GBO Creative Writing and Visual Arts Contest

See the Call for Submissions for contest guidelines.

And the Winners Are . . . !

Astronomer’s Choice Awards

These represent the winning submission for each category.

A Sign In Space

I was always the one

wishing on stars,

always the one

counting, dreaming.

My mom always told me

“Pay attention more!”

“There’s nothing up there!”

I always thought maybe I was wrong,

until today.

“They made contact!”

someone yells.

Then, there’s hundreds of others who are wrong.

Hundreds who are

counting,

wishing,

dreaming.

I can’t help but wonder,

were we always

alone?

Who else is out there?

Are they just like me?

Are they always wishing and dreaming?

Always dreaming of life outside the cosmos?

I wonder what they’re thinking about

as they drift asleep

under those stars.

The next day,

we receive another beep.

“A sign from space!” a woman yells.

I can’t help but feel

a little less special

knowing I might not be

the only me.

“It must be a hoax.” my dad says

angrily.

I don’t think so.

I’ll keep wishing on dying stars.

I’ll stay up counting the constellations.

I’ll continue dreaming of a little girl who’s

just like

me.

This could not be happening.

Even now, with the evidence right there on the monitor, her mind was desperately racing to explain it away. Maybe the search algorithm had malfunctioned. She might have missed a bug in the code. Or maybe it was interference – someone could have turned on a microwave nearby. She was pretty sure she’d heard that old story back in grad school, right? There were a few practical jokers in the department; it could be an early April Fool’s prank.

As soon as each idea popped into her head, her brain swatted it away. The software had passed all the tests; she’d already zapped interference; none of the pranksters would go so far as to falsify raw data files. This was real.

She took a deep breath.

As a kid, squinting through the dusty old Dobsonian her mother had dragged out of the basement, she used to dream of a moment like this. She’d been drawn to the romance of stargazing, the solitude of those long nights peering into the depths of the cosmos. Maybe the awe she felt back then would have prepared her for the realization that had just thrown her for a loop.

Then grad school whisked away the magic of it all, squeezing every drop of the wonder and curiosity out of her. It had been a while since she dreamed those kinds of dreams. Shaky funding, an unsupportive advisor and a depressing job market forced her away from SETI to a “safer” field: fast radio bursts. Looking at blips on a screen. Asking questions, but never the big ones. Searching for answers, but never getting those she really wanted. Telling herself she was content.

But today those blips had answered the biggest question of them all. Displayed on her screen was a pattern of bursts she’d never seen before: grouped together, first 2, then 3, then 5, 7, 11, 13, and on and on and on. Prime numbers. The universe is creative – sometimes, she knew, poetic – but this was beyond even its intricate designs.

As she gazed into the cosmos, someone else was gazing back.

Sunbeams danced through the window, smiling on the peeling stickers on her laptop, on the nervous nibble marks on her pencil, on the mug of coffee that was quickly growing cold. A slew of emotions slipped through her mind: anxiety, curiosity, confusion, even pride – and, for the first time in a while, fear. She had stumbled on something more alien than any human had ever known. Maybe something dangerous.

Then an idea crystallized in her mind, and she laughed.

She had spent a decade looking at the universe. It felt almost like a friend. But when had it looked back? When had it cared about her lofty dreams, her aspirations – when had it wanted to know even a single thing about her?

But now someone, something, maybe thousands of light-years away, wanted to know who else was out there. And nothing could be more human than that.

Category: K-12 Visual Arts

I decided to paint two planets talking through the tin can phone. It makes me wonder if civilizations from both planets speak the same language.

~Faith, 7th Grade

Category: General Public, Visual Arts

If humans receive an EM signal from aliens, I actually doubt much would change overnight (at least compared to them showing up on our front porch.) That said, we would be all the more likely to want to chase a signal on the horizon, much as people have done for many ages. A signal from the stars would be as enticing as a campfire on a far shore.

~Jett McIntyre Furr, International Association of Astronomical Artists

Top Flight Finalists

A Sign in Space

Hello,

My name is Olivia and I’m from another planet called Earth. I am writing this letter to tell you a little bit about our planet and to ask for your help with some things. I’m asking you to help us with our civilization and to make it expand by joining us to make our population bigger to help the communities with small amounts of people. If you were to join us, you would make a big difference in the world and in the communities by expanding them and helping them make bigger life choices and their lives and cites.

I will tell you a little bit about our planet to maybe make you like it more. First, I’ll tell you that we are nice people, well most of us. Some of us can be misjudging but most of the people you meet will be nice and caring and will accept you immediately. You can also go to school and get an education that can change your life forever. If you have a good education, it will help you get into better places like a better college. If you decide to go, I would go because if you go to college then you could get a better job to help you pay for your college degree. Also, we have farms which are where we get our produce like corn, carrots, and things like that.

You could go to school on our planet and make friends and maybe even be happier than how you were on your planet. You could also get a job and help expand some jobs that not many people like to do because they are either too hard to do or they just don’t pay enough money to do that certain job. With more people on our planet, you could change that and a lot more other things.

That’s all I will tell you for now. I hope to get a letter from you soon. I hope you like all the interesting things and stuff we can do and all the things we have.

Sincerely,

Olivia

“Inside the Quiet Zone”

By: Ash Litton

“Oh, hey. This is awkward. I thought you called me first—

“Anyway, that’s not why I called—back; AGAIN—SORRY, I keep interrupting myself. I’ll get to the point: you DO know how to read your ‘Check Engine’ light on the dashboard, yes?

“Yes, that one in the—I’m sorry, what IS ‘orange’? You all keep describing these colours on wavelengths that we can’t see, and the radio waves you’re sending our way don’t help, either—

“Yes. Yes. We know what that part meant. We just wanted to know what all your social media means, but more importantly, we want to talk about that elephant in the room: you keep making all these videos with black light effects, and we’re supposed to see these glowing paints atop your skin, but your natural bioluminescence is—

“Oh. No. I wasn’t intentionally phrasing it like a pickup line, but coffee does sound lovely.

“Wonderful! I’ll be down in a few lightyears—not at all; I just have to wake up my travel agent. I’m looking forward to meeting you in person, too! Take care of yourself until then!”

End

COMPENSATION

I come to myself sitting across from a being who can only be described as ‘not from around here.’ Big eyes, white skin, a skeletal body, and a voice like fingernails on a chalkboard.

“You are comfortable? Not feeling any anxiety?” it says.

“Yes comfortable, I feel great,” I said somewhat to my surprise.

“Good the suppression field is working, can’t have you running around the ship jibbering.” It says with a toothless expression I can only assume is a smile.

“The Council has decided that since your planet is performing an important service to our trade and transportation sector it is only fair that we reveal ourselves and compensate you, ‘sapient beings’ for services provided.”

“A service? I wasn’t aware we were performing a service,” I said

“Your planet has an important resource that after a long trip it is imperative that we replenish. The radiation from our engines and from space itself depletes it in our bodies and must be replaced or we would suffer through a long recovery. It would eventually replenish itself but it is much quicker and easier to harvest it here and then go about our business in this region of space.” It explained. “In gratitude I wish to compensate you for the service you are about to perform.”

It held out a small box. I took the box and made to open it but before I could it said, “your compensation, now prepare for the extraction probe.”

I awoke in the ground in a park with a small box in my hands, I got to my feet. It was night but I saw a park bench nearby and I went over to sit down, I noticed some discomfort as I sat down. I opened the box, inside was some bright colored bits of material didn’t recognize, beads of plastic and glass, some wire. Aliens! I’ve contacted aliens, and they want to trade with us…I wonder what? Well time will tell. I stood to go home and was stricken with a nearly irresistible craving for yogurt.

The tea was hot, the croissants were fresh, and the place settings were entirely
perfect. But no one would show up to our little affair. We would be all alone once again.
In our hearts, humans inhabit loneliness. Our history is full of lonely people searching to
quell this familiar feeling. We search for comradery; in love and war, invention and
destruction, family and friends, enemies and opponents. We become a part of each
other. We seek to belong. Loneliness lingers in the periphery of our vision, a yearning
that chokes at the heart when we gaze towards it. We are not alone, yet we are
excluded. Humans inhabit loneliness.

It has been decades since their first contact. Humans were a brief curiosity to
intergalactic high society. We were the Alpha Centaurians’ philanthropy project, they led
the little humans onto the intergalactic stage but grew bored of us. They stopped
responding to our invitations. We were out in the universe; without a sponsor to lead us
into high society. Humans simply lacked class.

We were not alone, but we felt more alone than ever. Ignored and excluded, we
set off to find a friend. We encountered indifference and hostility. We extended
invitations to all the major planets in the universe, with no response. Then all the minor
planets, with no response. Then we called every number in the intergalactic phone book,
hoping for a callback. Finally, an answer, an invitation. We no longer cared for class, we
could no longer bear to be alone.

Their name is unpronounceable in the human tongue, but we call them the
Trialian. They are an old race, perhaps one of the oldest, yet they were like us, shunned
by the intergalactic society. They have some weird ticks, but humans and the Trialian go
along quite well. We both work on a principle of trial and error, though the Trialians are
the extreme.

They never got the hang of calculus, and abstract concepts and symbolism
evade them. Everything they built, everything they’d made, it had all come about simply
through trial and error. Their history is almost a billion years of trials. Their technology
was redundant, inefficient, and convoluted, but it worked. Their trials are their history,
showing how they grew. Each rocket flies just a bit further with each flight, buildings
getting just a bit taller, and they become just a bit more advanced. They were like us.
They loved us too. Our history of trial and error for them to grow from. What
worked, and what didn’t. How to simplify and how to learn. Our calculus, our symbolism,
our understanding. Our technology expanded with an influx of new things to try, and
theirs simplified, discovering efficiencies. We became better together.

Loneliness is motivation. Humans inhabit our loneliness and grow beyond it. We
create lasting ties through collaboration and companionship. We saw it as a flaw, but
loneliness is our power.

Category: General Public, Visual Arts

We have existed as a life form for a brief moment in the vast age of the universe. Perhaps the knowledge of other life won’t come to us. We may have to venture out to find it.

~ Ken Davy

Space Garden, Samuel Dietze

Category: General Public, Visual Arts

A garden consisting of many different colorful trees and bushes on a planet with two moons in the sky.

~ Samuel Dietze

Category: General Public, Visual Arts

We are Spacefaring Human Beings from Planet Earth seeks to capture the vibrant curiosity, space faring ability and intrinsic value of Earthlings to the Universe. The foreground references that which human beings are, and the background references that which they know about space. Human beings of diverse age and gender are seen in space faring garb. An animal is pictured among the cosmological iconography from the oldest astronomical observers on the planet, the ancient Africans. The background indicates that humans are aware of the Universe, galaxies, stars, planets, suns, moons, asteroids, atmospheric anomalies, and black holes. Satellite images reference exploration missions from Apollo into the Artemis era.

~ Barbara Amelia King