Kepler Award
Criteria & Results
Judges are asked to decide whether either or both stories deserve some level of award – winner, second place, or honorable mention, and to evaluate stories using the following criteria: Does the story –
1. creatively extrapolate and speculate based on established fact and solid theory, without exposition. (Stories can incorporate fantasy elements, as Kepler’s Somnium did, as long as they don’t contradict established facts)
2. have science as an integral part of the story, in an exciting, inspirational, and thought-provoking way, and
3. Meet all expectations for good story-telling — intriguing characters, believable and compelling action, satisfying conclusions.
Judges are asked to include any comments, reactions, and reasons for their decision, and rate the stories on points 1, 2, and 3 from 1 to 100. All individual feedback remains private unless the judge specifically allows any portion of it to be shared..
2023 Update — Our announcement of award results is slightly delayed as one of the judges had an updated email address we missed. We expect the last results will be in by the weekend of 2/10
Our judges for 2023:
Professor Virginia L. Trimble
Geoffrey Landis
Dr. Andrew Burt
Douglas Dluzen, PhD
You can see their bios on the main Kepler page.
Winners and Finalists
2023 We are pleased to announce the results for this year’s Kepler Award. More details will be forthcoming, but for now we want to let everyone know:
The winner for the long category is:
“The Ninth Tentacle”, by Geoffrey Hart
Geoff Hart is a Fellow of the Society for Technical Communication (STC) with more than 35 years of experience as a writer, editor, information designer, and French translator. During this time, he’s published more than 450 articles, most available via his Web site (www.geoff-hart.com), as well as the books Effective Onscreen Editing, Writing for Science Journals, and Write Faster With Your Word Processor. A popular speaker at the STC annual conference and STC chapter meetings, Geoff has given presentations and workshops in North America, the U.K., India, and China on topics ranging from writing and editing to information design, cross-cultural communication, and workplace survival skills. He currently works as a freelance French translator and scientific editor, specializing in authors for whom English is a second language. In his spare time, he writes fiction and has sold 73 stories, one of which won the 2023 Kepler Award. Visit him online at https://geoff-hart.com.
Author note — I’m enormously grateful to Fran Eisemann for finding the deeply buried heart of this story and helping me bring it to the surface.
For the short, short category, the judges were split, so we will be giving awards to both of these stories:
“In Space No One Can Hear You Play Alto Sax”, by Hesper Leveret
Hesper Leveret writes speculative fiction about beauty and heartbreak, magic and imagined mythology. She was born and raised in Southampton, then read Ancient & Modern History at Balliol College, Oxford. She has done a variety of jobs including SEO writing, project management, procurement, writing questions for TV quiz shows such as Mastermind and The Weakest Link, and selling books in Waterstone’s.
She lived for several years in Derby, where she enjoyed exploring the Peak District but missed living near the sea. She is now based in Liverpool, UK, where she lives with her rock-climbing husband, two young sons, and chronic pain. Her stories appear in venues including Fireside, Interzone, Cosmic Roots and Eldritch Shores, and Luna Station Quarterly. From 2020 to 2023 she was a slush reader for Apex Magazine, and in September 2022 she had the great pleasure of accepting the British Fantasy Society Award for Best Magazine on behalf of the Apex Editors.
Her interests include visiting museums and historical properties, reading books, baking cakes, scrapbooking, board games, jigsaws, and escaping rooms.
Hesper’s comments on her story: This story was inspired by imagining how ordinary people would experience a future exodus from Earth: the sort of personal items they might want to take with them as they left the planet, how some of those personal items might cause unexpected problems, and how people could come together to solve those problems. I am thrilled for my writing to be recognised for this science fiction award, and I hope my story inspires others to think about how science interacts with our humanity.’
and
“Call of the Void”, by Bridgette Dutta Portman
Bridgette Dutta Portman is an award-winning playwright and author based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She enjoys writing science fiction and fantasy, particularly with psychological and mental health themes, and is the author of the young adult novel trilogy The Coseema Saga. She teaches composition and creative writing at UC Berkeley. www.bridgetteduttaportman.com
Bridgette’s comments on her story: I was fascinated by the psychological phenomenon of “l’appel du vide” (“the call of the void”), the strange and paradoxical urge many people feel to leap off high places, including cliffs and waterfalls. This is not a feeling most people act on, but I wondered what it would be like if people felt something similar in space–maybe millions of miles from Earth and disconnected from everything familiar, which would be even more disorienting. Are we equipped to handle space travel psychologically and emotionally? That was the premise for this story, which also explores power dynamics, repression, and control.
2022 Update — At the suggestion of one of our judges, a flash fiction submission for this year has inspired us to create a new, “short short”, aka flash fiction, award category.
For 2022 our panel of Judges will once again return:
Professor Virginia L. Trimble
Dr. Andrew Burt
Douglas Dluzen, PhD
You can see their bios on the main Kepler page.
2022 Although we have no main winner for 2022, we are very pleased to announce that an excellent flash fiction submission has inspired us to create a new, “short short”, aka flash fiction, category. This year’s winner in the short short category is Rob Nisbet, for his story “Wish Upon a Star“. It will be published in Cosmic Roots & Eldritch Shores later this year.
Rob Nisbet lives on the English south coast near Brighton. He has had approaching 100 stories printed in magazines and anthologies ranging from science fiction to romance (using his wife’s name) to horror. His wife has recently turned to crime. Sci-fi credits include audio drama – he has adapted work by Philip K. Dick for radio and has had several audio scripts produced by Big Finish for their Doctor Who range. He also keeps chickens.
Rob’s comments on his story: The two contrasting aspects of ‘Wish Upon A Star’: the damaged space station, and the garden swing on Earth, occurred to me as a complete story. I played with the idea until I felt it worked and I was happy with the result.
2021 The judges have agreed on “Iron Tusk”, by Josh Pearce, as the 2021 winner of the Kepler Award. However, after accepting the award money and asking for the publication contract to be signed, the writer declined to accept edits by our judges and editors, or to have them carried out by the editors, unless registering protest, thus making publication in line with the spirit of the award not possible.
2020: We were pleased to see that this year submissions were closer to what we’re looking. There were two finalist stories sent to the judges.“I Dream of Stars”, by Steve Pantazis, and “Jupiter Rises”, by John M. Campbell. Overall, the judges decision was that neither one sufficiently met the criteria to be awarded a prize but that an honorable mention for one might be in order.
Therefore, we are naming “I Dream of Stars”, by Steve Pantazis, as Honorable Mention for the Kepler Award 2020. 
STEVE PANTAZIS is an award-winning author of fantasy and science fiction. He won the prestigious Writers of the Future award in 2015 and has gone on to publish a number of short stories in leading SF&F anthologies and magazines, including Nature, Galaxy’s Edge and IGMS. When not writing (a rare occasion!), Steve creates extraordinary cuisine, exercises with vigor, and shares marvelous adventures with the love of his life. Originally from the Big Apple, he now calls Southern California home. You can learn more about him at www.StevePantazis.com.
Steve’s comment on the inspiration for his story:
“Logan, my protagonist in “I Dream of Stars,” was inspired by the girl who lived across the street from me when I was eleven. She had spina bifida and used crutches to help her walk. What inspired me about her was her indomitable spirit. She was a “can do” person who never let her disability slow her down. I wish I would have stayed in contact with her because I know she went on to do amazing things. Her fierce spirit will always be with me, and it’s infused in the pages of my story.
.
Finalist John M Campbell:
John M. Campbell has made a career in the aerospace industry. Now, he speculates on the worlds currently unknown to us that science and engineering may unlock. He is compelled by the promise technology offers to address many of the issues facing human survival. The prospect of extraterrestrial life on Mars and the outer planets fascinates him. He finds intriguing the likelihood that machine intelligence will surpass mankind’s ability to control it in this century. Inspiration for his stories often comes from the strange realities of quantum physics and cosmology. He hopes his stories will inspire careers in science and engineering as the authors he read inspired his career.
His story “False Identity” appeared in Compelling Science Fiction Issue 12 and can be read here: http://compellingsciencefiction.com/stories/false-identity.html For more of his stories visit his web page at www.JohnMCampbell.com John lives with his wife in Denver, Colorado.
We also pass on to the finalists that portion of the comments and reasoning the judges offer for passing on. Since the award itself will not be given this year, we will also make donations to the The Planetary Society and Astronomers Without Borders.
For 2020 our judges were:
Professor Virginia L. Trimble
Dr. Andrew Burt
Douglas Dluzen, PhD
You can see their bios on the main Kepler page.
Joe Stech — editor-in-chief of Compelling Science Fiction magazine, a cloud software consultant, and an avid rock climber.
2019: The first year of the award was our trial run. We got a number of submissions, but felt that none of them were truly addressing the requirements of the award. So for 2019 we returned everyone’s reading fee and made sure that for the future years the award page emphasized more strongly what we were looking for.