Voices/Future Tense

Voices/Future Tense is interested in your voice.

We are looking for fiction, nonfictional articles, and art submissions for our e-zine. Guidelines are as set forth below:

FICTION:

V/FT seeks literate, strongly plotted science fiction stories between 1,000 and 10,000 words, set at any time within the ten thousdand year span of the Orion’s Arm universe. Successful submissions will have original ideas, strong characterization, fidelity to the OA canon (as set forth at http://www.orionsarm.com), and appeal to the sense of wonder. Stories must be clear and understandable. Longer submissions will be considered for serialization.

As befits our participation in the Orion’s Arm project, V/FT encourages non-traditional forms of storytelling. Comics, manga, Flash animations, hypertext, poetry, music… all such submissions will be considered. Please bear in mind that technical dazzle is fun… but story is essential.

NONFICTION:

V/FT is looking for reviews of fictional works and media science fiction which might be of interest to the OA audience, as well as articles on the sciences and technologies which underpin the Orion’s Arm project. These articles will ideally be from 500-1000 words.

Features should provide both context and breadth of information. You are writing for a wide range of readers. Subjects should be of interest to the OA community — transhumanist, extrapolationist, “hard science fiction” readers, whom are interested in how we might get from here to 10,000 AT.

Reviews can be outspoken and vigorous. However, V:FT will not publish libellous or offensive statements, and insists that it’s contributors behave as professionals. We are neither a shill for the entertainment industry, nor are we a home for petty personality sniping. Be fair; be honest; be professional.

Reviews are just that. Synposizing a work is not a review, and we probably won’t accept such submissions.

Reviews should contain the following information:

Genre(s) (e.g., science fiction, fantasy, horror, superhero, etc.)
Format (book, CD-ROM, VHS, DVD, film, etc.)
Creator(s)
Rating (MPAA, ESRB, etc., where applicable)
Date of Release/Publication
Date of Review
ISBN numbers, where applicable

GENERAL POLICIES:

All submissions, regardless of genre, are subject to the following editorial policies:

Format: Submissions will be accepted by email; they should be sent to dedoc at mac(dot)com, with “Submissions” in the header, and with the article itself as an attachment in DOC or RTF format. The submission should include title, author’s full name, address, contact information, and word count at the top of the story. Avoid the use of unusual fonts. Please include a brief bio and credits, if any, in the body of your email. Queries are welcome.

Comic, manga and animation submissions must be complete and web-ready upon submission. Where applicable, such submissions should NOT rely upon browser-specific tags or plugins; V/FT is meant to be read on a
variety of browsers, including current versions of Netscape and Internet Explorer, older versions of those browsers, Mozilla, Opera, Safari and others.

Audio files must have contact information (similar to the instructions above) in the body of the email. Submit files in standard MP3 format on a disk or CD.

We look to respond within five to eight weeks after receiving a submission. Depending on numerous variables, however, it may take longer. Please give us ample time before inquiring about a submission’s status. All submissions, whether fiction or nonfiction, are subject to spelling and grammar editing as well as to review for content. V/FT retains the right to act as any other publication and decline submissions for either artistic or technical reasons.

COPYRIGHT AND RENUMERATION

Articles published on V/FT are published by permission of the authors. For original submssions, we require exclusive electronic rights, meaning the same article cannot be published elsewhere online or in electronic form. The only exception will be if the board of directors for the Orion’s Arm Worldbuilding Group considers a story to be of such merit that they invite the author to have it featured on the main Orion’s Arm website, on the Stories page; V/FT articles will always be allowed to be published in such a case. Articles which have appeared in other venues will be considered for V/FT, in accordance with the rights of the author and all prior publishers. Any article published on V/FT will be removed on request of the owner, at which time electronic rights revert to the owner.

All articles based on the Orion’s Arm canon are subject to the following copyright terms:

All unsolicited Orion’s Arm Content added to the main website(s) prior to January 1, 2008 is protected by the Creative Commons Limited Rights Reserved license. You may go to the Creative Commons Home Page to learn more.

The OAUP previously used this attribution, non-commercial, share-alike license. What this means is that you are completely free to publish or distribute a copy, or modify, the relevant Content, without asking for permission from us, as long as:

you attribute the original to us
you do not use the work for commercial purposes
you include the same Creative Commons license on the copied or derived work

If however you do wish to use the Content for commercial purposes, or don’t wish to give it a Creative Commons license, an arrangement must be agreed upon beforehand by either the original Contributor(s) in question and / or the Board.

Any Content covered by the Creative Commons license is free to use including any or all concepts or ideas or events or characters or entities unique to the OAUP setting, including all the details, in any project of your own, assuming the above condition is met.

All of the above conditions do not apply to generic transhuman or hard SF concepts like nanotech, superhuman AI, megascale engineering, traversable wormholes, personality uploading, animal or other uplifts, human-animal splices or hybrids, orbital habitats, terraforming, gengineering, posthumans, the singularity, etc, etc, all of which are already part of the current SF framework, and in any case predate the OAUP in some form or another. Orion’s Arm in no way owns, or claims to own, these concepts. Nor does Orion’s Arm own the idea of a shared world employing transhumanist or other hard SF themes or tropes. So you may freely write a story, create a game, a shared world, or anything else, bringing together all these themes, in any way, as long as it doesn’t specifically copy Orion’s Arm.

All unsolicited Content added to the Site(s) after January 1, 2008, and all solicited Content, is protected by United States copyright law, international conventions and other applicable laws. Copyright is maintained by the original Contributor(s). The OAUP shall include a copyright notice on the Content as it appears on the Site(s). Copyright registration, if any, is the responsibility of the Contributor.

In the event that negotiations for commercial rights to an author’s work occur after publication by V/FT, the Editorial Board of the Orion’s Arm Worldbuilding Group is the point of contact for permission to use Orion’s Arm material for commercial purposes.

Save as set forth above, all other rights are retained by the author.