Events

The Benevolent Apocalypse Deadline: August 31st 2011 Payment: $20/published story Timid Pirate Publications seeks short stories (1,000-6,000 words) set after the apocalypse. In the next cycle of expanding humanity, communities thrive in a post-industrial world. This is the reign of the makers, the doers, the community builders, the farmers and those who work with tangible objects, producing and creating. The collapse of money, the stock market and centralized government has led to smaller, more tightly-knit communities where adventures, mysteries and tales of the human abound. The chaos is over, and rebuilding is well underway. What characters and situations have arisen? You tell us. What happens when people keep calm and carry on? What happens when many people’s jobs vanish overnight, and they return to the land and their innate powers? How do people come together, rediscover rapture and build new lives together? What countries adapt better, and what communities thrive? The end of the the world is the new frontier. Worlds and civilizations die, but the survivors find a way to move on. We feel that most post apocalypse anthologies are primarily focused on the fire or the ash. We want to show the phoenix that results instead What we're not looking for: Solitary, angry, lonely, desperate, fearful figures in a bleak or desolate landscape. Not fantasy. What we are looking for: Inventive, speculative tales of human connection, community and discovery. That could be a murder mystery that rocks a settlement, it could be a big-farm versus little farm economic rivalry, or the capture of a con artist that surprises a community of carpenters that design his cage, a drought threatening a region alleviated by a traveling scientist and his physics lessons...the stories are unlimited. As long as community plays a big role, it fits under the joyfully benevolent apocalypse...