Science Fiction Writers of the world! Unite, and invade Nature! Nature earlier had (I didn't know, I don't have access to the journals) a science fiction feature called Futures and now it's back again.
Futures is the award-winning science-fiction section of Nature. Contributions are usually commissioned, but unsolicited articles are welcome. Each Future should be an entirely fictional, self-contained story between 850-950 words in length, and the genre should, broadly speaking, be 'hard' (that is, 'scientific' SF) rather than, say, outright fantasy, slipstream or horror. Each item should be sent as a Word (.doc) attachment to futures@nature.com, including full contact details and a 30-word autobiographical note to be appended to the story if published. (Please do not send presubmission enquiries, but send the whole story.) Unsolicited artwork is not considered. Before submitting, prospective authors are advised to read earlier Futures columns in Nature and Nature Physics; selected examples are available free at http://www.concatenation.org/futuresindex.html.
It would be a glaring omission if I do not plug our own Science Fiction Contest. Did I tell you that you can send in various fun things to thescian.com editorial board (that's me, you can keep a tab on the goings-on by subscribing to my monthly newsletter).
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There's a slick new online Sci Fi rag called Lightspeed. I like this one because they also publish nonfiction pieces that are relevant to their fiction stories.
Last Friday I went to at talk by Brian David Johnson from Intel. That sentence sounds like any other that an academic could write--always with the going to seminars we acahacks are.
"The British are sniffy about sci-fi, but there is nothing artificial in its ability to convey apprehension about the universe and ourselves."
Cat and Girl offers a smashing take on facts and fiction. An excerpt from Spoiler Alert: