Story Olympics

Story Olympiad banner until 2008

Story Olympiad logo since 2009

The Story Olympiad is a non-commercial writing competition for German-language fantasy , which was launched in March 1999 by authors and members of the Internet forum for authors webring for SF & Fantasy .

history

The first Story Olympiad took place in 1999 as an internet competition for short stories. In 2000 Stefanie Pappon and Ernst Wurdack, both founding members of the Autorwebring and the latter later as a small publisher , dared to publish an anthology with the winning stories. From 2003 onwards, the number of participants was more than 200 competition entries from Germany, Austria, Liechtenstein, Great Britain, Russia, Italy and Switzerland.

In 2001, however, the competition almost ended due to the excessive financing risk for the publisher. The problems arose because a participating author offered the anthology to the public at the usually somewhat cheaper author price. This was followed by a wave of cancellations of orders that had already been planned at the normal price from the publisher, who had made advance payments. The actually calculated cost recovery was no longer guaranteed, so the publisher, disappointed, decided to declare the story Olympics project, which had and had the goal of publishing the winning stories, to be a failure. However, following repeated insistence and requests from those involved in the Story Olympiad and friends of the competition, this decision could be reversed.

Since the publishing house was founded by Ernst Wurdack in 2004, the anthologies with the best competition stories have been published by Wurdack-Verlag .

By 2007, several volumes of short stories with ten to 30 winning stories each were published . Some of the winners (see winners of previous competitions) have now published their own novels or have been involved in the sector projects that have arisen.

In August 2008, Ernst Wurdack, the previous boss of the Story Olympiad team, ended his activity as organizer of the Story Olympiad and handed over the organization and administration completely to a team of long-serving and new volunteers. The anthology of 2010 was published by Wurdack Verlag. In 2012 the association "Die Phantasten" took over the publishing supervision of the winning anthology. Since 2013 the Torsten Low Verlag has been able to be won over as publisher for the Story Olympiad.

aims

The aim of this competition is to find talented authors of German fantasy and give them the opportunity to publish.

Participation in the Story Olympiad is free of charge for the participating authors due to the voluntary work of the Story Olympiad staff. A founding member paid in advance privately and voluntarily for the expenses up to publication.

genre

The themes of the stories are stories from the field of fantasy, i.e. horror , science fiction or fantasy . However, for copyright reasons, fan-fiction stories are excluded from the competition. For example, narratives based on Star Trek , Shadowrun , Star Wars and content from role-playing worlds are not permitted .

The restriction for content from role play worlds only applied during the competition. After the competition was over, the game manufacturer's approval was available for the Demonwright universe, a role-playing game world. Some of the novels subsequently created by the winners are therefore set in the game world of the Demonwright universe.

Competition process

Since the year 2000, a preliminary jury (four to six volunteer helpers) has checked the reports received for compliance with the rules of the respective tender as well as for quality criteria. From 2001 the contributions were also anonymized. The contributions accepted by the preliminary jury are then rated by the main jury (six to eight volunteers) for content and execution with points. The preliminary and main jury evaluate independently and separately. The stories that achieve the most points overall will be printed as winning stories in the Story Olympiad anthologies. In addition, up to 2008 the 1st to 3rd place to write a novel were encouraged and supported. This also resulted in the division projects listed below.

The announcement for the year 2008 was a novelty for the Story Olympiad, because here for the first time completed novels with 360,000 to 450,000 characters including spaces were requested for the competition. However, the 2008 competition ended without a winner from the jury. In 2009 and since 2011, short story competitions have been held every two years.

Further project work (division projects)

Many stories are sent to the competitions that appear suitable for publication, but no longer fit into the respective Story Olympiad anthology . For this reason, up to 2008, sectoral projects were developed that also offer authors who have become famous in the competition an opportunity to publish their stories. These divisional projects were supervised by voluntary editorial teams, which ensured further support for the authors.

The Story Olympiad resulted in the following sector projects :

• Fantasy z. B. "Demonwright" and " Movenna ", supervised by Ernst Wurdack
• Horror / horror / fantastic z. B. "Pandaimonion" supervised by Anja Labussek, Dr. Melanie Metzenthin, Claudia Hornung and Olaf Trint
• Thriller z. B. “Lichtscheu”, “Neun Leben” and “Blind”, supervised by Ernst Wurdack
• Science fiction z. B. "Deus ex machina", "Walfred Goreng", "Tabula rasa", "Golem & Goethe", "Surplus", supervised by Armin Rößler , Dr. Heidrun Jänchen and Dieter Schmitt
• Märchen supervised by Dr. Petra Hartmann and Judith Ott

The Story Olympiad team is currently not supervising any branch projects.

Winner of previous competitions

The past competitions

Publications and releases

Published publications in chronological order:

" Traumpfade " (winning texts for the story Olympics of 2000; 1st edition March 2001, 250 copies; 2nd edition April 2001, 100 copies)

" Creatures of Darkness " (winning texts for the 2001 Story Olympiad; published in 2002, 500 copies)

" Dark Visions " (first story Olympics 'Special', 2002)

" Witches, magicians, charlatans " (winning texts from the 2002 Story Olympiad, published 2002)

" Pandaimonion " (Story Olympiad Special, 2002)

" Märchenzauber " (Story Olympiad Special, 2003)

" Pandaimonion II - Because madness is near " (Story-Olympiad-Spezial, 2003)

" Pandaimonion III - For Daddy " (Story Olympiad Special, 2003)

" Shining heroes ?! "(Winning texts of the Story Olympiad 2003, published 2003)

" Good night stories " (Story Olympiad Special, 2003)

" The Iron Throne " (Demonwright, 2003)

" Reach for power " (Demonwright, 2003)

" Pandaimonion IV - The Greenhouse " (Story Olympiad Special, 2004)

" Deus ex Machina " (Science Fiction Project, 2004)

Further publications sorted by genre:

Fairy tale:

• "Magical Fairy Tale World", ISBN 3-938065-03-6
• “More good night stories”, ISBN 3-938065-10-9
• “Always these goblins”, ISBN 3-938065-20-6
• "Drachenstarker Feenzauber", ISBN 978-3-938065-28-0
• “What does the moon dream of?”, ISBN 978-3-938065-37-2

Horror / Scary / Fantastic:

• "Pandaimonion I - VIII", e.g. B. ISBN 3-938065-27-3 , ISBN 3-938065-17-6 , ISSN  1618-9647 -Bd7

thriller

• "Lichtscheu", ISBN 3-938065-06-0
• "Nine Lives", ISBN 3-938065-14-1
• "Blind", ISBN 3-938065-15-X

Fantasy:

• "The Iron Throne" (2003), Demonwright, ISSN  1612-0566 -Bd1
• "Reach for Power" (2003), Demonwright, ISSN  1612-0566 -Bd2
• "Shadows over Byzantium" (2004), Demonwright, ISBN 3-938065-01-X
• "The Forgotten Portal" (2004), Demonwright, ISBN 3-938065-02-8
• "Stories from Movenna" (2004), Movenna, ISBN 3-938065-00-1
• “A Prince for Movenna” (2007), Movenna, ISBN 3-938065-24-9
• "To the north", ISBN 3-938065-09-5

Science fiction:

• "Deus Ex Machina" (2004), ISSN  1618-9647
• "Walfred Goreng" (2004), ISBN 3-938065-04-4
• "Surplus" (2005), ISBN 3-938065-08-7
• "Golem & Goethe" (2005), ISBN 3-938065-13-3
• "Entheete" (2006), ISBN 3-938065-16-8
• "Tabula rasa" (2006), ISBN 3-938065-18-4
• "Lazarus" (2007)
• "The Zyanid Connection" (2007), ISBN 3-938065-22-2
• "Andrade" (2007), ISBN 3-938065-25-7
• "SFX" (2007), ISBN 3-938065-29-X

Nominations / Awards

See also

• Literature Prize
• Wolfgang Hohlbein Prize
• Movenna

Supported Authors or Winners:

• Petra Hartmann
• Frank W. Haubold
• Heidrun Jänchen
• Regine Kölpin
• Alexander Lohmann
• Wilko Müller junior
• Armin Roessler
• Andrea Tillmanns
• Alexander Wichert
• Frank Lauenroth

literature

• Petra Hartmann : Between thunderstorm and poet's laurel. Ten years of story Olympics. In: fantastic! No. 35, July 2009. pp. 24f.
• Martin Witzgall (Ed.): We are serious! Munich: WortKuss Verlag, 2010. (Foreword contains extensive statistical material on the Story Olympiad books and other publications by Wurdack Verlag up to 2009)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ "We about us" from www.story-olympiade.de , Internet link
2. ^ "Interview with Ernst Wurdack on WARP-Online 2003" Internet link
3. ↑ “Interview with Ernst Wurdack and Armin Rößler on Fantasyguide 2003” , Internet link
4. ↑ "Quote from a newsletter" , Internet link
5. ↑ "Copy of a quote from www.warp-online.de" , Internet link
6. ↑ "Commentary by Gaby Scharf" , Internet link
7. ^ "Ernst Wurdack hands over the Story Olympiad 2008" , Internet link
8. ↑ "Team of the Story Olympiad from 2008" , Internet link
9. ↑ "Cooperation with the Fantastic" , Internet link
10. ↑ "winning anthology silence has appeared" , Internet link
11. ^ "Result of the competition 2008" , Internet link
12. ^ "Winner since 1999" , Internet link
13. ^ "Competitions" , Internet link
14. ↑ "Extract of the winners overview at www.story-olympiade.de" , Internet link
15. ↑ Between thunderstorm and poet's laurel. Ten years of story Olympics. , Internet link

Web links

• Story Olympics

Competitions:

• German Fantastic Prize
• German Science Fiction Award
• Kurd Lasswitz Prize

Interviews:

• Interview with Fantastik-Online
• Interview with Fantasyguide

Background for the Demonwright stories:

• Demonwright