300-Word-Fable Contest 2024

Our domestic annual fable contest is back for its eighth year. As ever, we look forward to reading yours! Listed below are some take-home messages for you!

The Rules:

Please make sure that stories are new, not published before and exactly 300 words long (not including the title). Entries may be used in all print and electronic media. Contributions can become world copyright (版权) of Granta. The judges’ decision is final.

Entry is open only to people living in the UK. It is not open to employees of Granta and all others associated with this contest, their immediate families and relatives living in an employee's household.

Terms and Conditions:

There are three categories-one for adults and two for schools: one for teenagers aged 12-18 and one for children under 12.

In the adults category, the winner will receive £1,000 and two runners-up will each receive £250. In the 12 — 18s and under-12s categories, the winners will each receive a selection of STAEDTLER products worth £150. The two runners-up in both categories will each receive a Kindle E-Reader.

Please submit your fables by 5 pm on February 19.

The editorial team will pick a shortlist of entries, which this year will be published by our partner nicereading. com. Winners of the categories will have an opportunity to write a longer version of their fables for inclusion in the book.

Highlights to keep in mind: the three best fables in each category will be posted on-line at granta.co.uk on February 27. You can vote for your favourite, and the one with the most votes wins the top prize. Voting will close at 5 pm on March 19 and the winning list will be published in our June issue.

“Why does grandpa have ear hair?” Just a few years ago my child was so curious to know “why” and “how” that we had to cut off her questions five minutes before bedtime. Now a soon-to-be fourth grader, she says that she dislikes school because “it’s not fun to learn.” I am shocked. As a scientist and parent, I have done all to promote a love of learning in my children. Where did I go wrong?

My child’s experience is not unique. Psychologist Susan Engel notes that curiosity — defined as “spontaneous (自发的) investigation and eagerness for new information” — drops greatly in children by the fourth grade.

In Wonder: Childhood and the Lifelong Love of Science, Yale psychologist Frank C. Keil details the development of wonder — a spontaneous passion to explore, discover, and understand. He takes us on a journey from its early development, when wonder drives common sense and scientific reasoning, through the drop-off in wonder that often occurs, to the trap of life in a society that denies wonder.

As Keil notes, children are rich in wonder while they are rapidly developing causal mechanisms (因果机制) in the preschool and early elementary school years. They are sensitive to the others’ knowledge and goals, and they expertly use their desire for questioning. Children’s questions, particularly those about “why” and “how,” support the development of causal mechanisms which can be used to help their day-to-day reasoning.

Unfortunately, as Keil notes, “adults greatly underestimate (低估) young children’s causal mechanisms.” In the book, Wonder, Keil shows that we can support children’s ongoing wonder by playing games with them as partners, encouraging question-asking, and focusing on their abilities to reason and conclude.

A decline in wonder is not unavoidable. Keil reminds us that we can accept wonder as a positive quality that exists in everyone. I value wonder deeply, and Wonder has given me hope by suggesting a future for my children that will remain wonder-full.

Many oohed and aahed after Sora amazed the world with its superb ability of creating videos directly from text instructions. Discussions about what the artificial intelligence model can do to make a difference continue.

Some said it could be a blow to traditional industries such as film and television making, looking forward to the day when a movie can be created right after a novel is put into the model. But others remain doubtful about how powerful the novel model can be in changing the landscape of AI application.

The text-to-video model, developed by a group of young talent from Microsoft-backed company Open AI, can produce videos up to a minute long while keeping visual quality, challenging AI products by Musk to some extent.

“Sora marks a great advance in the field of AI-generated content (AIGC).” Shen Yang, a professor in Tsinghua , argued. As one of the leading scholars in AI research in China, Shen leads a team conducting studies of the philosophy of AI. Shen sang high praises of Sora because, even if satisfied with his team’s AI-generated videos after a two-minute video on the Spring Festival produced by Shen’s team had recently made waves on social media platforms, he said, “Compared with the new model Sora, what we used are tools of the previous generation. There’s a huge gap in between…”

Shen highlighted that not only does the technology contribute to his productivity, but it also benefits his daily life. His wife was suffering from cancer, and he used Sora to assist in finding treatment, greatly prolonging (延长) her life. He even wrote a science fiction novel using Sora.

However, new technologies may not be good news to everyone. Many also concern about AI models’ safety since related rules are far from enough .

Sora is going to bring about changes in many fields. There is still much room to improve AI models. For instance, current AI models can’t draw characters accurately and quickly. Shop signs lack meaning in Sora’s demo (示范性的) video showing a woman walking down a street in Tokyo. But these problems are believed to be settled as models update.