Friday Science Highlights – Alien Elevator Music, The Search for Second Earth, and Windsurfing on Jupiter

Science photo of the Week

This week's science photo is actually more about "science music". If intelligent life exists out in the deep black, and they happen to stumble across the Voyager spacecraft, launched in 1977, then they will soon discover that they have a Golden Ticket straight to Earth. Or something like it, since the Voyager is carrying several discs collectively titled “The Golden Record.” The sound bytes contained on these records range from the music of trains and cars to mud pots bubbling – a digital museum of sorts meant to represent the sounds of Earth to strangers from another planet. There is even a large collection of spoken greetings in various human languages, in case your average interstellar dweller might happen to know Arcadian or Welsh.

Whether or not aliens will ever listen to these sounds, now they are available for native Terrans to listen to instead. So enjoy the sounds of civilization and nature. Once the aliens trace this miraculous variety back to Sol, you might not have the luxury again for a while. *doom doom doom*

The Search for Second Earth Comes Close with Kepler 452b

Earth is a delightful gem in a sea of what sometimes feels like sterile hostility. But surely in the vastness of space, Earth cannot be the only planet capable of containing some sort of life – or at least life supporting conditions. In fact, scientists and virtual space explorers may be on the verge of finding Earth’s twin. In a new crop of some five hundred planets being studied, Kepler 452b is the most similar to Earth yet. It has an orbital year of 385 days, and its sun is very similar to our own. Its perfect placement in the habitable range of its solar system makes it very likely that the planet could have water, the sort of atmosphere necessary to protect the development of life, and even active geological movement.

 Discovering planets with a decent chance of supporting human life is crucial if we are going to entertain any long-term colonization plans at all. But it also is a good indicator that perhaps other creatures might exist somewhere else in the galaxy.

Cloud Surfing in Jupiter’s Tempestuous Atmosphere

Jupiter, the mysterious monster planet with the iconic red eye, might be next on the list of celestial bodies to study up close and personal in ways never before accomplished. NASA is investigating an entirely new design for keeping a robot probe afloat in the hazardous conditions of Jupiter’s atmosphere. And, like most successful designs, the so called “wind bot” is being conceived based on an example taken from nature: the dandelion seed.

It’s an amusing image, but ultimately sensible. On Earth, dandelion seeds are extremely aerodynamic and exert no force of their own to stay afloat. They simply use their fantastic design in combination with the wind to scatter themselves far and wide, spreading the species with practically no effort. Who among us has never blown on a dandelion seed and watched the puff-ball umbrellas glide away on the slightest breeze?

No picture the never-ending rage of Jupiter’s stormy atmosphere, and you can see how this design may be too ingenious to laugh at. But NASA is still just in the planning stages. It will be a long time before the “wind bot” sees the winds of Jupiter up close.

Battling Low Writing Morale with Smart, Positive Practices

I have a bad case of the Mondays.

Actually, I’ve had a bad case of the Mondays for a little over two weeks now, and there doesn’t seem to be any end in sight. My energy levels have plummeted, my mood has been overcast at best, and I have gotten along by doing only the minimum amount of meaningful work it takes to function and continue looking like a responsible adult.

I haven’t looked at my novel once (still stuck halfway through the first chapter). I toyed with the idea of trying the Pomodoro technique and put it off. I’ve read maybe one or two stories. And the last thing I want to do is write.

So I asked myself this morning, what do I want to do? The answer that popped into my head was, “stare at the wall and slip slowly into madness.”

Ah. I need a cup of coffee. Hang on a moment.

Better. And a blanket. And a hot pop-tart.

We all find ourselves in this place at some point in our lives, usually multiple times throughout our lives. We’re exhausted, demoralized, and it feels as if every little thing takes a monumental effort.

But we can’t stay here. Life must go on, work must be done, and it’s not fair to dedicate what little spunk you have left only to paying bills and fighting traffic. The things that make you happy and recharge your batteries deserve your attention too!

So how do we battle the effects of low morale, especially when it comes to writing? Writing takes a lot out of us. Ernest Hemingway famously said “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” When you’re already feeling down, entertaining the idea of writing can feel catastrophic.

Which is why this is the time to take baby steps and not push your mood even further down. This is the time to bolster your happy thoughts, not tear them down with guilt. So what if you haven’t written word one in a month? That’s not a long-term trend by any means. You can change that any day, so start with today.

Sit down. Have something to drink within easy reach. Maybe a bowl of snacks. Give yourself no excuse to get up and distract yourself with easier-to-satisfy needs. This time is for you. Listen to some relaxing, or thematic, music – whichever suits the writing you’re attempting to accomplish.

If you’re struggling to commit the time, why not consider giving the Pomodoro technique a try. This little trick has been applauded for its ability to increase your focus in lots of areas that require you to sit down and concentrate for extended periods of time: writing, reading, studying, etc. It gets a lot of attention for being a work technique, but don’t be afraid to use it for relaxation too. The idea is that you set a timer for 20-30 minutes, and while that timer is running, your attention is centered on one task only. If you find you have trouble getting the work done while time is ticking, you are allowed to sit quietly and think. Even this will get your mind into a recognized patter than when the timer is running, it’s time to get to work. Using those minutes for meditation will do you some good too (the brain keeps working, even if you don’t feel like you are!). Here’s an online timer you can use right now!

Remember also not to fall into the big traps of demotivating yourself even further. If you’re in a writing rut and you literally cannot bring yourself to continue, why not try sharing what you do have with a friend? They might have just the right comments to motivate you to continue. Or dedicate some real time to reading a book for enjoyment – it could be that your word well has become depleted.

Probably the best thing you can do right now, though, is speak encouragement to yourself. Don’t make yourself even more depressed by feeding the shadows with lies. This season will pass, and you’ll be back on your feet soon. Take little steps. Even if it’s only 20 minutes a day, try to get back into a positive rhythm.

What are your techniques for getting out of a writing rut? Let me know in the comments!

Friday Science Highlights – Oceans of Fire, Distended Atmospheres, and a New Meaning for Super-Massive

Science Photo of the Week

It’s a beautiful sight to see fog rising from a lake or stream early in the morning, hovering over the surface and making the air cool and moist. In a different way can we admire the enormous quantities of smoke pouring out of Canada and Alaska, enveloping the upper states of America and passing into the arctic regions of the North Pole and Greenland. This has been one of the worst years for wildfires (a record-breaking season for Alaska) and the devastation of brush and undergrowth will undoubtedly have regrettable consequences. Nevertheless, the power of nature is one we science fiction writers repeatedly turn to for inspiration, and this picture makes me wonder what kind of elements would have to be present to make up a literal sea of fire? Imagine an ocean made up of some substance that in liquid form is constantly burning and sending off some sort of smoke or fume. How much more deadly and terrifying if the burn was invisible?

Pluto is Orbiting the Sun in a Coma

Fear not, the planet is not comatose – rather, researchers are now gathering data that shows Pluto’s atmosphere is being blown back by the solar wind, much like the fragile atmospheres of comets (called the coma – get it? I will not apologize).

Mars and Venus experience a similar loss of their atmospheres to the power of solar radiation, due to the fact that they have no magnetic field protecting the gases from the ferocity of the sun.

But not only does Pluto’s stretched atmosphere make it look like tadpole, it even has the tail – made out of plasma, of all things! What this means for Pluto is not yet entirely clear, but we can expect more updates as data continues to come in over the next few months.

What would you do in a story with a planet that has a tail made of plasma? Comment below!

Super-Sized Black Hole Discovered in Average Sized Galaxy

This is it – a scientific game changer. Boy do we love those. As soon as we get a little comfortable with a subject, the universe presents an exception and calls everything into question. Then again, how well can we say we really know black holes?

Black holes fascinate me, perhaps because they are so complicated, perhaps because the forces they exert are so incredibly powerful. Nothing escapes the crushing force of a black hole, not light, not gravity, and certainly not matter. They suck in and spin up such a disturbance that they are the drain around which the matter of the universe floats. These pits of darkness are everywhere – it is believed that they exist at the center of most galaxies, and how many galaxies are in the universe? Well, a lot.

Black holes come in different sizes and rotate at different speeds, giving us a wide variety of scenarios to observe. Each one has what is called an “event horizon” – the boundary beyond which gravity becomes so strong that satellite matter no longer orbits the black hole but falls into it. And previously, there seemed to be some sort of sensible relationship between the size of a black hole and its respective galaxy. But that may all change, since a recent study that was meant to observe “normal” sized black holes has accidentally discovered a black hole 7 billion times the size of our sun residing at the center of a relatively average sized galaxy.

What does it mean???? How has this black hole not gobbled up everything in this puny little galaxy already? Its mass is a tenth the size of all the matter that surrounds it. Putting aside the mystery of the very existence of the galaxy, what kind of amazing things could it be undergoing with the gravitational spin of a 7 billion sun black hole gnawing at its innards?

This week I read a short story (“A Galaxy Called Rome”) that was written in the earlier, golden years of science fiction, and I found it interesting that the author called what we know now as a black hole a “black galaxy.” Perhaps this is Rome. 

1969 Moon Landing Footage in Two Minutes

And here’s a nice little nugget of nostalgia for you – this week marked the anniversary of man’s historic landing on the moon. If you weren’t lucky enough to be a witness to the event back in 1969, fear not – Scientific American has you covered with a new, two minute compilation of the footage, from lift-off to landing to the safe return to Earth eight days later.  

Symbolism in Fiction, or, the Elephant in the Room

Here’s a fun topic for all of you who ever had to sit through a high-school literature class: symbolism.

If you just felt a chill run down your spine, then this is the article for you. This little post is going to be the catharsis you have been longing for all these years after you were forced to interpret what the author meant when he wrote about the sunset passing over the city like a flock of birds.

As a writer, I have always scoffed at people’s attempt to force symbolism on writing that isn’t theirs. Don’t get me wrong, personal interpretation is very fine. Everyone brings a unique perspective in life that affects how they digest information, and I will see a piece of art differently from the person standing next to me based on my previous experiences and individual personality. The swell of emotions I feel when I look up at the stars on a dark night are never quite the same as the next awed individual craning their neck for a peek at eternity.

What I tend to roll my eyes at the most is when I hear someone declaring confidently that a certain writer meant something deep and intense by their words. The more obscure the connection, the better.

Even as a young student, I used to imagine that if the authors we were reading in class could sit in the back, unnoticed, and listen to our desperate attempts to please our instructor by utilizing the magical, metaphorical shovel, they would roll on the floor laughing at some of the crap we were forced to come up with.

I had a teacher once tell me that an extremely unlikeable character in a novel was a Christ-figure simply because his initials were J.C. and he died standing in water.

Very convincing. I think Spark Notes comes up with more intellectual associations.

Comic by Kate Beaton, harkavagrant.com

So here is your chance to mourn all those misused brain cells and re-claim your dignity, and you have young Bruce McAllister to thank for the redemption. Well, Bruce isn’t so young anymore. He was 16 years old in 1963 when he sent a survey to over 100 famous novelists of the time, asking them specifically if they placed symbolism in their work, consciously or unconsciously. Those that answered directly (some simply told him to do his own research and stop bothering them) often refuted the idea of conscious symbolism entirely.

The full survey has been published in a book, but here are some of my favorite responses:

Isaac Asimov: “Consciously? Heavens, no! Unconsciously? How can one avoid it?”

Norman Mailer: “I’m not sure it’s a good idea for a working novelist to concern himself too much with the technical aspects of the matter. Generally, the best symbols in a novel are those you become aware of only after you finish the work.”

Ray Bradbury: “…each story is a Rorschach Test, isn’t it? And if people find beasties and bedbugs in my ink-splotches, I cannot prevent it, can I? They will insist on seeing them, anyway, and that is their privilege. Still, I wish people, quasi-intellectuals, did not try so hard to find the man under the old maid’s bed. More often than not, as we know, he simply isn’t there… There are other things of greater value in any novel or story…humanity, character analysis, truth on other levels…Good symbolism should be as natural as breathing…and as unobtrusive.”

Richard Hughes: “Have you considered the extent to which subconscious symbol-making is part of the process of reading, quite distinct from its part in writing?” 

Friday Science Highlights – Tie-Fighters, Time Travel, and Your Vacation to the Middle Thermosphere

Science Photo of the Week

At the end of last week, a gorgeous picture of the International Space Station passing in front of the moon was taken by Dylan O’Donnell from Australia. This picture is quite the catch, since the Space Station took about a third of a second to pass by our planet’s only natural satellite.

We often get to see how small the ISS is when astronauts take pictures of its crowded halls while in orbit, but there’s nothing like a little perspective to bring it all together. It can be hard to reconcile that small, glowing disc in the sky at night with the pictures of the lunar landing, but the moon is actually quite large! Also, who knew the ISS looked like an Imperial Tie-Fighter. Very suspicious.

New Record-Breaking Supernova Observed 2.8 Billion Years After Explosion

Science fiction loves the idea of faster-than-light travel, even though the very idea of it is completely impractical (gravity, my friends, is a dangerous thing!). While we’re getting closer and closer every day to high-speed space travel thanks to the research on the ion-drive, it is highly unlikely that this final speed barrier will ever be surpassed.

In the meantime, however, the speed of light provides us with plenty of scientifically accurate and extremely cool topics for fiction as it is. Consider this article on the recently discovered supernova that has broken all the records for being the brightest explosion observed by man. This detonating star shone with the light of about 600 BILLION suns. We can’t even imagine how bright that really is. Thank goodness the flare was a safe distance away from our solar system. We got to see the show without experiencing the catastrophic  effects at a nice, quiet, 2.8 billion light year distance.

A light-year, as we all know, is the time it takes for light to travel in one year (that’s a really long way). When we observe the light of the stars, we are seeing light that is already thousands, maybe millions of years old. And in this case, we are seeing light that is already 2.8 BILLION years old. Have you ever wanted to experience some kind of radical time travel? This is probably as close as you’ll ever get. We observe, in real-time, an event that took place almost 3 BILLION years ago!

Have you ever seen a picture of the famous Pillars of Creation? Go look them up now. They’re one of the most gorgeous structures in the universe that Hubble has been able to capture. The truly sad thing is that these mind-boggling towers of gas and dust and star-birth don’t actually exist. Not anymore. The pictures that Hubble gathered are based on light that was emitted so long ago that the clouds have by now very likely dispersed.

One More Step for U.S. Commercial Space Flight

Have you ever wanted to visit space? This might be a reality within a few decades, since NASA just selected the crew of the first ever Commercial Space Flights scheduled to begin in 2017. As the United States continues to push for putting feet on Mars, the number of exciting advances in space research continue to pile up. A new spacecraft, the Orion, a new launch system, the recently tested SLS rocket, alongside a concrete goal of reaching Mars by 2030. Now these new astronauts are preparing to get us closer to large-scale space travel than we ever have before.

I, for one, have always wanted to make the trip. I’m hoping that it will be possible in my lifetime.

NASA Makes History With First Ever Fly-By of Pluto

And the week wouldn’t be complete without briefly mentioning that the New Horizons Probe has begun its collection of data at the end of the Solar System with its closest approach of Pluto on July 14, making this the first time in history that the outer planet has been reached by mankind for research. Total data collection and interpretation will take a year. Meanwhile, New Horizons will continue on out of the Solar System and beyond.

Space…the final frontier. 

Contract Signing: What Rights Are Publishers Looking to Buy?

So it’s finally happened – you’ve gotten the long awaited acceptance letter. After a string of rejections, what a relief to see confirmation that your work is ready to be read by the world! This is the big moment when you get to celebrate seeing your name in print (and of course, seeing your name in print on a paycheck as well).

If you’ve done your research, you should know already what your contract is going to look like when it arrives from the publisher. But do you really understand what all that jargon means? Now is not the time to just sign your name in glee and skip over the fine print. Bad things still happen to authors who aren’t careful, and inexperienced writers may discover too late that they are not actually 100% on board with the terminology in their contract. This is why it is very important to not only submit your work to trusted markets, but to also do the research it takes to understand the end product.

Let’s dive into the basic categories of rights that you will see on most of your publishing contracts.

First Rights

First Rights in general are pretty much self-explanatory. The journal or publishing house that is purchasing your work is purchasing the right to distribute the story first. The term First Rights is a large umbrella under which many other sub-categories exist, but we’ll go through some of those later.

It is very important to understand that, even though First Rights seem simple, many publishers are divided on what constitutes a work as published or not. You can’t sell the exclusivity of something that has already been let out of the bag, so be careful with what you do while you’re waiting to sign a contract! Some publishers are very strict and will count any distribution of the work as the loss of your First Rights. Once you’ve sold your First Rights, the only other right you’re going to be selling is for reprints. This severely narrows your ability to sell the story, since reprints are not the top priority of many publishing houses.

 

A good rule of thumb is, when in doubt, hold on to your work. Cater to the harshest critic and you will have no trouble selling to a more lax editor. Neil Clarke (of Clarkesworld magazine) tested the waters on this controversy via a twitter conversation recently, and you can see that some share his strict point of view, while others would make exceptions. Later on he produced a webpage narrowly defining some examples of what constitutes a work as published or not. I highly recommend reading these rules before you make any attempts to distribute your work on your own.

Subsidiary Rights

As mentioned before, First Rights is a very broad term that covers a variety of subset rights. If you’re selling Exclusive or Unrestricted First Rights, this means that you are selling the rights for all possible subsets.

Rights can be determined based on language, geographic location, type of distribution, etc. If you are seeking publication in an American or Canadian literary journal, you are likely going to run across the term “First North American Serial Rights.” This terminology is giving the publisher the exclusive right to distribute the work to a North American audience via a Serial publication (the magazine).

Some publishers will also request the rights to audio/podcast versions of the work, or even sometimes video representation. They may also throw in the right to publish the work in an anthology later on.

If you’re looking at all these restrictions and starting to feel a little panicked, don’t worry. Remember, you ultimately own the copyright of your work. You are simply selling certain features of it for a set amount of time in very specified forms of media. Most publishers will only claim exclusive rights of any type for a short period of time (for example, one year). After that the rights become unexclusive and no longer have any bearing on where you choose to reprint the work (unless this too was restricted in your contract – so read the fine print!).

Also remember that once you sell even one subset of rights, you can no longer sell your work to anyone who is looking for exclusive first rights. So if a friend of yours wants to make an audio version of your story for their weekly podcast, remember that will have an impact on whether or not you can seek publication in print!

For a much more thorough breakdown of terminology that you might come across, check out these awesome guides from The Internet Writing Journal, Writing-World, and Poets&Writers:

A Novice Writer's Guide to Rights

Rights: What They Mean and Why They're Important

Copyright Information for Writers

Some other useful sources are Lightspeed Magazine’s Contract Template for Original Fiction, as well as author Nathan Bransford’s breakdown of a basic publishing contract.

Questions? Let me know in the comments and I’ll be happy to answer them for you. Happy submissions to you all!

Friday Science Highlights – Mercury Oceans, Rogue Probes, and Martian Caves

Welcome, Far-Sighters, to the first post in a new weekly series featuring some of the latest fascinating developments in science! Every Friday I will collect a variety of headlines from the scientific community for summary, discussion, and creative expansion. Since science rests at the very heart of most science fiction, keeping up to date on what we know and don’t know about the world around us is essential to moving forward the field of exploring the imagined universe.

You don’t have to be an expert on everything to write good science fiction, but you never know when one small fact will inspire a new idea. Scientific fact is the cornerstone upon which we build possible futures as dedicated followers of that mantra “What if?” My hope is that you will find these reports informative and exciting and that you will join me in discussing the possibilities inherent in each new discovery. Please feel free to share your thoughts and inspirations in the comments!

It is, of course, nigh-impossible for me to keep my finger on the pulse of every field of study available, which is where you also have a chance to participate in what content gets featured. If you come across a news article that you find particularly interesting, please send it to me via email with the subject line “Friday Science Highlights”. Try to keep all suggested content current (within the same month, if possible) and reliable (either directly from or cited from reliable sources).

Science Photo of the Week

International Space Station crew member Scott Kelly, who is also one of the subjects in the Year in Space Human Research Program, regularly tweets stunning photos of our planet from the perspective of low Earth orbit. This week he posted the sun reflecting back from a desert lake.

It is amazing to me how alien Earth can appear with enough separation. The lake looks to me like liquid mercury, which is deadly in even small amounts. Imagine what entire oceans of it would do to a planet. What kinds of hazards would explorers face with such an environment?

The New Horizons Probe Enters Unexpected Safe Mode

If you haven’t been keeping up with all the hubbub going on in space exploration right now, you may not be aware that we are mere days away from having a probe pass by Pluto and its moons for the first time in human history. This is incredibly exciting, since it has taken the New Horizons probe almost ten years to travel to the edge of our solar system, making Pluto and its moons “the farthest worlds ever to be explored by humankind.” If you’re a space exploration nerd like me, you can get past the slight cheesiness of the teaser video that the National Space Society has released to commemorate the achievement and still be awed and thrilled by what is going to happen on July 14.  

However, no exploration is complete without some bumps in the road, and on the afternoon of July 4^th, the New Horizon’s probe lost contact with Earth for more than an hour. This was very interesting (proper word?) for NASA, since once they regained communication with the probe, it was at first unclear why the error had occurred.

The mystery has since been solved and attributed to a simple flaw in the command sequence, but we can just pretend for a moment that the hang-up wasn’t quite so humdrum as a computing error. People have for years been obsessed with life on Mars and as a result have given little thought to the potential fertility of the“almost-planet” (come on people, we all know that Pluto is one of the nine).

Or is it? What if Pluto isn’t a planet at all but an outpost? What might happen if the inhabitants saw a probe about to pass their observatory where they have been making notes on the tiny blue planet at the other end of the system for all these centuries?

While you’re pondering whether the New Horizons blip might have been the result of insidious intentions or not, you can keep up to date on our visit to Pluto with this handy counter at seeplutonow.com. 

The Waters of Mars –Atmospheric Humidity

Forget the icecaps on Mars; today’s water talks are all about the moisture taking up residence in the red planet’s air. As we continue to roam Mars’ surface via long-distance robotics, we are learning more than ever before on whether or not Mars could potentially support life. Though no life has yet to be discovered, we’re a long way from declaring Mars sterile. The latest promising feature is Mars’ relative humidity, which can climb to as high as 80-100% in certain areas at certain times.

But water in the air is only a small feature that can still be overruled by whether or not that water ever condenses, and even if it does, whether its evaporation is nullified by hostile surface conditions.

One fascinating idea that this article projects is the hypothesis that Mars’ organisms may be hiding away beneath the surface, avoiding the sun’s uninhibited radiation. I will be honest, I had never thought of extraterrestrial cave systems, though it makes clear sense that they should exist. Earth’s cave systems are rich with both water and life and are the settings for some of the most incredible beauty you can find on the planet. It would be worth it to research what conditions allow for these exotic caves to develop here on Earth and whether or not it would be possible for there to be similar cave systems on Mars, or to speculate what the different conditions of Mars would allow for underground. 

Writing Prompt Reviews Part 3

Here we go again with another round of Writing Prompt Reviews! If you found any of the prompts from last time to be insightful, let me know in the comments. Feel free to explore any of the prompts with your own opinions, observations, or even some creative text!

I want to also call your attention to a new section on the side bar of the website called “Special Content” – the Writing Prompt Reviews will be catalogued here, along with a new feature coming very soon called “Friday Science Highlights.” Keep your eye out for it.

This month’s prompts come from blogger Mandy Wallace who has an excellent list of 58 Science Fiction Writing Prompts to choose from. These topics are so varied, however, that you shouldn’t feel limited to Science Fiction. I can easily see how many of these could be interpreted as Fantasy as well. The beautiful part of writing prompts is that you don’t have to feel chained to the original intention of the prompt. You can be inspired in any direction you choose to take it.

#1. “After eons and light years of travel, I’ve learned only one thing of any consequence: there’s nowhere far enough that her memory doesn’t follow.”

I love quotation prompts – they can generally belong to anyone in any situation if they are constructed to be open enough for wide interpretation. The only thing this quote tells us for certain is that the character has been travelling for a very long time (But at what speed? Does relativity come into play here? How much time has passed from the character’s perspective?) and that the character has interacted in the past with another character, female, who seems to be haunting them somehow.

The way this prompt is phrased makes me immediately think of the character as not quite human. Picture an android, or a computer-based being perhaps, that has felt the pain of human love and endured the loss. But, being effectively immortal, it must continue on indefinitely with the pain of remembrance, storing every visual, every sound clip for all eternity, no matter how far it attempts to get away from the point of origin.

Or perhaps this prompt could be used to spur a story of the age-old space travel problem. The character has been world-jumping, travelling at such high speeds that the generations of those on stable Earth have passed them long by, and though the woman they remember has for centuries been lost to the memory of their home world, the traveler cannot manage to let her slip into the obscurity of time as well.

It’s a beautiful prompt full of enough mystery and feeling that it makes me want to ask, and answer, all sorts of questions.

#2. Gold-fingered gods arrive in chariot-emblazoned space crafts claiming to be the Roman Pantheon back from vacation.

Comedy gold here, ala-Good Omens. This idea screams farcical humor and you could twist it to fit in multiple genres. They don’t even have to be Romans – what about ancient Egyptian deities coming back for a stroll through the modern day Middle East? People already say aliens built the pyramids anyway, so that’s a funny piece you could play off of.

It would be amusing to see what these “gods” opinions on human improvement would be. You’re not still using the aqueducts we built you? How primitive. We leave for the odd millennia and you revert right back to your barbaric ways. And what’s this? You haven’t even made it to Mars yet? We were all wondering why you didn’t answer Ares’ dinner party invitation. He was most put out – even threw a few asteroids your way. Missed of course, but you know how he gets when he drinks.

#3. A man decides to climb Mars’s Olympus Mons. He’ll finish in three years, just in time for his wife to emerge from cryogenic freezing.

Being a great lover of backpacking and as a result having an avid interest in mountaineering stories, this prompt caught my adventurous spirit and immediately made me wonder if there really are mountains on Mars large enough that they would take three years to climb. The research required to pull this story off is promising, but unfortunately the prompt as written is so narrow that it would be difficult to construct two stories that varied from each other enough to be considered original. However, the things you could discover looking up facts about Mars’ mountains could spawn all kinds of other rabbit trails for you to follow. Science-fiction tourism is not a new idea, and I can think of a few topics off the top of my head that have all been covered several times, each one unique and exciting in its own right. The setting is important, but not as important as the problem that you introduce for the characters to deal with.

For this prompt specifically, I’m interested to know why the man’s wife is cryogenically frozen in the first place. And why for three years exactly?

Additionally, mountain climbing is incredibly dangerous as it is on Earth. Throwing in the fact that Mars’ atmosphere is thin and full of solar radiation, not to mention the surface temperatures are vastly different that far from the sun, it becomes clear that mountain climbing on Mars of even the mildest difficulty would be an extremely hazardous undertaking. So tackling a three-year climb sounds almost suicidal. What was the deciding factor for this man to do so? And is he going alone?

I would probably choose the basic premise of this prompt as my beginning if I were going to use it and come up with my own outlying factors. It’s very interesting in that it poses a lot of problems that need to be answered. All of which could be covered through a narrative train of thought while the man performs his task. From personal experience, I can tell you that you have a lot of time to think when you’re slogging up the side of a mountain (when you’re not busy chanting “left foot…huff puff…right foot…huff puff…”). 

Science Fiction Journals You Should Be Submitting To

Have we talked about submissions enough yet?

Probably not!

Submissions are intimidating and can seem complicated, so there’s never a bad time to go into more detail about the best ways to handle sending your work out for consideration. If you do your research, plan ahead, and pay attention to details, you should find that handling submissions is actually quite easy work.

The slush pile is the first step to publication!

I have personally been researching literary journals in the Science Fiction and Speculative Fiction genres recently, and I have already gotten through my first two rejections. If you think this is some kind of taboo topic that shouldn’t be mentioned, then you already have the wrong attitude about submitting. Rejections are a part of life that every writer has to face often. But they are not something to fear or be discouraged by. As one of my favorite writing websites says, rejections are a good thing because they are the evidence that you are submitting! 

Below you will find a list of some of the top Science Fiction journals in the industry. This list is by no means comprehensive and should never be used as a substitute for doing more thorough research on your own. While I hope it helps you to choose which journals you want to submit to first, you should always and forever read through the entirety of the guidelines provided by each journal, especially since they can change at any time.

But before you get in over your head, make sure you have the following things:

               

1.       Your manuscript is finalized and properly formatted

2.       You have a simple, brief, and polite cover letter

You may also be asked to provide an author biography, so it’s handy to have one already typed up. But so far I have not seen any journals outright demand one. The closest they have come is to request that you include your publishing history or any personal experiences related to the story in the cover letter, which, if you have neither, is not something you need to worry about.

When it comes to formatting your manuscript, most journals are looking for the same kind of thing (with the exception of a few people who prefer single-spaced type, plain text documents, or some other outlier I haven’t come across yet). Many Editors reference the same resource: William Shunn’s guide for formatting short stories. The details listed in this guide will be invaluable to you, and once you have the basics down, it is then very easy to customize your manuscript for those rare journals that want something else. I highly recommend you download the free PDF. 

As for cover letters, I have a longer post about them here, but by and large you will find that you don’t need them. A courteous greeting, a simple explanation of what you are submitting (title, genre, word count), and an expression of your appreciation will get you much farther than wasting your time writing a flowery description of your virtues. 

Additionally, you will see that I have included a line for each journal detailing some of the rights they purchase when you publish a story with them. Rights are technical and bewildering if you’ve never dealt with publishers before, but at the end of the day journals are not out to grab ownership of your content forever. Most only claim exclusive rights (meaning you cannot sell the work anywhere else) for a period of one year. I will go into more detail on rights in another post later. Keep your eye out for it!

As a side note, all of these journals are SFWA Approved Markets, meaning that if your work is accepted in any of the below, you are on your way to being eligible for active membership.