Permuted time travel anthology guidelines

TIMES OF TROUBLE

An anthology of time travel tales from Permuted Press

Edited by Lane Adamson (editor of Robots Beyond)

Submission Guidelines

Time travel.

It's the ultimate impossible dream: the ability to step through a doorway into tomorrow or yesterday, seeing all the unknown wonders of the future—or correcting the awful mistakes of the past.

It can't happen, of course. Oh, but what if?...

And what if something went terribly, irreparably wrong?

Times of Trouble, a new anthology of original speculative fiction from Permuted Press, is looking for grim, gritty stories about the unhappy unintended consequences of mucking about with the delicate fabric of reality. That doesn't mean there's no room for any note of hope, or the occasional happy ending—in fact, accomplishing such a feat effectively just might greatly enhance the author's chance of inclusion in this anthology—but the emphasis here is decidedly on the dark downside of time travel.

Times of Trouble most emphatically does not want to see any stories of clichéd wish fulfillment—don't bother submitting any stories in which Hitler is fortuitously killed prior to World War II—or those using time travel as a convenient plot device to place the protagonist "elsewhen" simply for the sake of a rousing adventure. (The Editor has nothing whatsoever against a good romp with Tyrannosaurs, but the place for such is not here.) Time travel must be integral to development of the story.

Unless crucial to the plot, it is not necessary to expound at length on the actual mechanism of time travel. The "how" should be far less important than "what happens next?"

Examples of the sort of stories that will succeed in this anthology are "—All You Zombies—" by Robert A. Heinlein, "A Sound of Thunder," by Ray Bradbury (oh, look—you can use dinosaurs, if you do it right), and the classic Star Trek™ episode, "The City on the Edge of Forever."

Submissions open April 04, 2010 and close July 04, 2010, for stories of 3000 to 7500 words, and should be emailed to timetraveler@permutedpress.com attached as a .doc (preferred) or .rtf file in Standard Manuscript Format (as described—with many worthwhile pointers—at either http://www.sfwa.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/Mssprep.pdf or http://www.shunn.net/format/story.html, both of which are fine examples for the writer). Submissions that fail to at least make an attempt to follow formatting guidelines will be rejected unread (but may be resubmitted in proper format).

Multiple submissions are not permitted, but authors whose attempts are rejected are not prohibited from making another effort. Simultaneous submissions are strongly frowned upon.

Payment will be US $.01/word for first worldwide print and eBook rights, payable on finalization by the Editor of the completed Table of Contents and issuance of a contract by the Publisher.