Dreadnought SF Submission Guidelines & Portal

*****Subs Closed*****

Dreadnought SF is an online literary journal of solarpunk science fiction poetry, flash fiction, short stories, essays, interviews, book reviews and art published irregularly.

We are looking for work that envisions an optimistic future for humanity. That embraces and celebrates the possibilities while inspiring and entertaining the reader. Novel concepts that excite our sense of the possible and that just might work given advances in technology, are particularly prized.

Send us your bold and optimistic creativity, it may be just right for this literary journal.

Response Time

We will respond to all submissions in time.

You may be glad to know that we automatically acknowledge receipt of all work submitted to us as we receive it so that you do not wonder if it has been lost in cyberspace somewhere and so that you can easily keep track of when you submitted your work to us.

All of that being said and with no promises being made, we will endeavor to contact you in three months as to whether your work has been accepted or declined.

If you have not heard from us in this time period, use the Contact Us form in the About Us dropdown menu to rouse us from our literary stupor, deep in our cups. Be sure to include the title of your work and its submission categories (for example, Dreadnought SF / poetry) to assist us in this process.

Fees

No submission/entry fees, reading fees, or fees of any other kind are charged for submitting your work to this publication.

Payment

We do not offer payment.

Rights

1) Starship Sloane Publishing Company, Inc. requires First Serial Rights, meaning that it has been granted the right to be the first to publish your work online, digitally, or in print.

2) Starship Sloane Publishing Company, Inc. requires Electronic Rights, meaning that it has been granted the right to publish, distribute, archive and store your work, its content, in any and all electronic formats, media, and capacities; retaining the right to reprint the content of its publications (webzine, emagazine, ebook, and print) in any potential forthcoming features, specials, anthologies and the like, whether online, digitally, or in print; and retaining the right to reprint content from its publications (webzine, emagazine, ebook, and print) on any and all of its websites and social media platforms, including for promotional purposes, site spinoffs, and so forth, with proper attribution.

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.

Simultaneous Submissions

We accept simultaneous submissions but please let us know right away if your work is accepted elsewhere.

Submission Frequency & Resubmission Policy

You may submit work to each of the submission categories if you feel so inspired, but you are limited to doing so exactly ONE time per submission period/publication cycle of Dreadnought SF. If you submit another batch of work in a category to which you have already submitted — even if not previously reaching the batch limit — during the same submission period, it will not be reviewed. Asynchronous submission to each category is fine.

You may submit new work during each new submission period. If your work has been declined during a previous submission period, please do not submit that work to us again unless significant and meaningful revision has been done. In some very rare cases, we may provide editorial feedback when we think that your work is very, very close to being right for publication in this journal.

Closing a Submission Period

Currently, the determination to close a submission period is contingent upon the quantity and quality of the submissions we receive. Ultimately, submission periods will end absolutely no later than one month prior to publication; or earlier if the determination is made to do so.

Notification in the submission portals will be posted when the submission period has been closed.

Submission Guidelines

Standard Manuscript Format (short version for those longer in the literary tooth)

Please submit your work using industry standard manuscript formatting but briefly peruse our requirements below. Thank you.

Standard Manuscript Format (long version with some insight for those shorter in the literary tooth)

Navigating the sometimes mystifying world of literary submissions requires some patience and a work ethic. If you’re very new to all of this, you may not know that there is a standard manuscript format for this industry or that it varies a little from source to source — so it’s not really so standard after all; and of course, many editors have their own set of in-house subjectivities. Search “standard manuscript format” if you have never done so and you’ll see what I mean and as you submit your work around, you’ll further see what I mean. So, what is one to do? Here’s the deal, even though variations in the details exist between interpretations of the standard manuscript format, they are all substantively in agreement. An editor is unlikely to toss your manuscript if you were to use Courier instead of Times New Roman and vice versa. I will provide one link to propel your learning curve in this matter if you are at that stage in your development as a writer who is just learning the market; but your learning curve is, of course, yours entirely, as it is for all writers. Here’s the link to Bill Shunn’s highly regarded, very helpful and very entertaining guide to properly formatting a variety of manuscripts for submission.

Note: The following guidelines, the descriptions of what we’re looking for in each category and the batch limits are provided again in the applicable submission portal, be sure to double-check these before submitting your work.

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.

Be sure to have read the About page for Dreadnought SF to best understand the Geist of this literary journal and what we’re looking for.

Poetry

Send in your SF poetry, don’t doubt your work! Follow through on your inspiration and sound your creative yawp over the roofs of the world (thanks, W. W.)!

Batch Limit

You may submit up to five poems. Ten if unlinked scifaiku.

Flash Fiction

This category is for any SF literary work that is 1,000 words or less. As you well know, the various and overlapping word limits, interchangeability of definitions and names and the submission guidelines unique to each publication for work in this category creates a positively fluid and bewildering literary landscape to negotiate. Call it flash fiction, sudden fiction, short-short story, immediate fiction, microfiction, microstory, microflash, nanotale, postcard fiction, napkin fiction, dribble, drabble, minisaga, the 280-character story, twitterature, the six-word story or any other name that fevered minds might ferment; call it six words, 50 words, 280-characters (supposedly about 55 words if using average length words), 100 words, 300 words, 400 words, 500 words, 750 words and 1,000 words (with some definitions and publications ranging up to 1,500 words and even 2,000 words in the extreme) — it is all flash fiction to us and is 1,000 words or less for this publication. All of this to say that we are striving for simplicity.

Batch Limit

You may submit two works of flash fiction.

Short Story

This category is for any SF literary work that is no less than 1,000 words and is not to exceed 5,000 words for this publication.

Batch Limit

You may submit one short story.

Essay

SF essays should not exceed 2,500 words.

Batch Limit

You may submit one essay.

Interview

Interviews should not exceed 2,000 words. We are interested in the spectrum of fascinating SF and related voices — writers, artists, scientists, ponderers, visionaries, fanatics, and so forth.

Batch Limit