Strange Horizons A Magazine of Speculative Fiction

We want good speculative fiction. If your story doesn't have a clear fantasy or science fiction element, or at least strong speculative-fiction sensibilities, it's probably not for us. We'd like to help make the field of speculative fiction more inclusive, more welcoming to both authors and readers from traditionally underrepresented groups, so we're interested in seeing stories from diverse perspectives and backgrounds. We want stories that have some literary depth but aren't boring; styles that are unusual yet readable; structures that balance inventiveness with traditional narrative. We like characters we can care about. We like settings and cultures that we don't see all the time in speculative fiction.

Our goal is to publish a regular rotation of non-fiction articles, including: interviews with authors of speculative fiction; articles on aspects of science (such as astronomy, ballistics, artificial intelligence) or technology (historical or futuristic) that would be of interest to readers and writers of speculative fiction; criticism of books, movies, games and any other media relating to speculative fiction; and articles on history and culture that relate to speculative fiction. Strange Horizons publishes in-depth reviews of speculative art and entertainment, especially books, films, and television, three times a week. Reviews normally cover new works, although we do occasional features on older works, and will not reject a review because its subject has been available for a while. We're especially interested in reviews of worthy material that might not otherwise get the exposure it deserves; similarly we are interested in reviews of works that push traditional genre boundaries.

We're looking for high-quality SF, fantasy, horror, and slipstream poetry. We're looking for modern, exciting poems that explore the possible and impossible: stories about human and nonhuman experiences, dreams and reality, past and future, the here-and-now and otherwhere-and-elsewhen. We want poems from imaginative and unconventional writers; we want voices from diverse perspectives and backgrounds. We want poems that understand "literary" does not have to equal "boring"; poems that know how to write strange without being senseless; poems that balance inventiveness with traditional structures. We like mischievous poems, pensive poems, and everything in between. We don't see nearly enough true science fiction or formal poetry. However, poems must substantiate their forms; a rhymed weak concept is still a weak concept. Sonnet plus spaceship is not enough.