These are the prompts from the competition, plus some brief notes on how the stories came out. I wrote this mostly because I wanted to show my workings: it's not fair that you think all the previous madness came directly from my brain. A lot of it came from Ooorah.

Round 0: The House That Delona Built

 A story based on this image.

This was a non-judged qualifying round. I basically wrote this as a stupid joke. 

Round 1, Part 1: The Pitiless Stars

A max 1500 word story based on the following quote:

"Two posibilities exist: either we are alone in the universe of we are not. Both are equally terrifying." -- Arthur C. Clark.

Given a Clark prompt, I wanted this to be a Clarkean story -- one man alone with an AI, and some decent science. But it had too many jokes to be Clarke, so, as wdhenning noted, it came out pretty TNG. Which I can live with!

Round 1, Part 2: A Fish Called Lou

A science fiction story with a maximum of 1000 words that features the following three things: a garden gnome, a goldfish, an hour glass.

This was part 2 of round 1, so reusing the same characters from part 1 seemed natural. This is probably the funniest of the stories here, although I was unhappy with the end. This has the dubious distinction of being the most bodged of all the stories: there are no actual gnomes, goldfish or hour glasses, although all three things are mentioned and have suitable analogues. And, if you hadn't figured out that the way to be successful in prompt-based fiction is to subvert the prompts... Well, now you know.

Round 2: The Lucid Seer

A story that includes the song 'We Don't Need Another Hero' by Tina Turner; and two of these characters: Cleopatra VII Philopator, queen of Egypt, Elvis Presley, Donald Duck, Marie Curie, Laika of Sputnik 2 and is max 2000 words.

After three stories where people just sat down and talked, I wanted a much more kinetic, muscular story. I also wanted to try writing cyberpunk; but it came out, well, dustier and not neon enough for that. The word limit for this round meant I cut the story down so much that I wasn't particularly happy with it. A remix with some stuff added back is in this compilation. Having said that, I'm really happy with how I wove the song in.

Round 3: The Tin Moon

A story that includes a cat, a 'big dumb object' (look it up), and a complete recipe, including ingredients and instructions. Max 3000 words.

Big dumb objects are normally the stuff of awe: the gag in this story is the idea that humanity just wants to chuck it away. I'd just finished The Expanse, so I was all about the physics of space flight, which isn't normally a thing I'm very interested in. Finding a creative way to include a complete recipe such that it didn't interrupt the narrative required a lot of thought, and that drove the whole plot. I'm pretty pleased with this one.

Round 4: The Happiest Employee at Sammy's

Two pieces: a story and a poem. All four prompts must be used, but can be split between the poem and story, so long as the both use at least one prompt. The prompts are this picture:

the word 'crepuscular', the song 'Return to Innocence' by Enigma, and this quote:

"You need chaos in your soul to to give birth to a dancing star" -- Friedrich Nietzsche.

Story is max 2000 words.

After all that hard SF from Tin Moon, I really wanted to write a Philip K Dick style story, all bleak futures and odd relationships and questions about society. I don't normally write first person, but it seemed a natural way to put the happy ending in. As an aside, I quite like the song, even though the characters hate it.

Round 5: The Heist at 9 Ceti

A story of max 5000 words in the genre of 'soulpunk', that includes the number 757, a dentist, a rescue, and this picture:

Soulpunk is a genre I really like, so this one was fun. I've wanted to write a heist story for some time, so that was the skeleton of the plot. The number 757 made it a casino, and then everything else came from there. The corridor in the picture is where Namir dies: if you look closely, you can see the domed city.

Round 6: Kollock and the Creed song

A story that includes destiny, a wish, a nursery rhyme, a black hole, a key and a happy ending. Max 7000 words.

This is it, the final round, with a massive word limit. I wanted something vast and sweeping; so I wrote a space opera. Turns out they are hard to write, and hard to take seriously, and so I ended up making a stupid meta joke at the end. But it's not completely terrible! It's the first one that I actually didn't need to cut.

And, yes, it has a happy ending.