Everyone ought to remember the crazed attempt at a multi-author serial novel foisted upon fandom by Julius Schwartz and Raymond A. Palmer, the staff of the storied fanzine Science Fiction Digest.
Cosmos was outline by Palmer and then sent to 14 prominent SF authors of the day, each to write a chapter.
Hailed as a breakthough concept, it quickly become something of an unmentionable thing.
The First Fandom Experience – first introduced here – correctly argues that the novel did not turn out the way it was intended, but also contend that the ending chapter could have concluded things in a better way, and are now offering a serious prize to the winner of the author who pens a better ending for Cosmos than Ralph Milne Farley, David H. Keller, M.D., Bob Olsen, Francis Flagg, Miles J. Breuer, M.D., Arthur J. Burks, Otis Adelbert Kline, Abner J. Gelula, Raymond A. Palmer, A. Merritt, R.F. Starzl, Edward E. Smith, Ph.D., P. Schuyler Miller, L.A. Eshbach, Ed Earl Repp and Edmond Hamilton might have but didn’t.
The Cosmos Prize Contest details can be found here .
And you can learn more on The FIrst Fandom Experience’s page The Cosmos Project
