After much consideration and counsel with close friends -- one of whom is Ben White, the editor of Nanoism -- I now present to you the top 20 finalists of this year's Hint Fiction Contest. It's always tough narrowing down the best stories, and several stories came extremely close to making the final cut. In fact, I could have easily included a top 30. But a top 20 is much more reasonable, especially as I'm now going to open it up to you to vote for your favorites. Out of the 20 stories here, you can pick up to 3 stories. Tell your friends, family, whoever! Every vote counts.
Voting will remain open until the end of the month. Then the top 10 will be sent to Benjamin Percy to pick the winners. The poll box can be found at the bottom of this post (note: for some reason the poll box was not compatible with my current theme, so this rather boring layout is only temporary).
Now here are the top 20 Hint Fiction stories, in no particular order:
EDIT: The stories have been deleted.