We want your general-relativity-inspired stories!

I'm really thrilled to be part of this fabulous new project, initiated by my friend Pippa Goldschmidt, a fellow fiction writer, poet and novelist with a passion for physics and science-inspired lit in general! We are co-editing an anthology of short stories and essays inspired by Einstein's Theory of General Relativity, which has its 100th birthday next year! The book will be published by Freight Books, we have a great line up of fiction writers and physicists - and we have left a little bit of space in there which could be filled by YOUR STORY. Yes, you - no physics knowledge required! Here's what to do:

Open call for contributions to ‘I am because you are’: the anthology of short stories inspired by general relativity

Einstein published his revolutionary paper on general relativity in November 1915 and changed the way we think about the world. He also purportedly insisted that imagination was more important than knowledge – so here's a chance to use yours and borrow from his -  with no background in physics required!

General relativity turns our ideas about space, time and mass on their head. It predicts astonishing objects such as black holes: so compact that nothing – not even light - can escape them. It explains how the Universe started from a hot, dense explosion and has been expanding ever since. And it utterly befuddles accepted ‘common sense’ notions about space and time.

To celebrate the 100^th anniversary of this world changing theory we are publishing an anthology of short fiction and non-fiction inspired by general relativity, which will be edited by Pippa Goldschmidt and Tania Hershman. 'I am because you are' will be published by Freight Books in Autumn 2015. Around fourteen authors are contributing short stories, alongside essays by astrophysicists about the impact of general relativity on cosmology, black holes and quantum gravity.

Now we want your short fiction! We have assigned space for three more stories and we’re challenging writers to write a short story of no more than 3000 words - shorter is fine too - inspired in some way by general relativity.

Rules

The closing date is 28 February 2015.

Stories should be a maximum length of 3000 words (with no minimum) and written in English.

Stories should be your own work and should not have been published or accepted for publication elsewhere.

Entrants can be of any nationality.

Entrants can only submit one story.

Each story should be formatted as follows:

12 point arial or times new roman, provided digitally as a MS Word, RTF or TXT file.

The front page should include your name, address, email address, phone number and wordcount.

Your name should not appear anywhere else on the story.

Send your stories to us at info@freightbooks.co.uk as an attachment with ‘general relativity short stories’ in the subject line of the email.

Results

Chosen writers will be contacted no later than May 30th 2015 and a the titles and authors of the three chosen entries will be posted on Freight Books' website by 10th June.

Copyright

Copyright will remain with the authors