What do we look for?

We have a preference for stories that bring a new idea to the genre and explore it efficiently in a story with compelling characters. Whether the novelty is an interesting idea from biology, grounding in an underrepresented culture, or the decision to focus on an ordinary worker at the ray gun factory -- that's up to you.

Requirements:

• Between 2100 and 3500 words, in Shunn Manuscript Format, .doc, .docx, .odt, or .rtf file format.

  • Longer or shorter submissions may be solicited in the future, so check back!

• Stories must not have been previously published, but do remain the intellectual property of the writer.

• We do not permit any use of generative AI.

• If your story is accepted, we will request an afterword of 300-500 words describing your inspiration, animating ideas, or thoughts about the story -- up to you! This will be available as an exclusive for paid subscribers. We may request minor edits to the story and afterword.

Preferences:

We are still figuring out our tastes as they relate to this publication, but as a general rule, stories of the following types might have a harder time:

• Stories about an expedition where the primary drama is that one character must kill another to survive (somehow, these have accounted for around 10% of all our submissions so far)

• Stories containing a monologue about how this discovery is going to make the characters as giants in the history of man.

• Extremely topical stories about generative AI, Jeff Bezos, Donald Trump, etc. In case we don't update this in time, this also applies to whatever the new thing is next year. (Climate change is fine, though.)

• Stories that are only SF in that the word "gun" has been replaced by "phase blaster" throughout.

Conversely, stories of the following kinds might have an easier time:

• Stories that tie in nicely with a serialized format.

• Stories that are about science rather than only about technology. See, "The Author of the Acacia Seeds" by Le Guin for an example we would publish in a heartbeat despite having arguably no technology whatsoever.

• Stories with a nice dry wit.

• Stories which aren't afraid to take their time a little bit with the prose, whose sentences are allowed to breathe a little, such as you might find in stories written in an era when writers sat down at typewriters undistracted and savored every word they wrote.

• Stories with a strong hook in the first 500 words -- this is especially important in our serialized format.