Human-Machine Fiction

The In Silico Awards

Honoring outstanding fiction created through transparent, human-directed AI-assisted workflows.

Founding development Submissions are planned to open in Fall 2026.

What this is

A serious home for AI-assisted authorship.

The In Silico Awards recognize fiction shaped by human imagination, machine assistance, and exceptional creative process.

We exist for writers with stories, worlds, images, arguments, and emotional truths they want to bring into fiction. Writing craft matters, but it should not be the only gate. AI-assisted workflows can be another artistic medium: a palette, an instrument, a revision partner, and a way to shape what is inside the author into a work that can move another person.

Subject matter is open. We are not looking for stories about artificial intelligence; we are looking for crime novels, ghost stories, family sagas, romances, westerns, and literary fiction that happen to have been made this way. The machine belongs in how a work was made, not in what it is about.

Current status

Building the founding circle.

Advisor feedback

Rules, judging, ethics, and submission safety are being refined before launch.

Reader pipeline

The review model is human-led, partial blind, and story-first.

Submission system

Paid public submissions will open only after intake, privacy, and review workflows are ready.

Did the work move us?

Did it provoke us?

Did it stay with us?

Was a human being making the taste calls?

Awards

Planned Year One Honors

Final categories will be announced before submissions open. The first year is designed to stay focused, credible, and manageable.

Flagship honor

The In Silico Grand Award

The strongest work of the year, selected from finalists across every category. Judged on what the fiction achieves and on the human direction behind it.

Special citation

The Galatea Citation

For unusually elegant, experimental, or revealing collaboration. This is the one that is about the making: it may go to a work that is not the strongest entry but that expands what the field understands about process.

Short Fiction

A short story that earns its length: force, precision, or surprise in compact form. Any genre or subject, made through a disclosed AI-assisted workflow.

Longform Fiction

Novels, novellas, and serials that sustain a reader across distance. Any genre or subject, made through a disclosed AI-assisted workflow.

Creative Workflow

For the clearest, most useful, or most inventive account of human-directed AI-assisted making.

Youth citation

Future Scriptorium

For a writer under 18 whose work shows real imagination, emotional force, or conceptual ambition. Guarded: parent or guardian consent and added privacy safeguards apply.

Eligibility

Fiction with a human author and a disclosed machine-assisted process.

View submission materials

At least one named human author directs, reviews, and accepts responsibility for the work.

AI or LLM-assisted methods are used in a meaningful part of the creative workflow.

The submission includes a process dossier, disclosure form, and rights attestation.

Technical repositories are welcome but not required; a clear written process dossier is enough to enter.

Judging

The finished work comes first.

The awards judge the fiction and the process behind it. A complex workflow will not rescue an unengaging story, and a simple workflow can be excellent when it produces strong creative control and a distinctive result.

45% Fiction impact and quality

20% Originality and ambition

20% Human-machine process

15% Transparency and ethics

Use the tools. Credit the tools. Show what you made together. Make it good.

The founding creed — read the founder’s note

Timeline

Founding cycle target dates

Dates remain provisional until formal launch.

Now — 2026
Advisor circle, rules, and category details being finalized.
Fall 2026
Submissions open.
Winter 2026-2027
First-round reading and process review.
Spring 2027
Finalists announced.
Summer 2027
Winners announced.

Founding development

Advisors, judges, and readers are invited.

We are seeking people with experience in fiction, editing, literary criticism, AI-assisted creative workflows, copyright, publishing, ethics, and computational creativity.

Get involved