These magazines and anthology publishers publish speculative fiction of every stripe – science fiction, fantasy, horror, and their associated sub-genres. Many of these outlets pay writers. Most, not all, of these are open for submissions now, or will open soon.
Seize the Press
This is a new magazine and their first issue was published in January 2022. They want “dark, transgressive speculative fiction. Bleak sci-fi, dark fantasy and horror only. We’re looking for stories that aren’t didactic or moralistic. We want stories where everything isn’t wrapped up neatly at the end. We want to promote a diverse range of voices from authors who write messy characters, so give us your problematic queers and your angry women—we want your difficult and morally questionable characters in unpleasant situations who don’t slide neatly into a narrow definition of positive representation and don’t fit the model minority mould.” They want stories up to 2,000 words, and pay £0.06/word. Details here.
Grim & Gilded
They publish fiction and poetry, both literary and genre; they want work with “strong characters that reflect upon the human experience and facets of society. We appreciate pieces that contain elements or exist fully within the realms of fantasy, horror, high fantasy, magical realism, science fiction, urban fantasy, contemporary fantasy, fairy tales, Gothic, steampunk, and thriller.” They accept submissions year-round, with cut-off dates for issues. Details here and here.
Gwyllion
This Welsh magazine publishes genre fiction and poetry twice a year, and prints a limited number of copies. They want low fantasy, space opera, pulp fiction, swords-and-sorcery tales of mystery and adventure. Also, “We want your weird fiction, your eldritch horror, your wuxia, and your steampunk. Give us cryptids, give us aliens, give us vampires. If you think ‘lowbrow’ is an insult then we are not the right magazine for you. We also accept high fantasy, literary fiction, and ‘hard’ science fiction.” Send fiction of up to 10,000 words, or up to 3 poems, book reviews, as well as fan fiction recommendations of up to 200 words. Pay is £10. Submissions are open in January, February, July, and August. Details here.
GigaNotoSaurus
They publish science fiction or fantasy (or any combination thereof). They publish one story a month. They publish stories of 5,000-25,000 words, and pay $100. Details here.
Three Crows Magazine
They want “stories of dark and weird fantasy, horror, and sci-fi, with complex characters making morally ambiguous decisions.” They also publish non-fiction and art. Send stories of 1,000-5,000 words; pay is $0.01/word for fiction. Details here.
Flash Frontier: Thunder
They publish 250-word stories. They read and publish quarterly. The current theme is ‘Thunder’. The deadline is 28 February 2022. Details here.
NewMyths
This magazine publishes speculative fiction of every kind, except graphic horror. They also accept nonfiction, poems, reviews (query first), and artwork with speculative fiction themes. Pay is 1.5c/word for prose and poetry, a minimum of $30; and $30 for reviews. The deadline is 28 February 2022. Details here.
Factor Four Magazine
They want flash speculative fiction — science fiction, fantasy, supernatural, super hero, or any combination of these. They want stories of up to 1,000 words, and pay $0.11/word. Details here.
Wyngraf
This is a new cozy fantasy magazine (no science fiction or urban fantasy), and they’ll open briefly in March for submissions. “Often fantasy means the presence of magic, but not always… Low-magic and no-magic stories are welcome”. Stories should have a pre-modern technology level (their cutoff is about early 19th century). They want secondary worlds, do not want stories set on our earth, prefer fantasy to fairy tales, and human-only settings are welcome; please see guidelines for these, and other, details. Please do not send submissions outside of their reading period. They want stories of 4,000-10,000 words, and pay $0.01/word. Their reading period is 1-8 March 2022 (please send work only during the submission period). Details here.
Shoreline of Infinity
Their guidelines say, “We are looking for an engaging science fiction or fantasy story, something that gives reality a tweak on the nose – an idea that makes us stop and think.
But more than that, we want your story to be populated with characters we want to meet and have a drink with or from whom we want to run screaming away; we want characters to hug to ease the pain; we want to read the stories of heroes; we want to be your character.” They pay £40 per 1,000 words, accept stories up to 6,000 words. They’ll be reading general SF/fantasy submissions during 11-14 March 2022, and science fiction fairy tales during 4-14 April. Details here.
Bourbon Penn
This is an online and print magazine and they want “highly imaginative stories with a healthy dose of the odd. Odd characters, odd experiences, odd realities. We’re looking for genre / speculative stories and are quite partial to slipstream, cross-genre, magic realism, absurdist, and the surreal.” Pay is $0.03/word for stories of 2,000-7,500 words. They have ongoing submissions. Details here.
TTA Press: Interzone
Interzone is a well-regarded magazine, publishing science fiction and fantasy stories of up to 10,000 words. Submissions are ongoing. Details here. (TTA Press also publishes Black Static, for horror stories, and Crimewave, for crime fiction.)
Knight Writing Press: Two themes
They want fiction (up to 7,000 words), poetry, and art for two themes: Mermaidens, stories about mermaids, deadline 1 March 2022, and Modern Magic, which will feature stories about magic in the modern day – no witches, warlocks, vampires, or werewolves, deadline 1 April 2022. Payment is royalty share. Details here.
Deracine Magazine
This magazine is reading for its final issue. Their website says, they want “dark, psychological fiction, poetry, and art. … Our goal is to share literature that raises awareness of and expresses psychological issues and feelings of displacement through the literary gothic, with creative elements of horror and fantasy.” Send fiction of up to 8,000 words. Details here.
New Gothic Review
This is a fiction magazine. “We’re looking for previously unpublished short stories that reimagine Gothic fiction for the 21st century. We want stories that are beautifully written, heavily atmospheric, and psychologically chilling.” Please see detailed guidelines about what they want, and do not want, in their stories. They accept submissions of 1,500-5,000 words, pay $50, and plan to open before Spring 2022. Details here.
Apex Magazine
They publish science fiction, fantasy, and horror every other month. Pay is $0.08/word for stories up to 7,500 words and if they podcast the story, they’ll pay an additional $0.01/word. Submissions are read on an ongoing basis. Details here.
Black Ink Fiction: Musketeers vs. Cthulhu in the Court of Louis, and other calls
They have several open calls for fiction anthologies. One is Musketeers vs. Cthulhu in the Court of Louis, which combines the worlds of Alexandre Dumas’ The Three Musketeers, of their adventures and court intrigues in the France of 1625 as they are pitted against Cardinal Richelieu, and Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos. “I am looking for stories that combine the classic adventure stories of Dumas with the sanity blasting horrors of the Cthulhu Mythos. Turn the lives of 17th-century France into a sanity-blasting nightmare. No idea is too weird. … The only restriction is that it must take place during the time frame of the original stories and feature some of the characters in some way. Your MC doesn’t have to be one of the Musketeers, but it must exist in their world.” They want stories of 3,000-8,000 words. The deadline for this theme is 15 March 2022. Details here.
(They also have other themed calls and anthology series: Romance series, which includes Lawless, about romance in the old west; and Under the Gaslamp Glow, gaslamp romance, atmospheric Victorian historical/gothic, similar to steampunk but with an emphasis on magic rather than machinery or technological advancement; Campfire Tales series, which includes Penny Blood Tales, stories of Victorian horror; The Gunslinger, stories about the ordinary citizens of the old west and their interactions with the gunslingers of legend; and The Call of the Sea, stories of sea adventures, which can feature big names like Blackbeard and Ching Shih, but they should be secondary characters; Home Sweet Horror anthology, about haunted houses, cursed dwellings, terrors close to home; Transitions, a charity anthology, about aging, changes, memories, or transitions, LGBTQ+ themes prioritized, any genre except horror; and We Were Warriors series, three fiction anthologies featuring Valkyries, Samurai, and Vikings.)
Escape Artists: Cast of Wonders, Escape Pod, PodCastle, PsudoPod
The Escape Artists suite of magazines publishes four online speculative fiction magazines / podcasts currently.
— Cast of Wonders, an online fiction magazine and podcast; they want young adult stories on the Halloween theme; pays $0.08/word for stories up to 6,000 words, and the reading period for this theme is 21st to 28th February 2022 – see schedule;
— Escape Pod, for science fiction stories, is also open now. “We want stories that center on science, technology, future projections, and/or alternate history, and how any or all of these things intersect with people.” They accept short stories of 1,500-6,000 words (longer for reprints), pay $0.08/word, and the deadline is 31 May 2022 – see schedule;
— PodCastle, a fantasy market, will be open during 1-31 March for general submissions and during 1-31 July for a special call, according to their schedule; and
— Pseudopod, a horror market – this will open earlier for reprints, from 1 March 2022, than it will for original fiction submissions, according to their schedule.
All the Escape Artists magazines pay $0.08/word for original fiction, and have various guidelines and deadlines – please see these before submitting. (Escape Artists is still working out the logistics of CatsCast, which will feature – you guessed it – speculative fiction about cats.)
Dark Horses Magazine
Dark Horses is a new magazine of weird fiction (not to be confused with The Dark Horse poetry magazine). Their website says, “From hard science-fiction to stark, melancholic apocalypses; from Lovecraftian horror to zombies and horror comedy; from whimsical interludes to tales of unlikely compassion–whatever it is, if it’s weird, it’s here.” They want stories of up to 10,000 words, and they also accept reprints. Details here.
CommuterLit
They want short stories, memoir, novel excerpts and poetry (one poem or a series of poems), in any genre, with a word count of 500 to 4,000. It is for people to read work on the go, and is published five days a week. Details here.
Infinite Worlds (and Infinite Horror)
Infinite Worlds publishes science fiction, as well as artwork and comics. They’re also accepting submissions for Infinite Horror, a new, upcoming horror fiction magazine which is a spinoff of Infinite Worlds. Send stories of 1,500-5,000 words. Pay is $0.08/word for fiction. Details here.
Cartridge Lit
They want fiction, poetry, and essays inspired by video games. Their website says, “We want games-inspired lit that takes risks and tempts edges, that sparks and burns. Send us your Uncharted prose poems. Final Fantasy VI flash fiction. Segmented essays on transformation and mutation in games. Chrono Trigger. Donkey Kong. Minecraft. The Last of Us. Games new and old.” They want work that is short (up to 2,000 words) and lyrical. They also want contributors for their blog, The Airship. Details here.
Underland Arcana
This magazine is published four times a year. They want “short fiction that veers into the numinous, the esoteric, the supernatural, and the weird. We like these stories to be mildly speculative, fantastic, mysterious, and/or horrific (if you prefer genre tags). We’re not terribly keen on stories that splash through gore, but we don’t mind the grotesque. We prefer character-driven pieces, but will pause and admire works that are exceptionally experimental in tone, style, and presentation.” If they also publish the work elsewhere after it is on the website – as an eBook or collected print edition – they will also pay royalties. About the deadline, their website says, “Our next reading period begins February 1st, 2022, and will run for approximately one month.” They want stories of 1,000-5,000 words, and pay: $0.01/word for work published on the website. Details here.
Del Sol SpecFic Review
“We seek to publish unsolicited works of speculative fiction which includes (and this is not an exhaustive list) science fiction, fantasy, urban, steampunk, horror, alternate history, utopian, dystopian, and futuristic.” They do not want stories about zombies, vampires, or dragons. Writers can also send excerpts of novels in progress. Send stories of 500-6,000 words. Details here.
Gingerbread House
They publish fiction and poetry with a magical/folkloric/fairytale element. They want stories of up to 1,500 words, and up to five poems. They publish four times a year, and read submissions year-round. Details here.
Augur Magazine: Joyful Imaginations
They want fiction and poetry submissions from underrepresented creators in Canada (see guidelines), on the ‘Joyful Imaginations’ theme. They want dream-touched realism, slipstream, fabulism, magical realism, and literary speculative fiction. Pay is CAD0.11/word for stories up to 5,000 words, and CAD60 for poems. The deadline is 28 February 2022. Details here.
(Also see this list from Emily Harstone, which lists many more opportunities for historically underrepresented creators.)
SFS Stories
“SFS Stories is a throwback to the golden age of fantasy and science fiction. Think of authors like Bradbury, Clarke, Asimov, and the sci-fantasy pulp magazines that published their delectable stories.” They do not want erotica or gore. Send stories up to 1,000 words. Pay is $25. Details here (scroll down).
Enchanted Conversation: A Fairy Tale Magazine — Weather
They publish fairy tales – new fairy tales or mashups of fairy tales. Their guidelines say, “The theme for 2022 is “weather.” That means rain, blizzards, hail, lightning, hurricanes, thunder, heat, clouds. … It does not need to be a major part of a story or poem, but it does need to be discernibly part of the work.” They also publish nonfiction, and themed poetry. They will have some brief open reading periods in 2022, from the 1st to the 3rd of March, May, August, and October. Send 750-1,000 words for fiction and nonfiction, and any length for poetry. Pay is $50. Details here.
The Colored Lens
They publish stories “that shift our perspective on the world, through the far-reaching genre of speculative fiction. … We publish all varieties of speculative fiction, from alternate history, to high fantasy, to nuts and bolts hard science fiction, to dark fantasy… the focus should be used to comment on our world and society rather than exclusively to keep the reader turning pages.” Send stories of up to 10,000 words; they can also serialize stories of up to 20,000 words. Pay is $10-20 for short fiction. Details here.
Tasavvur
This is a new magazine of South Asian speculative fiction. Their website says, “Tasavvur, which literally means Imagination in Urdu/Hindi, aims to provide a warm and cozy space for imaginative short stories from South Asia. While we love all sorts of stories, we want to publish those with a South Asian theme, setting or characters.” Also, “Give us your dreamscapes and nightmares, your soaring fantasies, your futuristic miasmas.” Pay is two and a half cents per word, for stories up to 5,000 words. The deadline is 15 March 2022. Details here.
Sci-Fi Lampoon
They publish humorous speculative fiction online and in print – “Humor. Satire. Spoof. It can be a humorous take on space operas, a satire of apocalyptic disasters, a spoof of heroic fantasies, fake ads & letters to the editor or a love advice column for human/alien couples. … Just keep our theme of speculative fiction in mind.” Submissions are ongoing, and pay is $5 for stories up to 7,500 words. Details here.
HellBound Books: Vampires and Such; and other calls
They are open for several anthologies for 2022. One of the themes is Vampires and Such. “In celebration of the 125th Anniversary of the first publication of Dracula, the grandaddy of them all, we are courting vampire stories of all kinds.
So, send us your very best vampiric tales – gothic, contemporary, speculative – chill our bones and have us panic-buying garlic and wooden stakes…” Pay is $5, and the deadline is 31 May 2022 for this theme. Details here (scroll down). Other anthology themes are: Madame Gray’s Poe-Pourri of Horror, about Poe-inspired stories; Hellbound Sci-Fi; Kids are Hell!; In Celebration of Splatterpunk; and Beautiful Tragedies (a poetry anthology).
James Gunn’s Ad Astra
This is a science fiction magazine. The guidelines say, “James Gunn defines science fiction as “the literature of change” and states that it “incorporates a belief that the most important aspect of existence is a search for humanity’s origins, its purpose, and its ultimate fate.” A tall order but a worthy goal.
Our editorial vision for James Gunn’s Ad Astra calls for raising our eyes above the horizon and not limiting the scope of speculative fiction. It is in this spirit that we welcome great stories that range from the near-reality to the far reaches of the what-if.” They are reading stories for Issue 11, which will be published in the winter of 2022. At the time of writing, they were open for fiction, but closed for poetry and scholarly article submissions. They want stories up to 7,500 words (flash stories are a hard sell), and pay $50 for fiction.
Details here.
Aftermath Magazine
They publish stories and nonfiction on the theme of the end of human civilization as a result of our destruction of the environment (see guidelines). They also publish work that “celebrates the beauty and importance of our environment, the natural world, the splendour of the wild, the abundance of wonderful creatures, big and small, and our kinship with them, the simple joys and profound enrichments experienced by people who are able to commune with nature.” Submissions can be in English or Dutch. Send work of 1,500-5,000 words. Pay is $0.02/word for fiction, and $0.01/word for nonfiction. They are open now for submissions. Details here.
Utopia Science Fiction
This is a new online magazine and they accept science fiction stories (100-6,000 words; query for longer), poetry, articles, and art. Their guidelines say, “We’re looking for enthralling stories set in a future we want to believe in, one we would fight to make a reality.” See the website for details of the kind of work they want to see. Pay is $0.01/word for fiction, $35 for nonfiction, and $5-10 for poetry. They also run some themed issues. Details here.
Galaxy’s Edge
“We are a science fiction and fantasy magazine, so we would love to receive fiction from those categories as well as any sub-categories, such as space opera, steampunk, urban fantasy, africanfuturism, magical realism and so on. We do not publish straight horror stories, even if they do have a supernatural element, but if you have a dark fantasy story, or a dystopian science fiction piece, send it our way”. Do not send them vampire, werewolf, or zombie stories. Pay is $0.07/word for stories of up to 10,000 words, and US-based contributors also get contributor copies. They close periodically to submissions. Details here.
The British Science Fiction Association: Fission #2
Fission is the annual anthology of British Science Fiction Association (FSFA); they’re reading for their second issue. They want science fiction, and genre benders are welcome. Writers do not have to be FSFA members to contribute. Pay is £0.02/word, and the deadline is 15 March 2022. Details here.
Zooscape
This is a magazine of furry fiction (up to 5,000 words). They want stories prominently featuring an anthropomorphic animal figure – it could be anthropomorphic in body or only intelligence. Their guidelines also say, “We’ll consider any type of furry fiction from secret life of animals to fox in Starbucks. We love science-fiction with animal-like aliens and fantasy with talking dragons, unicorns, or witch familiars.” They are specially interested in underrepresented voices. They also accept reprints. Pay is $0.08/word. Details here.
Solarpunk Magazine
This is a new magazine of solarpunk stories (500-7,500 words), poetry, nonfiction, and art. Submissions will be open during 1-14 March 2022, and they’ll have a reading period for BIPOC-only creators during April. Pay is $0.08/word for fiction, $40/poem, and $75/essay. They also have a themed monthly micro fiction contest, which pays $25 to the winner. Details here.
Bio: S. Kalekar is the pseudonym of a regular contributor to this magazine. She is the author of 182 Short Fiction Publishers. She can be reached here.
