‘OPSNIZING DAD’ - WINNER OF 'WRITING THE FUTURE'
In 2017 I was honoured to win 'Writing the Future', the world's largest heath Science Fiction prize. ‘Opsnizing Dad’ went on to be adapted into an opera in 2022, and this year, nominated for an Ivor Novello Award for Classical Music.
OPSNIZING DAD can be read online, or in the competition anthology. It is short and strange and full of swearing and men losing their trousers on the bus.
Back in 2017, the £10,000 Writing the Future competition asked authors to imagine how health and healthcare might look in 2100. Kaleidoscope Heath & Care initiated the Writing the Future project to spark new conversations and radical thinking about the long-term future of health and healthcare.
The competition was supported by The Commonwealth Fund, the Institute of Global Health Innovation at Imperial College London and lastly The House of St Barnabas, where the incredible awards ceremony was held in October 2017. The anthology can be purchased online, or a digital copy can be downloaded and read for free.
Richard Taunt has an excellent blog about the thinking behind the prize, and why 'Writing the Future' matters.
OPSNIZING DAD
I decided OPSNIZE was for me when Dad lost his trousers on the bus. He threw them out the window. Then he rolled around on the floor, screaming his own name, over and over, until some kid pushed a panic button.
David
David
David
That was his name. He wanted to hold on to it, for as long as he could.
Whole weeks went by where he lost it, though. Just sat in a chair and occasionally allowed his skull to rotate around three-hundred and sixty degrees on his neck.
Sometimes an arm fell off.