Seeking experimental microstories

Call for Stories

The TFF-X (The Future Fire—ten years) anthology will contain 15 reprinted or slightly revised stories, plus at least as many new pieces that we hope will give an idea of the sort of things we’d like to see more of in the magazine in the future. We’re enthusiastically looking forward to the next decade, as well as celebrating the last one.

If you think you can help us to exemplify different and experimental modes/kinds of social-political, diverse, progressive and speculative stories, we’d love to hear from you. Some of our ideas are listed below. We're looking for very short pieces, so 500-1000 words is about right (or equivalent, for comics/poetry). We'll pay $20 per piece, and this call will remain open until we have the 5-10 new pieces we need to fill the volume (or until the end of October at the latest, at which point we'll have to firm up the table of contents if we’re to publish the anthology before the end of 2015). If you have any other experimental ideas—try us! Email your submissions or pitch ideas to fiction@futurefire.net with a subject line beginning “TFF-X submission: (title of work)” and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible.

Genre, style or conceit (many of these can be summed up as “ekphrasis”—a representation of one art form via the medium of another):

1. Story written as a theater or radio play, or as an interview
2. Story written as a pitch for a TV show or web series
3. Story in the form of an online user review for a science-fictional/fantastic product (hoverboard, replicator, magic wand? You can think of something more original than this!)
4. Design a poster or one-page advert for a made-up book or film
5. Story in the form of a critical review of a non-existent book (no spoilers!)
6. Story in the form of a user guide for a videogame or a module for an RPG
7. Story told via a letter or letters (letter to a magazine advice column; letter of complaint; rejection letter for a job/story/grant; letter of condolence/congratulation; any letter that isn’t just the sender telling a story to the recipient)

Theme, content or medium (can be combined with one of the above, if you want to be hyper-efficient):

1. Stories written largely/partly (or with dialogue) in a language or dialect other than US-English—with no apology or translation for the reader
2. Bi/pansexual and trans/nonbinary characters (we do pretty well with queer representation otherwise)
3. Utopian story—a world that satirizes our own by being visibly better than it in some significant way (doesn’t have to be perfect)
4. Absurdist or nonsense piece—any combination of surrealism, dadaism, bizarro, dream-quest
5. Horror and dark fantasy (so many possible modes)
6. Poetry (any style; up to 40 lines)
7. Graphic/comics story (2-4 pages)

All stories should of course be social-political, diverse, intersectional, and all the others things that TFF want to see in fiction anyway!

(If you would like to read more about what some of our editors would like to see more of in TFF in the future, the question has been addressed by Kathryn, Cécile, Valeria and Djibril in recent interviews. More suggestions welcome!)

Submission guidelines summary:

Length: approx. 500-1000 words (poems 40 lines, comics, 2-4 pages)
Email submissions as attachment to fiction@futurefire.net
Deadline: October 31, 2015, or sooner if filled
Pay: $20 (USD) per story, poem, comic, etc.

FeministSF and IWD

As most people who have cause to interact with me over fiction or reviews at TFF know already, I'm running a little behind on everything at the moment, so writing this post only 8 days after International Women's Day is actually slightly ahead of the curve, by this month's standards...

A while ago I found lying around a few copies of a flyer that we made to call for stories for the Feminist Science Fiction themed issue of TFF (published as TFF 2010.19). We did have better flyers, which I think we sent to WisCon 2009 and elsewhere, but this is the only one I apparently still have copies of:

(Click through for a readable version of the text.)

My first thought when I looked at this, nearly four years later, was "Why am I apologising for the word 'feminism' in there?" Maybe that's a bit strong—I just wanted to make it clear that a "feminist SF" issue didn't have to be only stories about and by women—but I think I was a bit sensitive and defensive about the topic at the time. A female friend at the time had recently said something to me like, "I don't think you mean feminist; you mean feminine. Feminism did great things in the 1960s, but we don't need it any more, do we?" (While obviously I disagree with that, and the introduction to that feminist issue in part answered that question, I also don't want to start preaching to women about what feminism should or shouldn't mean for them.)

I'm also not sure I entirely agree with my formulation in that call for submissions that all speculative fiction that addresses issues of sex, gender, sexuality and sexual identity falls under the category of feminist. On the one hand, there are plenty of themes within the gender/sexuality area that are not in themselves specifically feminist (masculinity, m/m queer stories, etc.), so my attempt at a broad church was maybe a bit too woolly. On the other, the most interesting feminist writing is that which is properly intersectional, which recognises that male privilege and discrimination against women do not exist in a vacuum, but intersect significantly with racism, trans- and homophobia, classism, linguistic dynamics, cultural imperialism, colonial privilege and ableism. So yes, all of those things belong in feminist science fiction.

There will never come a time when feminist science fiction is not welcome at The Future Fire.

Although the CFS for the themed issue was from several years ago, and in some ways it served its function which was to raise awareness of the fact that we're very interested in including more fiction from a feminist perspective and featuring a more equitable balance of male and female authors, I would like to end this IWD post with a call for submissions—or a call to arms—of sorts: we'd love to receive more feminist speculative fiction, especially intersectional feminist stories, in TFF. Come up with stories that challenge not only one but several hierarchies; write stories that show in a radical light the full variety and beauty of the world, rather than just the straight, white, anglo males who fill the Masterworks and Mammoths of our genre; send us stories that are militant, angry, amazing, pushy, hilarious, challenging, mind-blowing, astonishing, useful, beautiful, feminist, postcolonial, intersectional and new.

Call for Submissions: Guest Editors

The Future Fire, an online magazine of social-political speculative fiction with an emphasis on the progressive (feminist sf, queer sf, eco sf, multiculturalism/race) is looking for guest editors to collaborate on one or two themed issues/anthologies in the coming year. We would like suggestions for the theme and applications from prospective editors. If you would like to take part in selecting, editing and producing an issue of this magazine, please write to the fiction editor (fiction [at] futurefire [dot] net), using the subject line “TFF Guest Editor application”, by October 31, 2011.

In your application (maximum one page or c. 500 words), please include:

1. Your suggested theme. Please explain the theme you suggest and why you think it is interesting. Include how such stories fit the social-political speculative slant of TFF and any writers or groups you would target in a call for submissions.
2. Any credentials and/or experience you may have. You don’t have to have edited a speculative fiction magazine or anthology before, but it may help to know, for example, whether you’re a writer yourself, how much you’ve read in the area, whether you have any background in literature or any other relevant experience.
3. How much work you're willing to put into editing. We do not expect you to perform an unreasonable amount (we all have day-jobs), but it’s good to have realistic expectations. A call for submissions will need to be both disseminated widely and targeted to potential contributors and groups; stories need to be read, selected and copy-edited; the published issue then has to be widely publicized. It would therefore be useful to know how much you would be willing to help.
4. Do you have any ideas for fundraising for this issue? TFF is a non-profit publication; the only income is from donations and all shortfall comes from the editors’ pockets. Any ideas you might have for alternative finance models (e.g. print-on-demand version for sale; funding drive; special editions, subscriptions) would be very welcome.

This doesn't need to be terribly formal, but these are ideas we'd like to start brainstorming with you. We will of course discuss all of these issues in more detail later in the process, but as much background as you can give now will be valuable.