Toward Ecosophy

I'm delighted to say that my earlier post here on the Grist cli-fi contest got an extremely enthusiastic response from my readers. Admittedly, Grist gave the discussion a lot of help. If you set out to dream up an all-out parody of today's woke ideologies, could you do better than a story in which humanity is saved by getting everyone to use different pronouns? 

That's the basic plot of the winning story of the Grist contest. No, I'm not kidding. 

I've mentioned before that being a satirist these days is the hardest job in the world. How in heaven's name can the writers for The Onion and The Babylon Bee keep on struggling to top real life?  You know that right now, if they've read the Grist contest winners, they're sitting in a bar staring into glasses of straight whiskey and gathering their strength for their greatest challenge yet. We cannot leave them to face this alone!  Arise, and let us hasten to their assistance! 

That is to say, it's time to launch a countercontest. 

Since I want to encourage prospective writers to sink their teeth into something a little meatier than the pablum being served up by Grist, I've decided to name this the Gristle Cli-Fi Contest. The rules are as follows:

1. Entries shall be short stories between 3000 and 5000 words, written in English. (By "short story" I mean something that has characters, setting, and a plot that goes somewhere. In "English" I include standard punctuation and spelling.)

2. Entries shall parody, satirize, undercut, or otherwise make merry mock of the premises and presuppositions of the Grist contest, which can be read in all their glory here. (This is not a place to submit straight sci-fi stories just because they're politically incorrect. I am looking for stories that take aim directly at the blossoming silliness of this contest and the belief system that underlies it.)

3. Entries shall not expect readers to believe crass stupidities. (You can introduce all the crass stupidities you want, but don't expect the readers to treat them as anything but crass stupidities.)

4. Entries shall not feature space travel. (Seriously, at this point space travel is the most overused cliché in all of science fiction. The last interesting thing that could be done with it was done before many of you were born. Back in the golden age of science fiction, there was a grand panoply of futures that had nothing to do with space travel, and it's high time to bust the genre out of the rocketship ghetto and go on to less drearily repetitive futures.) Edit: one of my readers has proposed a story that makes fun of the space travel cliché in a lively fashion. I will potentially be willing to include a story or two along these lines. If your story presupposes the geriatric fantasy of Man's Future in Space, on the other hand, spare me.

Those are the rules. Submissions should be in Word format, and should be sent by email to gristleanthology (at) gmail (dot) com. Submissions to this contest will remain open until October 31, 2021. Stories that are accepted will be published in an anthology early next year. The working title is The Flesh Of Your Future Sticks Between My Teeth: Stories from the Gristle Cli-Fi Contest. Let's make it happen!