L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future Volume 35 Read online

  So, in this volume, you will find a dozen stories of wonder, intrigue, and even horror. They span several genres and subgenres, but they all share one thing in common: they’re all winners of the Contest, and all of the authors show tremendous promise.

  If that isn’t enough, each of the stories has been illustrated by one of the most talented new artists in the world, winners of the Illustrators of the Future Contest.

  On top of that, we have fine advice on writing and art from some of our celebrity judges—Rob Prior, Echo Chernik, and Mike Resnick—and we’ve got some delightful stories from other judges, Dean Wesley Smith and Rebecca Moesta—along with a powerful piece by the Contests’ founder L. Ron Hubbard.

  I hope that this year’s presentation will make you laugh, make you cry, astound and delight you, and ultimately fill you with wonder.

  I know it has done that for me.

  Cover Art

  by Bob Eggleton

  * * *

  Bob Eggleton is a winner of seven Hugo Awards and eleven Chesley Awards. His art can be seen on the covers of numerous magazines, professional publications, and books in the world of science fiction, fantasy, and horror across the world including several volumes of his own work. He has also worked as a conceptual illustrator for movies and thrill rides.

  Of late, Eggleton has focused on private commissions and self-commissioned work. ( The latter was the genesis for this year’s cover art.) He is an elected Fellow of the International Association of Astronomical Artists and is a Fellow of the New England Science Fiction Association.

  Bob recently completed nineteen paintings for The Foundation trilogy. And he is currently working on a new book, The Art of Frank Kelly Freas.

  Bob has been an Illustrators of the Future Contest judge since 1988. He has participated as an instructor for the annual workshops and as an art director for previous anthologies. As a judge of thirty years, we thought it fitting that his work grace the cover of the anthology celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of L. Ron Hubbard’s Illustrators of the Future Contest. www.bobeggleton.com

  The Illustrators of the Future Contest Directing the Art

  by Echo Chernik

  * * *

  Echo Chernik is a successful advertising and publishing illustrator with twenty years of professional experience and several prestigious publishing awards.

  Her clients include mainstream companies such as: Miller, Camel, Coors, Celestial Seasonings, Publix Super Markets, Inc., Kmart, Sears, Nascar, the Sheikh of Dubai, the city of New Orleans, Bellagio resort, the state of Indiana, USPS, Dave Matthews Band, Arlo Guthrie, McDonald’s, Procter & Gamble, Trek Bicycle Corporation, Disney, BBC, Mattel, Hasbro, and more. She specializes in several styles including decorative, vector, and art nouveau.

  She is the Coordinating Judge of the Illustrators of the Future Contest. Echo strives to share the important but all-too-often neglected subject of the business aspect of illustration with the winners, as well as preparing them for the reality of a successful career in illustration. www.echo-x.com

  The Illustrators of the Future Contest Directing the Art

  The most valuable award from winning the Illustrators of the Future Contest is not the most obvious. The twelve winners each year don’t only win a monetary prize, and a fabulous ceremony in their honor, as well as having their name permanently added to a prestigious collection of past winners who have gone on to successful careers. Along with their victory, their work is published in the bestselling Writers of the Future anthology. The best of the best emerging writers and illustrators are published in one fantastically supported annual book and this year is the thirty-fifth volume.

  This article, though, is about something these artists win that may be one of the most essential gifts they could be given: they win the gift of experience from artists who have come before them.

  The winners of the Illustrators of the Future Contest spend an entire week in Los Angeles learning from industry giants, hearing stories of success (and failures), and discovering what it really means to make a living as an artist. They participate in workshops and lectures. They get to sit down one-on-one with the likes of Larry Elmore and Ciruelo, who will eagerly share their experiences and advice. They are inundated with more knowledge in a shorter period of time than they have ever had before.

  When I took over as Coordinating Judge of the Illustrators’ Contest a few years ago, it became one of my primary goals to infuse the winners with industry knowledge and experience that was difficult to get elsewhere, to really make the experience invaluable for them. Much of the week-long seminar is focused on the business of being a working artist. Whether they are looking toward a path of being a freelance artist or working on a team or in a studio, they will have to learn how to work with art direction. Working with an art director is a skill that is learned over time. During the week-long seminar, the winners work on a project with an art director from concept through timely delivery.

  Their experience with art direction, however, starts even before they arrive in Los Angeles. Upon receiving the exciting phone call that they are a winner, finalists are individually assigned a story that complements their artistic style. The story they receive is one of that year’s winning stories from the Writers of the Future Contest. From that story, they will illustrate a new piece that will be published and credited to them. This piece serves many purposes. They will experience, possibly for the first time, the process of creating a published work of art with professional art direction. It will also be a publishing credit for their résumé and not many artists can claim to be a part of a bestselling book. This published work will be judged and will contend for the Golden Brush Award (a Grand Prize check for $5,000 and a beautiful trophy) announced at a grand Hollywood gala. Maybe most importantly, the published piece will be a landmark portfolio piece—helping each winner earn their next job.

  As the art director, I work with each winner to help make their piece the best it can be. Being a good art director takes balance and practice. The goal is to work with the artist to guide them to conceive and create an amazing piece of art. An art director should not tell them what to paint.

  The winners are given thirty days to complete their illustration from start to finish. They first submit their concepts as thumbnails or loose drawings. The artist describes to me what their final vision is for each sketch. It is usually pretty easy to pick out the most exciting one, as the artist is inherently more excited about one or two of them. I then talk to them about details, focus, and composition. What elements should they make sure to retain when transitioning from sketch to their finish? What colors and shapes (both positive and negative) will really draw in the viewer? What elements of symbolism and position are there, and do they give the viewer the correct impression of the story? Is there a way to deepen the story and push the piece further? What sort of foreshadowing can be added into the illustration? Is the viewer’s eye traveling around the piece in an engaging and entertaining manner? Can the artist justify the choices they make in their vision?

  That one work will be judged for their vision and execution, but their career will be judged by their professionalism and ability to work with art direction.

  Eventually, as their careers progress, that once stellar piece will be replaced in their portfolio with new works and the prize money will be spent. But the big thing that will remain and be built upon is the experience and knowledge they gain from this special week. It becomes a part of their foundation—strengthening them to become that much more magnificent in their future. This is the gift that I, and the other judges, strive to give the winners, made possible by L. Ron Hubbard and the Illustrators of the Future Contest.

  Untrained Luck

  written by

  Elise Stephens

  illustrated by

  ALIYA CHEN

  * * *

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Elise Stephens was raised on
a steady diet of fairytales and Disney musicals. Early involvement in the theater left Elise with a taste for dramatic, high-stakes adventure while frequent international travel gave her an awe and respect for foreign cultures. When she fell in love with the intricate plots and strange worlds of science fiction and fantasy novels, her fate was sealed for the writing life. She graduated with a creative writing degree from the University of Washington where she was awarded the Eugene Van Buren Prize for Fiction. She attended Orson Scott Card’s Literary Boot Camp in 2014.

  Through her fiction, Elise strives to discover beauty within brokenness and unlock healing after devastating loss. She intends for her stories to offer light and strength for facing the darkness and disappointments of this world. Becoming a mother five years ago added a ferocious affection to her storytelling, and themes of self-sacrifice, legacy, and family ties currently permeate her work.

  Elise lives in Seattle with her amazing husband and two rambunctious kiddos in a house with large windows for letting in the sunlight that she constantly craves, both literally and metaphorically. www.elisestephens.com

  ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR

  Aliya Chen was born in 1998 in Buffalo, New York, but calls California her home. From an early age, Aliya fell in love with both reading and drawing, and she found a hobby in reimagining science fiction and fantasy stories through her artwork. She discovered digital painting and animation in middle school and became fascinated by the idea of bringing characters and worlds to life on screen.

  This fascination led her to pursue computer graphics at the University of Pennsylvania, where she is currently in her third year. Although she loves to explore the intersection of technology and art, her ultimate passion lies in capturing moods and telling stories through her illustrations. www.aliyachen.com

  Untrained Luck

  Mag forced herself to think about anything except the crescents glued inside her boot heel while the immigration officer addressed her in Hinshee, the official dialect.

  “What brings you to Palab?” His black eyes studied her face from beneath his green wool cap. She smelled desert dust on his jacket. Overhead, an icy stream of conditioned air warned of crackling heat outside. Even here, she tasted the bitter tang of Palab’s soil. Mag had thought her previous visit to this country had been her last. Life and survival had other ideas.

  “Business,” she said.

  “Your line of work?”

  “I’m a mediator. I’ve come to resolve a dispute.”

  “Really?” His eyebrows twitched. “And who are your clients?”

  “I can’t … say.” She grasped fleetingly for the Hinshee word for disclose. That would have sounded politer. Then again, disclosing the identities of her clients, with their reputations for violence and disregard for the law, would endanger Mag’s own safety more than a mild discourtesy.

  The officer nodded. “Did you take classes for this? A university degree?”

  Mag shrugged and turned her palms skyward, as per local custom. “Some skills I taught myself, for others I took lessons.”

  She’d built the bulk of her mediation skills from a childhood spent pulling her parents off each other. The day she’d come home to find her mother’s neck broken, body limp on the kitchen table, her father showering in the bathroom, she’d pulled her eleven-year-old sister Nika onto the Firebrand and gunned the bike out of town.

  The officer tapped an unlit cig against Mag’s pack. “Anything to declare?”

  She opened her jacket and laid out her handgun, permit for the gun, echo tin, snoop, and wallet. The moonblade tucked into the small of her back remained hidden and undeclared, as did the crescent coins in her boot. She’d learned from her first time inside Palab’s borders that extra weapons and secret finances were always wise. As she began to unclip her therma-pin from her lapel, the officer flicked two fingers to dismiss the effort. He nodded at the items on the counter and she put them away while he lit his cig.

  “Do you think your clients will find an agreement?” he asked casually.

  She shrugged again. “If the Eye shows mercy.”

  “If the Eye shows mercy,” he echoed, grinning, and reached for his stamp, then paused midway and shook his head.

  Mag’s relief froze in her chest.

  “My apologies,” the officer said. “You must go here first.” He motioned her to a curtained room labeled Secondary Questioning.

  As Mag entered, the room wafted scents of dust and disinfectant. A woman wearing a starched blue scarf sat behind a table. She pointed to Mag’s arms. “Roll up your sleeves.”

  So the Palabi government was searching for simpaths now. Mag had seen the same witch-hunt play out in Palab’s neighbor, Kesh, which had required simpaths to publicly register last year. All that had done was spur a wave of mob killings: death by bloodletting and eye-gouging. Mag held no high hopes of enlightenment for the days ahead.

  She doffed her riding jacket, baring her forearms. The female inspector met Mag’s eyes with disinterest, then set to swabbing her arms to check for concealed simpath heat-scars.

  Mag’s mind pinged back to her first run-in with a simpath. She’d been young in her career and hadn’t yet earned enough to purchase a therma-pin’s protection. The simpath had emotionally pushed Mag into negotiating an imbalanced divorce settlement in which the already traumatized children were placed in the neglectful parent’s custody. Her throat tightened at the memory and her mind’s eye still burned with the sight of the simpath’s whorled heat-scars peeking out beneath his shirtsleeve as he’d sauntered from the room. Mag had known then what he’d done to her, but it had been too late. She’d sold her mother’s necklace the next day in order to buy a therma-pin. Never again. Palab’s government appeared to have taken a similar stance.

  When the inspector felt satisfied with her scrutiny, she waved Mag to the room’s egress with a flat “Welcome to Palab.” Mag shrugged back into her jacket.

  She’d wished for a gifting as a child, but now felt grateful to bear nothing. As her boots hit the pavement outside the customs station, a wave of heat engulfed her. She retrieved the Firebrand, swung onto the seat, and drove for the border town of Ajrah. The sky above her was not yet stained with purple-and-black stripes. Then again, by the time the storm stripes appeared … “May the Eye show mercy,” she muttered under her breath.

  Minutes later, Mag snapped her kickstand onto the oily asphalt of a fuel station. The air was a filmy haze of petrol, honey-roasting pistachios from somewhere nearby, and burned rubber. As she topped off, she ran down her mental list: she’d already changed the bike’s oil, filter, coolants, and checked her tread depth. One and a half days’ ride to Ellawi City, do the job, get paid, then buy space in a bunker to hole up for the storm.

  After refueling, Mag headed for the dingy lavatory and moved the crescents from her boot to a concealed money belt. Her reflection in the bathroom’s cracked mirror halted her. A dull orange light burned at the tip of her therma-pin. She tapped the sensor twice to reset it, but the pin flashed three more blinks and then went dead. She hissed. The ultrasensitive temp sensor and proprietary pattern-recognition software made therma-pins expensive and costly to repair. Of course, today was when the device would finally stop working.

  While a simmer could heat or cool a non-bio liquid, and an empath fed emotions into the subject’s mind—always with a discernible “push”—a simpath bore a blend of both gifts and regulated sweat, blood and other bio-fluid temps, causing an imperceptible emotional sway that was limited only by the simpath’s line of sight. Simpaths bled excess energy from their hands at wavelengths with unique hot and cold signatures, the effect of which eventually scarred their forearms. Therma-pins detected these simpath heat signatures. Mag’s work could not be done without one. At least not ethically.

  Her clients would doubtless bring their own pins for security at the upcoming negotiation, but now Mag would have to
add repairs to the list of necessities piling up behind the expense of a two-week bunker stay. And asking to borrow a therma-pin for her own mediation might erode her clients’ respect. Mag was cursing to herself as she exited the lavatory when she saw the kid.

  As a child, Mag and Nika had spent hours at fuel stations like this one, begging for spare change. This seven- or eight-year-old kid wasn’t a street urchin; those always traveled in twos or threes. He was alone. His clothes were grimy and tight shirtsleeves hugged his narrow arms instead of the region’s customary loose tunics. Hair straggled, lips chapped, eyes round with wariness.

  In a border town like Ajrah, child trafficking stats gave mere hours before a vulch snatched him. Sure enough, lounging against one of the fuel towers was a man in a long tunic with sunglasses trained on the kid.

  Mag chewed her tongue, then shouted her best Hinshee curse at the boy.

  “Where have you been?”

  The eyes of the other customers swung to her like magnets. The boy gaped.