Pulp Idol runners-up announced

After months of waiting, we can at last reveal who are the ten runners-up in this year's SFX Pulp Idol fiction writing competition!

SFX readers were challenged to write SF or fantasy stories of between 1000 and 2000 words. The closing date was 3 June and the stories were sifted and sorted by the SFX team, SFX reviewers, the SFX editor and guest judge Robert Rankin. As in the previous two years, we promised to print our pick of ten runners-up. When the book hits news-stand next week, you'll discover that those final ten stories are:
“Custard” by Dave Barsby
“Fairy Boy” by Tim Ellis
“Flotsam” by Nic Clatworthy
“Living in the Fifth World” by David J Thacker
“Mickey and the Nixies” by Grahame Jones
“Not by Moonlight” by G Middleton
“Prophet Box” by Gary Lake
“The Meat Fields” by Stuart Pantoll
“The Pearl Diver” by Duncan Wildsmith
“Weapon of Mass Consternation” by Gareth Shore

Congratulations to all these writers, and of course to the overall winner James McGraw whose story "Charlie's Angel" will headline the collection. We’ve included all these stories in full in the Pulp Idol 2008 book, in no particular order. The authors should feel very proud of themselves! The book is being given away free with issue 175 of SFX, so that’s tens of thousands of copies out there on newsstands – what great exposure for a budding author. SFX 175 and the free Pulp Idol 2008 collection are officially available next Wednesday, 24 September. Here's what you'll be looking out for:

Thanks and well done to everybody who submitted stories to the competition this year. In the book you'll find the names of 39 other writers who made it through to the top 50 long list (are you among them?) as well as an extract from the latest novel by RA Salvatore. This year's competition was sponsored by Dungeons & Dragons .

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