A comment on an old post that may be of interest:
Futures is the award-winning science-fiction section of Nature, now currently running in Nature’s monthly sister title, Nature Physics.
In response to public demand, Futures will be returning to Nature in September 2007 as a weekly back-page feature, as well as continuing each month in Nature Physics. The Futures column in each journal will forge its own identity: a story in one journal will not be reprinted in the other, although authors are free to express a preference and choose for which journal their story should be considered.
Although contributions are sometimes commissioned, unsolicited stories are welcome for both journals. Each story should be an entirely fictional, self-contained piece between 850-950 words in length, and the genre should, broadly speaking, be ‘hard’ (that is, ’scientific’ SF) rather than, say, outright fantasy, slipstream or horror.
Each item should be sent as a Word (.doc) attachment to futures@nature.com, giving full contact details along with a brief (approximately 30-word) autobiographical squib that could be appended to the story if published. Unsolicited artwork is not considered. Presubmission enquiries are discouraged: instead, prospective authors are advised to read earlier Futures stories in Nature, Nature Physics and selected examples available for free at http://www.concatenation.org/futuresindex.html.
Authors whose stories are published in Nature or Nature Physics will be paid at the same rate irrespective of journal. The payment is commensurate with the brevity of the stories and is probably enough for a meal for two (with wine) at an establishment whose modesty will correlate either directly or inversely with the current sterling-dollar exchange rate, depending on the location of the restaurant. Publication is also subject to signature of a Nature Publishing Group author agreement, terms of which are often negotiable, and specimens of which can be seen on request.
Should you have read as far as this, you might be interested to learn that Futures from Nature, an anthology of 100 past Futures stories, will be published by Tor this November, and can now be ordered from any reputable online bookstore.
This is a public announcement which you are encouraged to disseminate as widely as you see fit.
Dr Henry Gee
Senior Editor, Nature
You know, this may not be a particularly notable year for single-author collections [*], but between this, Interfictions, Logorrhea, The SFWA European Hall of Fame, the Kessel/Kelly Rewired, Glorifying Terrorism and Fast Forward, it’s looking like a fine year for anthologies.
[*] Inevitably I’m now starting to think of books I want to read: David Marusek’s Getting To Know You, Vandana Singh’s The Woman Who Thought She Was a Planet and Other Stories, Ellen Klages’ Portable Childhoods, Kelley Eskridge’s Dangerous Space, and Lucius Shepard’s Dagger Key, for starters. And is Paolo Bacigalupi’s collection coming out this year?
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