For our fall, 2020 digital issue, we want to see the futures you can imagine. The ones you worry about, hope toward, prepare for.
Is it a dark place? Is it light? Is it eight minutes from now or six decades off yet?
We want to see what happens after the precipitating incident that brings change, whatever that may be.
Imagine us into/through/out of whatever happens between this now and all of the possible thens, and show us what our world might look like. What we could look like living in and on it.
We are leaving this category intentionally broad, but here are some terms to help you get there:
Sci-Fi
Cli-Fi
Solarpunk
Hopepunk
Afro-futurist
Speculative
Magical Realist
(Eco)Fabulist
Atopia
Dystopia
Utopia
and
Realist
Here's a great article in Lit Hub that explains some of the terms above: "Hopepunk and Solarplunk: On Climate Narratives That Go Beyond the Apocalypse," by Alyssa Hull.
And here are just some writers/humans we invite you to think about as you write/submit: N.K. Jemisen, Carmen Maria Machado, Matt Bell, Amber Sparks, Margaret Atwood, Emily St. John Mandel, Dave Housley, Greta Thunberg, Rachel Carson, Jeannine Hall Gailey, Jules Verne, JG Ballard, Octavia Butler, Franz Kafka, Jorge Luis Borges, Benjamin Percy, Molly Gaudry.
Wherever you take us, we are looking for a deeply considered, thrillingly imaginative, highly literary experience that keeps in mind the confluence of place, space and identity as all work published in The Fourth River does.
Note that we are unlikely to publish what might be considered strict genre writing.
We accept all work only via SUBMITTABLE.