Entries open for Australia’s richest sci-fi screenwriting award
08 July, 2019
Fifty years ago this month, one man far away took a small step off a spacecraft and captured the imaginations of millions.
It was a moment that until then had only existed in the minds of dreamers. But much earlier than Aldrin and Armstrong, before the space race, before scientists and engineers dared to believe they could reach the moon, a man by the name of Georges Méliès had already taken us there.
He was an illusionist and a filmmaker, and his 1902 spectacle Le Voyage Dans La Lune marks the first science fiction film in history.
We’ve come a long way since Méliès’s rocket collided with the man in the moon: we’ve put people in space, imagined the dark edges of reality and even darker edges of humanity, and faced the Endgame. We’ve envisioned spectacular futures both here and away, pushed science to the limit, and created worlds that are nothing like our own but nevertheless remind us what it means to be human.
In the spirit of these intrepid sci-fi dreamers, the 2019 John Hinde Award for Excellence in Science-Fiction Writing seeks those who dare to look beyond the world as it is and ask questions, and who foster the creation of great science-fiction stories.
After all, at the forefront of every bold endeavour, scientific breakthrough, and thrilling ride through time and space has been a writer with a simple question: what if?
So get dreaming!
Entries open 9 July 2019, and close Friday 9 August 2019.
For more information and to enter, click here.
About the John Hinde Award
Funded by a bequest from the late Australian film critic Australian film critic John Hinde, the John Hinde Award is the richest science-fiction screenwriting award in Australia, offering $10,000 for the best produced script and professional support for the best unproduced script.
Past winners in the produced category include the late Cris Jones in 2017 for The Death and Life of Otto Bloom, Michael Miller in 2016 for episode five of the acclaimed Indigenous series Cleverman, and Jesse O’Brien in 2015 for his feature film Arrowhead.
In the unproduced category, 2017 winner C.S. McMullen’s feature script The Other Lamb was on the Black List, Hit List and Blood List as one of Hollywood’s best unproduced scripts and is currently in post-production and produced by David Lancaster and Stephanie Wilcox at Rumble Pictures (Drive, Whiplash). She is a writer on the upcoming horror anthology series Two Sentence Horror Stories for The CW / Warner Brothers Digital and her scripts Living Metal and Awake are featured on Pathways Showcase. 2018 winner Georgina Love is developing her script Pig with professional support provided by the John Hinde Award.
