Any of y'all got short stories about after the oil age?

Oddman

Oddman

New member
I haven't been on here much over the years, but I've been starting this new project and I thought of you folks.

I'm publishing a short story magazine called New Maps. (Yeah, I'm apparently a publisher. It's weird to realize.) And I know some of you on this site are seriously creative and good writers, having seen some of the stuff in the train stories section, etc. So I wanted to see if any of you are interested in getting published!

The theme of the magazine is basically: What is life like during and after the long decline of the oil age? That can mean anywhere from "This might happen next year" up to "Here's how I imagine a culture of the year 3325 could be." You can read more about it at the New Maps website if you're curious, and if you're even more curious, you can order a copy (it's $12 in the US, shipping included) to see what kind of stories I like to put out there. I wrote a submission guidelines page that hopefully will tell you anything else you want to know.

It comes out 4 times a year and the first issue came out last month. For the second (spring) issue I want stories by March 1st, but you can always send stories after that and they'll just go to consideration for the summer issue.

I know you folks here could write some awesome stories that would not be like the stuff other people write. Folks traveling and living the DIY life like I see here are basically living in the deindustrial future before it happens. The world is going to get a lot more handmade and DIY as oil runs out and global civilization slowly crumbles apart, and people here know what the slow collapse of civilization looks like better than almost anyone, because I see you actually looking behind the curtain and sneaking out of it through the cracks. Let's see what you've got in your imaginations. The contact page on the website will tell you how to send it to me.

Thanks guys!
 
Can‘t help you right now, bud, I’m slathered in fossil fuels. Cannot bring myself to give up all the stuff in life that comes from oil, from cell phones, laptops, water bottles, synthetic fabrics,automobiles, boots and shoes, food products, personal hygeine products, ad infinitum, ad nauseum. I have about 20-25 years left to live, I think, on average. I would be extremely pleasantly surprised to see anything meaningful occur by then, in fact I’d bet good money against it. Knock yourself out, though!😀
 
Interesting. Though I don't care about the money, I am curious what being compensated to the tune of 0.001/4 looks like?
 
bote said:
Interesting. Though I don't care about the money, I am curious what being compensated to the tune of 0.001/4 looks like?
Click to expand...

I believe it's 2.8 cents for every 1200 copies sold. Jeez, that's pretty generous. Just imagine, once OP has sold 42,000 issues and raked in just over 500,000 dollars, you will have earned yourself an entire dollar! Don't spend it all in one place! I've never been so inspired to write fiction for someone else.
 
@bote — I won't try to sugarcoat it, the pay rate is what you'd call "nominal." The way it shakes out is, if you write a story, say, 8,000 words long (which turns out to be about 16 printed pages), you get 8,000 × 0.0025 = 20 bucks. You're not going to get rich off it, and that's sort of how it is for most venues that publish short stories: maybe a really famous author will get over $100, but this is a smalltime thing and I don't have the subscribers to pay better yet. I'm trying to publicize the magazine to more people, though, and the more subscribers, the more I can pay.

@Faceplant — you can be slathered in oil like nobody's business and still write good fiction about a future when the oil has run out.
 
Well, as they say , the best writers write what they know. I don't know, or expect to know, or necessarily want to know a world devoid of oil/ oil products.
 
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