$10,000 on offer for top Sci-Fi script, as new era of popular sci-fi is heralded

5 July, 2017

With Australian shows like Cleverman and The Kettering Incident receiving critical acclaim and Netflix’s first venture into Australian content – the supernatural series Tidelands – due to start production in Queensland in 2018, we seem to experiencing something of a renaissance of local sci-fi content.

Well timed to capitalise on the momentum of this second coming is the Australian Writers’ Guild’s annual John Hinde Award for Excellence in Science-Fiction Writing, launching today. Funded by a bequest from the late Australian film critic John Hinde, the award, this year in its tenth year, 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.

‘Above any other genre, science-fiction is the genre of ideas – mind-bending, jaw-dropping, awe-inspiring ideas,’ says Shayne Armstrong, AWG Board Member and a previous winner of the John Hinde Award. ‘It is the perfect genre for examining present concepts through a portal to the past or the future, or a parallel world or a completely alien one.’

Other past winners in the produced category include 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, 2015 winners Penelope Chai and Adam Spellicy have since had their screenplay Mary, Mary win the 2016 Monte Miller Award, and have individually received development funding through Screen Australia. 2016 winner Graeme Burfoot is continuing to develop his script Red to Blue with professional support provided by the John Hinde Award.

Entries open 4 July 2017, and close 6 August 2017.

For more information and to enter click here.