*****Subs Closed*****
Please be sure to read the About and Submission Guidelines sections found in the dropdown menu of The Space Cadet Science Fiction Review for complete information regarding this journal and SF poetry submissions.
Science Fiction Poetry
We accept every form of poetry in existence — even when it rhymes, as long as it is deeply steeped in science fiction! [Special note: We love science fiction haiku, so much so in fact that we have another literary journal, The Starlight SciFaiku Review, that is devoted entirely to such poetry — so please consider submitting new works of SciFaiku there as well when it opens again for submissions.] Fabulist poetry? Of course! Free verse? Yes! Pastoral poetry (think, idyllic countryside living on Mars)? Most certainly! You get the idea. Be as wildly experimental as you please, no specific formatting guidelines, poetic or stylistic form, device, element or particular aesthetic is required nor requested — as long as the flavor is splendidly science fiction. The one exception here being poetry that is expressly written and formatted to create some sort of shape or image on the page, like a heart or a dove — please do not submit such work to us [it actually makes the editor queasy]. One other caveat, we are not looking for epic poetry on the scale of the ancient Indian Mahabharata that comes in at something like 1.8 million words. So, although we are not officially providing a word limit for poetry here, just know that if it will use up large quantities of the world’s available digital storage space and remaining forests to produce, we’ll likely decline it.
Science Fiction Poetry Submission Guidelines
Submission of Unpublished Work
We accept submission of your original, unpublished work. We are not accepting work that has previously appeared in publication or that has already been selected by another publisher to appear in publication. Note: Self-published work is fine to submit.
Batch Limit
You may submit up to four poems. These should be submitted in one batch.
Manuscript & File Format Guidelines
Adhering to the industry standard manuscript format is the default, of course, and so it will always suffice. Remember, the idea behind such formatting is to improve the readability of your manuscript by editors, simple as that, it’s not designed to be oppressive. That said, the following guidelines are important to this publishing house, for all work submitted, including short forms. You’ll notice that our guidelines adhere to the standard manuscript format for the most part, but not entirely, as is the case with most publishers — we know what we like, and we’re going for a certain aesthetic.
Adhering to our specific guidelines facilitates ease of digital transferability of your work in addition to the aforementioned readability and aesthetic.
- Left-aligned title (for short form work)
- Byline (skip it, we look at name placement from a whole-page aesthetic)
- Left-aligned text
- One-inch margins all around
- 12-pt font
- Times New Roman
- Black ‘ink’
- Double spaced for long form (not necessary for short form)
- One space after a period, not two
- File must be submitted in an editable format, specifically, a Word Document (.doc).
- ATTENTION: Do not try to submit a Word .docx file (that’s .docX), our web hosting service will not allow a .docx file to be uploaded and so we have blocked that file type in the submission form. This issue has absolutely given us the bivering shitz but there is no working around it. Simply save your .docx file as a .doc file, it’s very quick and easy to do: Open the document > File > Save As > This PC > Location > Word 97-2003 Document (*.doc) > Save (you don’t need to rename it, it creates a new file).
Although not required, please include a short writer/author bio.
We look forward to reviewing your work!
