In Competition No. 2765 you were invited to fill in the gap in ‘The Last —— on Earth’, and to submit a short story of that title.
The challenge produced an excellent entry. I very much enjoyed J. Seery’s engaging opening: ‘The events at the Cheltenham supermarket at the end of the 24th century inducing the accelerated evolution of the foot are too well known to need description, initiating, as they did, the decline and disappearance of shoemaking and mending and their artefacts.’ And I was sorry not to have room for Noel Petty’s poignant and plausibly titled ‘The Last Landline on Earth’ or John Samson’s entertaining wordplay. Commendations all round but especially to Frank Osen, who scored high on laughs, Alan Millard, Gerard Benson and John Phillips.
The prizewinners, printed below, earn £30 each. The bonus fiver belongs to Alanna Blake.
The Last Garden on Earth
One strange tribe still tells how the first people came into being in a garden.
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