The Future Starts Here

As many of you know, Nature publishes a column called Futures – a regular weekly page of original science fiction. I’m proud to have devised it, and continue to edit it. It started on 4 November 1999 (Nature‘s 130th birthday) with a slice of vintage apocalypse from Arthur C. Clarke, and has been going, more or less, ever since, either in Nature or its sister title Nature Physics. A hundred of our best were published by Tor as an anthology, Futures from Nature, which got a starred review in Publisher’s Weekly. In 2005, Nature was commended by the European Science Fiction Society as the Best SF Publisher (and for all those wags out their who say everything Nature publishes is SF – pick a window, you’re leaving). We’re proud to have published the greats of SF – and to have nurtured new talent, just starting out. Some of our authors are professional writers. Some are scientists. Some have never written fiction before. Some of our contributions are commissioned. Most just wander in off the street. The reason I’m drawing attention to this now is that we’re thinking of how we might promote Futures more, give it a bit of a revamp. To that end I have created a Facebook Page to discuss how we might do this. It is there awaiting your input. 

If you fancy writing something yourself for Futures, here’s what to do. Your story should be between 850 and 950 words long. It should be ‘hard’ SF, rather than slipstream, fantasy or horror, although elements of these genres can be used to spice up a story. Once you’ve written it, send it in an email as a word (.doc) or rich text (.txt) attachment. Don’t forget contact details, and a 30-word note about yourself to add to the end of the story if it’s published. Don’t send sketches or ideas for stories, and please don’t send artwork or poetry. And yes, we do pay money for each contribution we publish. Not very much money, admittedly, but given the brevity of the stories, the per-word rate is hard to beat. Our author contract is available on request.

A tip – writing flash fiction is tricky. Too often, stories come in that look like scenarios, rather than tales. Even though a Futures tale is short, it should ideally have characters, a plot and a narrative arc. That’s not to say we don’t publish other things – we’ve had spoof book reviews, new items and advertisements – but nothing beats a good story, well told.

The main thing is to be able to either make me laugh – or get my hairs to stand on end in horrified fascination. Given that I am a singularly humorless, cynical and hard-bitten editor with very little hair, you’ll have your work cut out. So, what’s stopping you? Make my day.