I’m happy to announce that we are doing it again. Allow me to present our 3rd annual collection of speculative short fiction:
Wars to End All Wars
Alternate Tales From The Trenches
There are many worlds and many histories, but The Great War happened in all of them.
A complex web of events, both great and small, lead to a conflict of unimagined proportion, scope, and duration, and left the Worlds reeling in its wake. Wars to End All Wars – Alternate Tales From The Trenches is an anthology of speculative fiction re-imagining the causes, actions, and effects of the Great War, and the stories of the people within it.
GUIDELINES
Authors are invited to re-imagine the causes of World War I, the course of the war, and/or the results of the war to set the stage for their stories of 5000-8000 words.
There are three entry dates, each with an optional sub-topic. These dates are to help the anthology organizer collect works in manageable chunks. One of the dates listed below may work better with your personal life. By those dates, you can submit any story under any topic, within the thematic specification of WWI Alternate History. If you are a particularly un-busy person, you might even enter three times (with different stories). Thus:
Entry Date #1: Feb 28th.
Rise – Events leading up to the war, including early conflicts
Entry Date #2: April 30th.
Fight – Events during the main body of the war
Entry Date #3: June 30th.
Fall – Events leading to the end of the war, or after the end of the war
Again, there is no need that all entries during Entry #1, 2, or 3 be based entirely on one of these sub-topics. The sub-topics exist as a “creative limitation option”. Authors may use one, two, or all three of these sub-themes within a single story. Thus, stories spanning the war are, of course, acceptable at all times.
In short, the purpose of the “Rise/Fight/Fall” idea is primarily to create a loose focus for writers to use, should they wish to.
Deadline for all submissions: June 30th, 2014
To submit a story, email your story directly to nilaewhite (at) gmail (dot) com. Please double-space between paragraphs, single-space within. Also, do NOT tag your formatting. Simply use the italics, bold, centering commands of whatever program you use. Preferred file format is Google Document, Word DOC, DOCX, or RTF.
REQUIREMENTS
- You must be a member of SFFWorld.com in good standing (no strikes) prior to submitting your story.
- Your story must fall in the speculative fiction genre (including but not limited to Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, etc.)
- No fan-fiction
- 5000-8000 words (firm)
RIGHTS AND COMPENSATION
N. E. White (on behalf of SFFWorld.com) will take exclusive worldwide digital rights for 1 year, then non-exclusive worldwide digital rights for 1 more year. Payment is a flat $5 USD (paid via PayPal), plus an e-book copy of the anthology.
Hmmm, might give this one a crack considering how much I find I enjoy playing with alt history / alt future sometimes.
Is there a qualifying criteria for joining SFFWorld? Been meaning to ask you for a while – I guess now might be appropriate 🙂
You definitely should! No qualifying criteria what so ever. Participation on the forum is not required, but it would be nice if you stopped by and said ‘hi’. 🙂
Cool. Will take a look over the weekend and have a think about what I might submit 🙂
Wow, Nila, this sounds so awesome…and disappointing at the same time because I don’t think I’ll be able to submit anything with all the work I’ll be doing on my novel. But I can’t wait to read what people come up with!
Glad you are willing to read, and maybe next year you’ll have time (or make time!). 🙂