Contest: Write a 'Pearl Harbor Speech' for Year 2041

In a short-fuze writing contest, the Atlantic Council's "Art of Future War" project is soliciting short, speculative creative writing that presents a future U.S. president's message after the country has experienced a Pearl Harbor-like attack, circa 2041. Deadline is Mon., Dec. 15, 2014.

The title of the contest is: "What Will The Next Pearl Harbor Be?" The submissions call reads, in part:

What would a Pearl Harbor-like surprise for the United States look like in the 2040s? This seven-day Art of Future Warfare challenge seeks a futuristic interpretation of the opening of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s "Day of Infamy" address to Congress on December 8, 1941—a day after Japanese forces struck Pearl Harbor with an unexpected attack that would draw America into a global conflict the likes of which the world had never seen. The setting for this challenge is 30 years in the future, but the geography, events and actors included in this presidential address are up to you.

For details and writing prompts, click here.

The purpose of the council's series of "war-art" challenges is to showcase the value of creative thinking in the national security realm and gain insight into the future of warfare. In summer 2015, the organization's Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security plans to publish an electronic compilation of the best of these and other national security themed art and writing.

Other submissions guidelines include:

• Entries should, at a minimum, re-imagine the content of the first four paragraphs of the speech.

• A panel of Atlantic Council experts and War On The Rocks editors will select the winner, who will be announced by Dec. 22, 2015.

• The creator of the best entry will receive a copy of Atlantic Council Strategic Foresight Initiative Director Mat Burrows' new book, "The Future, Declassified: Megatrends That Will Undo the World Unless We Take Action" and an Atlantic Council coffee mug. The best entry and the creative process will be featured on the Art of Future Warfare project website.

• Entries must be the creator's original work.

• Select runner-up entries will be featured on the project's website.

• While authors may publish under a pseudonym, a C.V. or biography is required.

The Atlantic Council project has also issued a "war-art" challenge for longer-form, fictionalized journalistic accounts of events leading to a larger-scale conflict among nations. Stories written for "The Next Great War" challenge should be between 1,500 to 2,500 words. Deadline is Dec. 31, 2014.

The call reads, in part:

It has been said that journalists write the first rough draft of history. Through the rise of radio and television, written accounts still define how the enduring narratives around how we come to understand the historic points at which everything changes. A century ago, an angry nationalist in Sarajevo opportunistically aimed his pistol at the heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, killing Archduke Franz Ferdinand on June 28, 1914. What followed was "the war to end all wars." Yet it was not the end. The tank, the machine gun and the warplane wracked Europe’s battlefields for the first time as the conflict set the stage for further tragedy in the 20th Century.

For more details and creative cues, click here.