Paying Market: Space Squid

Space Squid
(Audio and print)
www.spacesquid.com
Pay Rate: $500/story
Length: Up to 1000 words
Genres: SF
Poetry: No
Submissions: Electronic
Dates: Nov 2006 to present (Spr 2007, #3)
Amuse and befuddle with easy-to-read sci-fi crap.
"We at Space Squid don't want your best stuff. We want the crap you can't bring yourself to kill, because it's too pugnacious to die.

"Margaret Atwood said the sci-fi is just 'talking squid in outer space." We think there's to reason to limit squid to just space and talking.

"Send us your squid, both the literal and the figuative equivalent. This is the refuse bin of sci-fi. This is the embarrassing mongoloid brother who's chained to the radiator in the basement. This is freebased genre smut for everyone who's tired of hearing people say, 'But there are parts of S/F that are really quite good.'

"Well, this isn't S/F. This is sci-fi and sci-fi should kick ass. It takes a lot these days for a story to truly kick ass, and we like to have our asses kicked. But neither have we deluded ourselves into thinking we can singlehandedly bring back the sense of wonder that drew us to sci-fi as children. We're pragmatists. Out goal isn't to bedazzle and shock, just to amuse and befuddle slightly. And above all we want to make it a quick, easily-digestible read so people won't feel ripped off if they don't like it.

"We've lost interest in the 99.9 percent of 'S/F' that takes itself too seriously (including the funny stuff, which more often than not tries way too hard). W're spent. Finished. Why wade through a novel-length digest of mediocre stories when we could be reading an actual novel? Why burn our eyes out on a Webzine when we could be browsing Web porn?

"So what are we looking for? Not the usual pedantic variation on a standard theme such as timetrave, robots, timetravelling robots, barbarians, dragons, wily-midget thieves in the Dark Ages, glorification of European classism in an oppressive feudal state, or swords. Sword-wielding timetravelling midget-robot barbarians in an oppressive state are okay though.

"Smut of any sort is okay too.

"Just send us whatever and we'll think about it. If it has something we like; a concept, a character, a nice turn of phrase, a brazen stupidity, we may figure out a use for it. Your contribution may become a cartoon, a piece of marginalia at the bottom of a page, a classified advertisement, a restaurant menu; whatever it takes to help us avoid filling our pages with the long, continuous blocks of (self-indulgent) text. Shudder."

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