction to dark fantasies is valid. The aim is to encourage imaginative fiction so anything that falls under the broad category of science fiction and fantasy, will be accepted.

What’s not acceptable though is religiously-oriented stories of good versus evil, stories that target a particular group/community, or stories that contain hate speech.

The Awards

The Salam Award for imaginative fiction is a short story award to promote science fiction and related genres of writing in Pakistan. The scope is broad and will include every thing from regular science fiction and steampunk to magic realism and weird fiction.

All submissions are due by July 31st 2017 and the winner will be announced on or before August 31st 2017. The winning story will get:

-A cash prize of Rs 50,000
-Review by an established literary agent for market guidance and possible representation
-An editorial review by a professional editor for critique and potential publication in a multi-award winning science fiction magazine

A greater reward though is getting your story reviewed by our esteemed judges.

“Scientific thought and its creation is the common and shared heritage of mankind.”

       — Dr Abdus Salam

Submissions

Please email your submissions to [email protected] or submit through the website here

http://thesalamaward.com/index.php/submissions/

If you don’t receive an acknowledgement of your submission within 3 days, please send us another email!