Godless Future Short Story Contest Rules

A winning story must meet the following qualifications.

The story must be an original work created by the person who submitted that work. The story itself must NOT contain the author's name or any identification. The email submission itself should contain the contact information - author, email address, mailing address, phone number.
Stories must be emailed to: contest@lincolnsecularhumanists.org with the subject: Short Story Contest. The story must be submitted as an attachment to the email in rich text format.
The story must be received before midnight, December 31, 2008, Central Standard Time.
The story must be one of the first 100 qualified submissions. Only the first 100 qualified submissions will be accepted. (So get your stories in early.)
The story must be no less than 6,000 and no more than 10,000 words.
The story must be set between the years 2025 and 2040.
The story itself must take place in space, not on earth. The author must provide a plausible and scientifically accurate account of what it would be like to live and work in space or on the moon during this time period.
The story must qualify as "hard science fiction." It must respect the laws of nature as we know them (or as we are likely to know them). In other words, the story must get the science right when presenting such things as the motion of objects through space, mass and inertia, orbital mechanics, the effects of weightlessness on the human body, the effects of vacuum, the chemical composition of moons and asteroids, and the like.
The story will not contain any exotic techno-magical entities such as wormholes, subspace communications, teleporters, warp speed, or time travel.
The story also must not contain any pseudo-science in the form of magic spells or potions, angels, demons, ghosts, goblins, characters who can mysteriously predict the future, voices from beyond the grave, or any other type of hocus pocus.
Within the story, there are no extra-terrestrials. Other than the possibility of receiving some interesting information from space-based telescopes, humans are still alone in the universe.
The story must explicitly state that no God exists. It will not be enough to simply refuse to mention God. Instead, the story must present an atheist point of view. In doing so, the story must avoid atheist cliches - particularly the cliche of the person who is angry at God for some tragedy, such as the loss of his family in an accident, or the fact that his side lost a recent war or battle.
The story must be written for an audience consisting primarily of children between the ages of 12 to 14 (Jr. High School aged students). The purpose of the story is to (a) explain some aspect of atheism to the reader to counter the malicious propaganda that tends to surround children, (b) teach the reader something about science and, in specific, space science that the reader probably does not know, and (c) present the reader with a plausible and scientifically accurate account of what the future may be like in 17 to 32 years.
The winners will be announced on March 1, 2009.
Prize money: First place: $500, Second place: $250, Third place: $125, Fourth place: $75, Fifth place: $50.