We have just celebrated 50 successful years of VWC. What about the next 50? For this competition cast your minds to the future and write the Chairman’s report for the A.G.M. of 2054; a report celebrating 100 years of VWC.

Your entry can be speculation (informed or otherwise) or pure fiction. You might like to consider the following questions:

• what sort of circle will it be be?
• who will be attend?
• all of us? (anti-ageing treatments permitting).
• aliens (assuming adequate space-ship parking)
• computers containing the downloaded brains of diseased members?
• what successes will the circle report?
• the annexation of Mercurian Poets?
• publication in Jupiter’s Own or perhaps The Asteroid Miner’s Informer?
• Where will we meet?
• St. Michael’s Church Hall?
• The Fishpool Mosque?
• The Cafe Meteor-Storm?
• Will your work still rely on deforestation or will it be imprinted straight from your brain onto those of your readers’?
• How will you write?
• on your own or in partnership with some kind of computerised intelligence which may well have ideas of its own?

Whatever your vision of the future the key marking criteria will be imagination and entertainment. I am also proposing that we archive all entries for publication as part of our centenary celebrations. Our successors can re-judge the competition this time awarding the prizes to the best predictions.

1. All entries to be anonymous with the writer identified by pseudonym printed on the cover page of the entry
2. Entries to be accompanied by a sealed envelope containing £2 entry fee, the name of the author and the pseudonym used by the author.
3. Closing date: 9^th February 2005.
4. Length not to exceed 1200 words.