16 Speculative Fiction Magazines Open for Submissions NOW - Paying markets
More than a dozen speculative fiction magazines are open for submissions right now. They want every subgenre of science fiction, fantasy, and horror, and all combinations, including weird fiction, slipstream, magical realism, and more.
All of these are paying markets, and none charge submission fees. Some of these are new magazines, so they will be eager to see your work.
For over a hundred paying speculative fiction magazines accepting submissions see: Mega-List of Speculative Fiction Magazines Accepting Submissions
Happy submitting!
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“Seize The Press Magazine is looking to publish 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.” Length: 2000 words max. Payment: 6 pence (GBP) per word. This currently equates to slightly over 8 cents (USD).
“GigaNotoSaurus accepts Science Fiction or Fantasy (or any combination thereof) from 5,000 to 25,000. We could wax eloquent describing the kinds of stories we like, but it wouldn’t be useful; there are dozens of things we don’t know we like until we try them. Send us that story you really believe in–the one, maybe, that quickly ran out of places to submit it to because it’s so long. Don’t query to gauge our interest in a particular subgenre. Just submit the story.” Payment: $100.
“Three Crows want your stories of dark and weird fantasy, horror, and sci-fi, with complex characters making morally ambiguous decisions. We are looking for sci-fi as hard as Liu Cixin and Peter Watts and as wonderfully poetic as Arkady Martine; fantasy and magical realism in the vein of Andrzej Sapkowski, Naomi Novik, and Marlon James; we want horror and New Weird stories that would challenge our preconceived notions and perception of reality like Mark Z. Danielewski, Thomas Ligotti, and China Mieville.” Accepts fiction, nonfiction and art. Payment: 0.01$/word (USD) via paypal for fiction. 0.01$/word up to $50 per piece for nonfiction. 50$ flat fee for art.
“We publish flash fiction in the genres of speculative fiction, specifically science fiction, fantasy, supernatural, super hero, or any combination of these. We are looking for stories that are engaging to our readers in such a short word count.” Length: 1000 words max. Payment: 11 U.S. cents per word.
“We are looking for 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.” Length: 2000–7500 words. Payment: 3 cents/word.
Apex is a well-known speculative fiction magazine. Maximum word length is a firm 7,500 words. Payment for original fiction is $.08 per word up to 7,500 words. Minimum of $50. An additional payment of $.01 per word up to 7,500 words if they podcast your story.
“We’re a digital literary magazine that focuses on fantasy, sci-fi, and horror flash fiction. We strongly believe that fantasy and sci-fi are two of the most important genres in the literary world, helping us escape to distant lands, reflect on our shared humanity, and gaze into the future. We want to provide readers snippets of the genres they love and we want to give writers of these genres a paid place to publish their work. We are open to submissions year-round and publish on a biweekly basis (every other Friday at 9 AM EST).” Length: 1000 words max. Payment: 10 cents/word.
“We’re constantly on the lookout for the best new science fiction and horror — whether that’s via submissions or reaching out directly to creators who catch our eye. We review all of the stories, illustrations and comics we’re sent before planning each issue, so there’s no need to wait.” Length: 1500–5000 words. Payment: $.08/word.
“We publish all varieties of speculative fiction, from alternate history, to high fantasy, to nuts and bolts hard science fiction, to dark fantasy, so long as it meets the guidelines above. Whatever the genre, the focus should be used to comment on our world and society rather than exclusively to keep the reader turning pages.” Length: Up to 10,000 words for short stories. They also publish novellas up to 20,000 words, serialized over multiple issues. Payment: $20 per short story, article, or piece of artwork, and $10 for flash. For novellas, $20 for the first 10,000 words, and $1 per 1000 words after that.
“Send us your best fantasy, sci-fi, and horror themed humor. We’re looking for flash (under 1000 words) and short fiction (7500 words, MAX), as well as high-res art, lampoon classifieds and ads.” Payment: $5.
“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.” Length: Up to 7,500 words for short stories. They sometimes accept poetry and nonfiction. Payment: $50.
“Our main theme is simple: the end of human civilization as a result of our destruction of the environment. The whole purpose of this magazine is to raise awareness of our suicidal behaviour. Only then will it be possible to do something about it. Our hopes are low, human nature being what it is, but still we believe we should try. We are seeking well-written intelligent stories dealing with the major issues of our time and the foreseeable future, realistic, speculative, cautionary and thought-provoking. We are also looking for stories that celebrate 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. In short, narratives about the paradise that we are on the brink of losing.” Length: 1,500–5,000 words. Payment: $0.02/word for fiction, and $0.01/word for nonfiction.
“We’re looking for enthralling stories set in a future we want to believe in, one we would fight to make a reality. We are especially in need of science and non-fiction articles for our Science Corner. Articles can be on any subject in any style, but must be accessible to a non-academic audience.” Length: 100–6,000 words. Payment: $0.01/word for fiction, $35 for nonfiction, and $5–10 for poetry.
“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 vampire, werewolf, or zombie stories. Payment: $0.07/word for stories of up to 10,000 words.
“All stories must be furry. That means an anthropomorphic animal figure should be significantly featured in your story — it could be anthropomorphic in body or only intelligence. 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.” Payment: Original stories up to 5,000 words. Reprints up to 10,000 words. Payment: 8 cents/word for original fiction. $20 for reprints.
“Short Stories, Flash, and Poetry that are out of this world…maybe out of this universe.” For this issue they want fiction based on a Tarot image. Theme: Curst & Twysted Tarot. Payment: $10 — $15.
Like this article? For more articles about the publishing world, useful tips on how to get an agent, agents who are looking for clients, how to market and promote your work, building your online platform, how to get reviews, self-publishing, as well as publishers accepting manuscripts directly from writers (no agent required) visit Publishing and Other Forms of Insanity .