2023 Winners Canopus Awards for Excellence in Interstellar Writing

100 Year Starship (100YSS) announced the winners of the 2023 Canopus Awards for Excellence in Interstellar Writing at Nexus Nariobi 2023. The 2023 100 Year Starship (100YSS) Canopus Award for Excellence in Interstellar Writing recognizes the finest fiction and non-fiction works that expand our understanding of the challenges, opportunities, pitfalls, and rewards of interstellar space exploration.

The winners are:

• In the category of “Published Short-Form Fiction” the winners are Kevin J. Anderson and Rick Wilber for “The Hind,” originally published in Asimov’s Science Fiction, 2020.
• In the category of “Published Long-Form Fiction” the winners are Jeff Lemire and Gabriel Hernandez Walta for Sentient, published by TKO, 2019.
• In the category of “Published Long-Form Nonfiction” the winner is Les Johnson for A Traveler’s Guide to the Stars, published by Princeton University Press, 2022.
• In the category of “Published Short-Form Nonfiction” the winners are Alex McKenzie and J. Punske for “Language Development During Interstellar Travel,” originally published in Acta Futura, 2020.
• In the category of “Published Digital Presentation” the winner is Ixion by Bulwark Studios, 2022, published by Kasedo Games.
• In the category of “Original Short-Form Fiction” the winner is Jamiella Brooks for “The Living Archaeologist.”
• In the category of “Original Local Short-Form Fiction” the winner is Chioniso Tskisayi (Zimbabwe) for “Gumbojena.”

This year’s theme, “Who Owns Space?” explores the future of humanity in space. For thousands of years, humans have looked up to the tapestry of stars, sun, moon, and lights in the sky—a compelling, if unreachable constant, connecting distant lands and cultures—an inheritance of all people. Space exploration, space-based technologies, and derivative capabilities, as well as its vision and magic, face a dilemma. Today, while more and more reachable, will the sky and space remain the inheritance for us all? Beyond the legal interpretation, today the very dream of space is being rewritten. Dr. Mae Jemison said, “Space isn’t just for rocket scientists and billionaires.” Yet, for many, the perception is that space is exclusive to only certain people and countries. Writers are invited to explore the possible paths ahead in space, to help identify how various actions, technology focuses, policies, individuals, and communities, and even the stories we tell over the next ten years may indelibly fix space exploration objectives, gatekeepers, and benefits for decades into the future.

The Canopus Awards were presented during the 100 Year Starship Nexus 2023 event held in Nairobi, Kenya on January 2, 2023. The Nexus 2023 theme was “When Space, Purpose, and Culture Collide.” The Nexus is designed to be: “THE space gathering to experience, connect, contribute to, envision, inspire & be inspired, create, share, explore, learn and foster an extraordinary future while building a better world, here and now . . . Nexus brings together the range of human experience, skills, knowledge, creativity, passion, commitment, resources, cultures, technologies, policy, investment, education, art, perspectives, and motivation needed to achieve such an extraordinary future.”

The Canopus Award’s namesake is the second brightest star in the night sky.  It has occupied a central role in the human journey over millennia from an auspicious herald of planting seasons to a major navigation star for civilizations from the Bedouins of Sinai to the Voyager probe.

A key initiative of 100YSS, an independent, long-term global initiative working to ensure that the capabilities for human interstellar travel, beyond our solar system to another star, exist within the next 100 years, the Canopus Award invites writers and journalists to join the adventure.  Led by former astronaut, engineer, physician, and entrepreneur, Dr. Mae Jemison, 100YSS is building a global community that is capable of mounting this audacious journey.

“Storytelling is essential to communicating and concretizing a vision.  A story well told—fictional or non-fictional—pushes us to consider how, where, who, and why we advance, stagnate or regress,” said Dr. Jemison.

About the Canopus Awards for Excellence in Interstellar Writing

A key initiative of 100YSS, the Canopus Awards are named after the second-brightest star in the night sky.  Canopus occupies a central role in the human journey over millennia – from heralding of planting seasons to a major navigation star for Bedouin and deep space probes like Voyager to the star around which Arrakis, the Spcie planet science fiction classic Dune, orbits.  The Canopus Awards recognize the finest fiction and non-fiction works that engage broad audiences and enhance the understanding, excitement, and knowledge of interstellar space exploration and travel.