Payments & Rights

Stellar Stories is currently an online only magazine for science fiction stories. Stellar Stories is pays $0.08 per word for short stories up to 7500 words. We buy first world electronic rights.

To submit a story please go the submission page.

To view your submission status please go the submission status page.

Story Content

We are looking for science fiction stories over fantasy, but we will accept both. We will accept fantasy along the lines of Star Trek over Once Upon a Time. That said, the more science the better, but good philosophy will be just as good. We want stellar stories, pun intended, that make us think and give us a sense of awe.

Grounds for immediate rejection (because they don't align with our goals)

• pornography
• trashy romance - you know what we mean... even if they do it in a holodeck...
• sexual violence - someone being assaulted as part of a crime-style story is ok, but embelishing or explaining the intricate details of an assault is gross.
• unreadable/unintelligible - sentences are not correct, paragraphs are incoherent, there is babbling, scenes that do not progress the story, etc.
• pure fantasy stories without science and technology.
• agendaism - meaning, the story has a specific, probably political, agenda as opposed to exploring a touchy topic. e.g. The Star by Clarke is ok, but a character randomly complaining about manspreading isn't.
• arrogant moral authority - similar to agendaism, the story comes from a narrowed point of view without understanding opposing points of view and espouses its point of view as morally superior. Not the same as patriotism.

Another way to sum up those last two is that what we don't want activism in the stories we publish.

If your story would garner an "R" or "NC-17" rating if it were a movie, we may publish with a warning of content.

Unfortunately, we are not accepting non-English language stories nor those translated into English at this time.

Format

Formats for electronic manuscripts are fairly standard out there. If it's in a monospace font, well organized, and consistent throughout it is probably good enough. We like Oxford commas.

Reply Process

Please allow up to 1 month for a reply.