Our Philosophy Through Fiction contest had 704 submissions, more than 10 times the number we expected. A dedicated team of readers at Sci Phi Journal checked the stories for basic quality, and our panel of judges – Eric Schwitzgebel, Meghan Sullivan, and Mark Silcox – judged among the remaining stories. We are very pleased to announce the winner.
The Philosophy Through Fiction prize will be awarded to Lisa Schoenberg, professor of philosophy at Cheyney University, Pennsylvania for her story “Adjoiners”. This well-paced, immersive story considers the question of whether you can commit a crime against yourself.
The judges also decided to give an honorable mention to “Morality tale” by John Holbo, associate professor of philosophy at National University of Singapore. This story asks what it would mean for something we would normally consider morally terrible to be good—and what it means for stories that recount such a situation.
Both stories will be published in the June issue of Sci Phi Journal.
This competition was organized by Helen De Cruz (senior lecturer in philosophy at Oxford Brookes University), and funded by the American Philosophical Association’s Berry Fund for Public Philosophy. We are grateful for the grant that made this possible, and we thank everyone who has participated in this competition and the judges.
Helen De Cruz
Helen De Cruz holds the Danforth Chair in the Humanities at Saint Louis University. Her areas of specialization are philosophy of cognitive science and philosophy of religion. Recent publications include De Cruz, De Smedt & Schwitzgebel (Eds.) Philosophy through science fiction stories (Bloomsbury, 2021) and De Cruz (Ed. and illustrator). Philosophy illustrated. 42 thought experiments to broaden your mind (Oxford University Press, forthcoming).
Very well done Lisa and also John. I very much look forward to reading your excellent stories and their food for thought sections. Also, I would love to hear any news of which stories that didn’t win the Philosophy Through Fiction competition nevertheless will be in the volume of invited speculative fiction. Have a good day, from Philip J Parkin.
Congratulations to the winners. Will there be any other entries in a special volume of the Sci Phi Journal? You must have lots of good material…and lots of people who want to read this subject.
Congrats to Lisa and also John.
Looking forward to reading their stories as well as the related rationales.
Would like to know the stories (from among the eligible one for the Competition) selected for publication in the said anthology.
We are working on an anthology with original philosophical fiction. We are currently exploring possible publishers, as well as approaching invited authors.
In a few months, we hope to have concrete expressions of interest from publishers and will get back to anyone who has expressed an interest in contributing.
Hearty congratulations to the winners! 🙂
Please let me know if there would be an anthology. I had taken part in the contest and would love to contribute to the anthology. 🙂
Warm regards,
Shalini