Congratulations to @blueteddy and @calluna for winning the first two farmpunk #fiction contests. Both writers are very gifted and I'm thankful for them taking an interest in this nascent speculative fiction subgenre.

Speaking of speculative fiction, there is a new Discord community forming as we speak called Speculative Fiction Writers of Steemit. If you write in the science fiction, fantasy, horror, or the various subgenres of these, then you should check them out. Even if you're just a fan, give them a whirly-go.

Image from Pixabay.

What is Farmpunk?

For new readers, here's a short introduction to farmpunk.

Falling under the subgenre of cyberpunk (doesn't all punk literature?), which is a subgenre of science fiction, which is, in turn, a subgenre of speculative fiction, farmpunk does two things:

Explores the juxtaposition of high technology with farming culture;
Presents a world that is dystopian in nature, characters that are countercultural, and/or themes that are retro-futuristic or anachronistic-postmodern.

Because farming is ubiquitous, able to be done in any historical epoch, the setting is much less important than the tone. Think something along the lines of RoboCop, or RoboCop for anyone under 30, meets The Grapes of Wrath. What happens when the technologies of the future meet with the farming practices of the past or present and things go wrong? What can go wrong, and how would people and machine deal with it?

For this contest, I'm not looking for writers who adhere to a strict set of rules. I'm looking for writers with boundless imagination. This is your chance to get in on the groundfloor of something incredibly fantastic. Surprise us, wow us, and knock us off our feet. That's how you'll win this contest.

If you haven't read them yet, here are the first two official farmpunk stories ever written (both are past payouts, so don't worry about upvotes):

Farmpunk Contest #3 Details

Starting now, my plan is to run this contest once a month. I really want to run up the number of entries to at least 10 each month. By giving people a month to come up with story ideas, flesh them out, and commit them to ink, I think there's a better chance of that happening simply because we're talking about something new. I want people to wrap their heads around this, and a one-week deadline is hardly time enough for that. So we're aiming for once a month.

Deadline: Midnight EST on the last Saturday of the month. The winner will be announced within the week following.

Theme:
I'm also going to do something different with this contest that I didn't do with the previous two. I'm going to give a prompt. Your story can start and end anywhere you want, but here's the theme I want you to explore:

A farming co-op has been tracking crop production with an advanced distributed ledger for nearly a century. Suddenly, it appears that farms are losing huge amounts of crop. Some might even be losing livestock. It's just disappearing from the ledger. But when they check their fields, silos, and warehouses, nothing seems to be missing. In fact, some of them may have even more than when they started. They have ruled out any anomalies with regard to the ledger, software, hardware, or computing challenges. What's going on?

Here's your challenge. Tell your story in whatever way you want. The theme stated above may be the major conflict or it could be nothing more than a device to get to the real conflict. Maybe there's something else going on. It's entirely up to you.

Stories should be 750 to 3,000 words long. Length will not give you an advantage. The winner will be judged based solely on the story, characters, plot ... traditional storytelling techniques. Try to make it as edgy as you can.

Full slate of rules:

Upvote this post (if within the 7 days before payout)
Resteem this post
750-3,000 words
Deadline: Midnight EST, September 29, 2018
Use the prompt to get you going
Write your entry on your #Steemit blog and post a link to it in the comments below.
Tag your post with the #farmpunk tag
Remember: High-tech meets farming in a dystopian world with countercultural characters and an edgy tone (or something close) :-)

Winner will receive 1 unopened Steem Monsters booster pack. If there are 5 or more entries, a second-place winner will receive 1 share of SBI. If there are 10 or more entries, a third-place winner may be selected and will receive 1 STEEM.

Do the best you can, and have fun. I'm looking forward to reading your farmpunk contest entries.

If you want to enter discussions on farmpunk literature and speculative fiction, join the Speculative Fiction Writers of Steemit Discord community.

Writers who have expressed an interest (let me know if you want your tag removed):

Writers	Authors	Storytellers
@bashadow	@mujasteem	@samuraihedgehog
@steveblucher	@calluna	@blueteddy
@iamjadeline	@stever82	@cicisaja
@talkingwiseshit	@jaichai	@seesladen
@ediblecthulhu	@effofex	@dedicatedguy
@lapb	@paulelmo