New or Reopening Market Listings/ Notes
At Minimum Pro-Paying (5 cents+ per word)
Orion’s Belt (online magazine)
https://www.orions-belt.net/submissions
Payment: 8 cents a word
Story Length: up to 1,200 words
Opens: March 1–September 1, 2025
Reprints?: No
Response: generally within one week
Description: Bold, experimental
literary science fiction and fantasy stories that blur the line between “genre”
fiction and literary fiction.
https://www.drabblecast.org/submissions
Payment: 6 cents a word (3
cents a word for reprints)
Story Length: 500–4,000 words
Deadline: ongoing
Reprints?: Yes
Response: Up to 3 months
Description: “Strange Stories for
Strange Listeners,” often also classified as “Weird Fiction” … or any and all
genres, but largely centers around those of Science Fiction, Fantasy and
Horror.
Planet Scumm
https://www.planetscumm.space/submit
Payment: 8 cents a word
Story Length: up to 5,000 words
Deadline: May 7, 2025
Reprints?: No
Response: unknown
Description: Previously unpublished
short fiction that doesn’t lean heavily on genre tropes. Hard sci-fi, soft
sci-fi, sci-fi that melts in your mouth-brain not your hand-brain. Speculative
fiction, weird fiction, slipstream, glitterlit, analogpunk.
It Was Paradise (Reckoning)
https://reckoning.press/special-submission-call-it-was-paradise/
Payment: 15 cents a word
Story Length: up to 20,000 words
Deadline: June 22, 2025
Reprints?: Yes
Response: 1 to 6 months
Description: Short stories that
delve into the heart of extinction, genocide, and climate crisis. Expose the
exploitation of the earth. Show us how the world could be on the other side.
Send us your stories of environmental justice, of violence, imperialism,
fascism, and resistance, of destruction, survival, and of triumph.
*Prioritizing work by people with lived experience of war and conflict.
Other: the 2025 Speculative Fiction
Anthology
https://bannisterpress.com/submissions/
Payment: 8 cents (Canadian) a
word (abt. 5-1/2 cents/ word U.S.)
Story Length: 2,500–3,500 words
Deadline: August 31, 2025
Reprints?: No
Response: After submissions close
Description: Stories of wonder: short
stories that are visually evocative (or character/narrative focused) and that
leave the reader thinking about the story long after closing the book. We don’t
want a lesson, we want an experience that makes us come alive.
http://www.asimovs.com/contact-us/writers-guidelines
Payment: 8+ cents a word
Story Length: 1,000–20,000 words
(generally less than 7,500 words)
Deadline: Continually open
Reprints?: No
Response: Five weeks
Description: Character-oriented
Science Fiction stories that is serious, thoughtful, yet accessible (occasional
humor), including borderline fantasy, slipstream, and surreal fiction (and some
poetry).
***Non-PRO-Paying Market, but Eric J. Guignard’s “Pick of
the Month”
https://flashpointsf.com/submissions/
Payment: 2 cents a word
Story Length: ?,000–?,000 words
Deadline: March 31, 2025
Reprints?: No
Response: 30 days (up to 60 if under
“further consideration”)
Description: Original flash
fiction stories: Fantasy, science fiction, speculative, slipstream, etc. (light
horror is okay, but not “primarily horror driven.”).
https://radonjournal.submittable.com/submit
Payment: 2 cents a word
Story Length: up to 5,000 words
Deadline: April 15, 2025
Reprints?: No
Response: within four weeks
Description: Short stories and
poetry containing elements of science fiction, anarchism, transhumanism, or
dystopia.
SNAFU: Contagion
https://www.cohesionpress.com/submissions
Payment: Australian 5 cents a word
(abt. 3-1/2 cents a word US)
Story Length: 2,500–7,500 words
Deadline: March 31, 2025
Reprints?: No
Response: estimate 3–4
months
Description: Action-filled tales of viral, fungal and bacterial horror. Whether
it be giant brutish mutations, fungal infections gone wrong, or experimental
nightmarish creatures made with super soldier experiments, it always ends with
people fighting to survive the horrible, seeping creations that result from
contagion and infection.
%20-%20Front%20Cover%20only,%20300%20dpi.jpg)
%20-%20Full%20Cover%20Wrap,%20300%20dpi.jpg)