Stephen Hawking remarked that the 21st century would be “the century of complexity.” While scientists are working toward a quantitative understanding of our highly coupled, complex future, it’s up to artists to speculate how we might experience life in an age of accelerating technological innovation, data collection, and displacement.
To underscore the importance of this creative vision, SFI External Professor Dan Rockmore, director of the Neukom Institute for Computational Science at Dartmouth College, recently announced the Neukom Institute Literary Arts Awards for speculative fiction. The awards will recognize “near-future creative writing featuring themes relevant to computational work or computing,” according to the Dartmouth press release.
“These awards recognize the role of artists as gadflies for the good, provocateurs and satirists when the sciences overreach, and as far-seeing prophets of scientific potential, for good or bad,” Rockmore says. “The arts have always had strong creative connections to the sciences, including computational science.”
Three awards will be granted, each carrying a $5,000 honorarium. The categories are “Speculative Literary Fiction,” “Debut Speculative Literary Fiction” (for a first book), and “Playwriting.” The winners will be recognized during a ceremony at Dartmouth college, which will include a panel discussion of their work and a performance of the winning play.
For more information, and to apply, visit http://sites.dartmouth.edu/neukominstitutelitawards
The deadline for submissions is December 31, 2017. Any works published after June 1, 2015 will be eligible for consideration.
Read Dan Rockmore’s “Case for Speculative Fiction” in the Los Angeles Review of Books (October 19, 2017) <link>
Read the Dartmouth College press release (October 25, 2017)
Listen to Rockmore on New Hampshire Public Radio (October 27, 2017)
Listen to Rockmore on Vermont Public Radio (November 3, 2017)