Deadline: June 30th 2016
Payment: Aus 5 cents/word (GST inc., maximum payment AUD$500) and 2 contributor’s copies.

Edited by Liz Grzyb and Cat Sparks

To be published by Ticonderoga Publications in 2017

Human activity has forced the Earth into a new geological epoch.

By 2050 the world’s population is expected to rise from the current seven billion to around 9.5 billion. The worst impacts will be felt by the world’s poorest people, victims of the developed world’s excesses.

The Earth must brace itself for enormous changes in patterns of global temperature and rainfall, significant sea level rise, with huge effects on water and food security.

Engineers and industrialists are currently faced with the challenge of inventing new sustainable technologies and the means of implementing them: technologies that may well improve our lives in ways we cannot yet anticipate.

We are looking for optimistic stories envisioning the future of our world as we are impacted by and adapt to climate change. New narratives of radical transformation and sustainability.

Stories exploring the end of carbon-capitalism, combatting inertia in our political systems, interrogating the technical and organisational challenges of clean energy generation, storage and distribution.

Stories investigating nascent technologies and fossil fuel divestment, imagining pathways to the low-carbon world. Encouraging the belief that we will survive not only as a species, but as a civilisation by proposing alternatives to how we live.

Stories showing how humanity can survive and flourish, despite looming uncertainty.

We are not looking for post-apocalyptic stories of dystopia and wretchedness, but of confidence in our ability to meet the challenges our future will bring us.

Guidelines

• Stories should be between 2000-10,000 words.
• Original stories only: no reprints, multiple, or simultaneous submissions.
• Stories should be emailed to [email protected] in .doc or .rtf format.
• The submissions period for unsolicited submissions is 15 May to 30 June 2016.
• Manuscript format: double spaced, large margins, Times New Roman font, Australian English spelling.
• Payment: 2 copies of print anthology and Aus 5 cents/word (GST inc., maximum payment AUD$500) on publication.

Useful links:

• The End of Nature and Post-Naturalism: Fiction and the Anthropocene by James Bradley
  http://cityoftongues.com/2015/12/30/the-end-of-nature-and-post-naturalism-fiction-and-the-anthropocene/
• Solarpunk: a new movement sees the future in a positive light
  http://www.abc.net.au/environment/articles/2014/11/10/4122309.htm
• A ‘Third Way’ to Fight Climate Change by Tim Flannery
  http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/24/opinion/a-third-way-to-fight-climate-change.html
• If enough of us decide that climate change is a crisis worthy of Marshall Plan levels of response, then it will become one – Naomi Klein
  http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/mar/06/dont-look-away-now-the-climate-crisis-needs-you

So, for example…

• a story set on a seaweed/algae farm. The farmers are being bothered by pirates raiding their algae diesel supplies but the pirates end up giving up life on the high seas and joining the community, or coexisting with them. Or thinking about it at least.
• a story set on a science vessel whose 5 year mission is to suck toxic plastic out of the Pacific
• a story set on a part of the great pacific garbage patch that has hardened into land and become a brave new secret country…

some ideas in here: http://solarpunks.tumblr.com/

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/feb/10/how-to-survive-a-global-disaster-handy-guide?CMP=share_btn_fb (maybe a story about somebody building a home-made internet for their community)

http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2016/feb/09/bushfire-proof-houses-black-saturday-innovations?CMP=share_btn_fb (a story set in a fire-resistant village, biologist investigates quick flowering edible crop that thrives in the wake of fire)

We’re looking for the normal kinds of human conflict which feature in any story, only set against a backdrop/environment in which humankind is actively attempting to make a better world or fix the old one rather than just sitting back and letting the apocalypse roll on over the top, with everybody sinking into cannibalism and another dark age.

Or you can even mess with the form & do comedy:

• a bunch of prepper/survivalist bankers holed up in a wall street penthouse attempting to keep the old world going while watching the new one begin to bloom on the water-filled streets below.

– See more at: http://ticonderogapublications.com/web/index.php/our-books/195-ecopunk/392-ecopunk-speculative-tales-of-radical-futures#sthash.h02t6cmE.dpuf

Via: Ticonderoga Publications.