Deadline: December 1st, 2018
Payment: 6 cents/word (1 cent/word for reprints)
Note: Reprints Welcome

At Compelling Science Fiction, we have two main goals: to find, publish, and promote the best science fiction stories, and to support and encourage the authors who write them. We currently pay 6 cents/word for accepted stories (we are considered a SFWA Qualifying Market).

• Pay rate: 6 cents/word (1 cent/word for reprints)
• Length: 1,000-10,000 words per work
• Rights: We purchase first world electronic print rights and audio rights (for podcasts). Our contract follows the lead of SFWA’s Model Magazine Contract.
• Submission window: submissions are open from Oct 1 to Dec 1.

Fiction Guidelines

 

The stories we accept almost always:

1. illustrate at least one interesting concept,
2. are engaging, and
3. clearly explain the science/technology in the story.

The ‘concept’ referenced in point (1) can be anything from new engineering ideas to novel social constructs to abstractions that help illustrate basic properties of reality. Point (2) is far more subjective, although as long as your story consistently moves forward it will probably be engaging. Point (3) is hard to attain without some knowledge of basic science/engineering; we encourage you to learn as much as you can about your subject matter. If your story is very strong in one of the above areas, we will sometimes accept weakness in the other two. Ultimately we are looking for science fiction that is entertaining, scientifically plausible, self-consistent, and technically detailed when appropriate. We have a preference for positive stories, to act as a counterweight to the currently popular post-apocalyptic genre. We certainly won’t dismiss a well-written dystopian future, but we have a bias toward stories that depict technological advancement rather than decay. We do not publish fantasy stories (although we enjoy them!). For more information about what we look for, please reference my plausible science fiction blog post.

 

Submission

Please submit stories via our submission form. The submission system accepts .docx files only. Please omit any identifying information from your story file (names, addresses, etc.).

Via: Compelling Science Fiction.