*****Subs Closed*****
The Space Cadet Science Fiction Review is an online literary journal of science fiction poetry, flash fiction, short stories, essays, interviews, book reviews and artwork published annually seeking sophisticated, compelling science fiction writing and artwork.
Response Time
We will respond to all submissions — but in the tradition of “T. Oh Come On Slow One” (a science fiction trivia gauntlet has just been thrown), we may take longer than you would like, depending on how many submissions we have received.
You will 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, The Space Cadet Science Fiction Review / 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Submission of Unpublished Work
We accept submission of your original, unpublished work.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 The Space Cadet Science Fiction Review. 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.
Science Fiction 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 The Space Cadet Science Fiction Review to best understand the Geist of this literary journal and what we’re looking for.
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 and free of structural constraints as you please, no particular poetic form or creative aesthetic is required nor restricted — 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]; we publish all text left-aligned. 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.
Batch Limit
- You may submit up to four poems.
Science Fiction Flash Fiction
This category is for any work of science fiction 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.
Science Fiction Short Story
This category is for any work of science fiction 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.
Science Fiction Essay
Essays should not exceed 2,500 words. We are looking for deeply exploratory, illuminating and insightful essays on science fiction.
Batch Limit
- You may submit one essay.
Science Fiction Interview
Interviews should not exceed 2,000 words. We are interested in the fascinating spectrum of science fiction voices — writers, artists, ponderers, fanatics, and so on.
Batch Limit
- You may submit one interview.
Science Fiction Book Review
Book reviews should not exceed 1,000 words. We are looking for expansive and engaging reviews of science fiction books, save the dry and stuffy stuff for lit class!
Batch Limit
- You may submit one book review.
Science Fiction Artwork
We are looking for a spectrum of science fiction artwork.
Photos that somehow capture the essence of science fiction in our everyday lives, obscure retro technology seen from odd angles, through dreamy-hazy filters, strangely illuminated, the use of juxtaposition, sunset surrealism and so forth; the objects and landscapes around us that bespeak a science fiction vision of the future. Go absolutely haywire and create tableaux vivants and dioramas!
Paintings, drawings, sculpture and moiré patterns that famously capture the essence, the motifs and themes and the extraordinary visual extravagance of science fiction.
All going very short on the lurid (think no more so than the science fiction and other pulps of the late 1920s through 50s) and very long on breathtaking alien worlds, their skies, the otherworldly colors, alien inhabitants and their daily lives, the cities and landscapes, space travel scenes, spacecraft, space battles, alien and super-futuristic technologies and so on.
Batch Limit
- You may submit a combination of up to four photographs or images of your artwork in total.
Please provide a description of the materials used to create your artwork.
Although not required, please include a short artist bio.
[Caveat: If you would like to submit minimalist line art in black & white here, while we will welcome it, you might also consider submitting such work to our literary journal The Starlight SciFaiku Review, where that is the only style of art that we accept (in both JPEG and PNG file formats). For The Space Cadet Science Fiction Review, extraordinarily elaborate, mind-bogglingly detailed, color-rich drawings providing a more complex and vivid representation of the subject are preferred.]
Artwork File Format Guidelines
We will accept only JPEG/JPG files for artwork uploaded through the submission portal. This format is ideal for presenting artwork on a website without bogging it down and will allow us to produce a quality print version (24-bit RGB) of the online literary journal. No TIFF files, convert them to JPEG. If you’re unsure how to do this, the following link to Adobe provides a good tutorial.
We do not anticipate encountering file size issues.
Next step, head over to the submission portals!
