Write Before Midnight Contest

Over the decades, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has published the smartest minds in the fields it covers, including Albert Einstein, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Mikhail Gorbachev, Arthur C. Clarke, Bertrand Russell, Freeman Dyson, George Shultz, Jerry Brown, Fiona Hill, Yoshua Bengio, and Jennifer Doudna, among many others.

But beyond its fact-based focus on science and security, the Bulletin has always had an affinity for and connection to the arts, high and low, from the artistic minimalism of the Doomsday Clock to the high satire of Dr. Strangelove and pop culture verve of The Who and Dr. Who. Now, to start the Bulletin’s 80th year of publication, we are launching a short fiction contest called “Write Before Midnight," which will be judged by acclaimed American science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson.

Submitted stories can be about any of the existential threats the Bulletin covers: nuclear weapons, climate change, biological and chemical weapons, artificial intelligence, killer robots, doomsday drone submarines, bioengineered zombies, the gray goo of nanotechnology gone wild, and so, so much more. The stories can be dystopian or utopian; pre-, post-, or non-apocalyptic. They can be optimistic as Sesame Street or dark as Edgar Allan Poe’s basement. Entries can be of any genre: high literature and potboiler noir will vie on a level playing field; scifi, fantasy, spy, detective, horror, and even romance tales will be not just allowed, but celebrated. The tales can be comic, tragic, ironic, satiric, or any kind of -ic at all.

The stories do, however, need to have some conceivable connection to the Bulletin’s interest in (avoiding) the Apocalypse. The connection doesn’t necessarily have to be central to the story; a porkpie hat that Oppenheimer abandoned in a greasy diner might do the trick. But the existential-threat angle must be clear.

Country of Publication & Year Established

United States

Established in 2025

AI Policy