The Harland Prize is the oldest annual award for original Dutch short science fiction, fantasy or horrorstories. It was originally called the King Kong Award, than the Millennium Award, than it was renamed after Dutch science fiction author Paul Harland, who died in 2003, and later on it was renamed again to Harland Award.
This award is for short stories and novelettes, but the word count changed sometimes.
History
The award was presented for the first time in 1976 by SF fan and critic Rob Vooren, on the occasion of a short story contest which had been organised that same year. Initially, Vooren called it the King Kong Award, and also published an irregular fanzine with the same name.
Over the next ten years, the contest was mostly organised by Rob Vooren, who not only assembled the jury, but also ensured availability of the prize money (usually 1000 guilders), and later enlisted the help of a publisher. In 1984 this finally resulted in professional publication for the award winners.
In 1987 Rob Vooren handed over the organisation for the last time, to a rotating committee. For reasons of credibility, and with a view to attracting more sponsors, it was decided in 1996 to change the name to Millennium Prize. Following the death of Paul Harland, who had not only won the award several times, but had also organised it, in addition to being on the jury more often than almost anyone else, the prize was given his name in 2003.
In 2011 the Prize was organized by author Martijn Lindeboom, who in 2013 collaborated on it with author Thomas Olde Heuvelt. In 2016, authors Floris Kleijne and Esther Scherpenisse organized the award. In 2017, the Harland Awards were organized for the first time by a four-headed organization consisting of Mariska Reniers, Freya Sixma, Jorrit de Klerk and Yarrid Dhooghe.
In 2013, there was a record number of entries, 206 stories (totaling some 1.3 million words), in the following years the number of entries stabilized around 200. In 2015, the writing competition was renamed Harland Awards and the novel prize was briefly added. The first Harland Awards Novel Prize was won by Auke Hulst with his science fiction novel Sleep Softly, Johnny Idaho. In 2023, the prize was again renamed and is now called the 'Harland Prize'.
