Extreme Planets Anthology

The second round of holds, please resubmit, requests for rewrites and rejections are now complete as of up to the end of April 2012. Thank you for everyone who has submitted.

We’ve read 430,000 words to date, with about 17% of those being from female authors. The majority of authors submitting are from the United States and the United Kingdom, with a lesser representation from Canada and Australia, then other places around the world.

8,000 words is the average length for stories that have made it into our final consideration list, with the shortest being approximately 4,000 words and the longest 15,000 words. A large majority of final list stories are from male authors.

Many of the stories that have been rejected are not about extreme planets or fail to incorporate science fiction elements, so while they are often well written, they are not meeting the anthology’s requirements. That said, we are seeing more and more stories on theme, and we have several authors rewriting submissions that were close to the mark.

As for the stories we have ‘on hold’ for the final selection, we have high gravity worlds, water worlds, ice worlds, planetoids, gas giants, super earths and some very bizarre worlds indeed. We are still looking for really good stories in any of the listed categories, as well as carbon worlds, iron ball worlds, tidally locked worlds, super-velocity worlds, ringworlds, Dyson spheres and so forth.

We are still very keen to see stories that incorporate elements of pantropy and stories of Earth-based planet hunters examining exoplanets through telescopes – the latter of which we’ve had no stories submitted thus far. In fact, we don’t have enough of any type of story yet. We still need plenty more good stories to round out the collection.

One last point, many stories use imperial measurements, such as miles, gallons and feet. Today scientists and engineers the world over use metric measurements. The same people will eventually lead us into space, so I can’t seriously believe that the future will not be a metric one. If you are using old style measurements, I’m going to suggest you need to explain why, otherwise I keep feeling like I’m jumping into a story that was written in the 50s or 60s, and missing something that makes them feel ‘real’.

All that said, please keep sending your submissions or rewrites in, because we’re still looking for the next great Extreme Planet short story or novella. We’ve made no acceptances yet, so there is still plenty of space for all those stories we are yet to receive.

We are almost at a point where the second batch of results are coming out.  All going well, they will come out at the end of the week.

There are a number of email types you may receive.

REJECT – We normally reject because the piece was not on topic or the writing lacked some key science fiction elements for the anthology.

SEND US SOMETHING ELSE – reject with a please send in something else because we like your work (yours HAS the elements we are after).

RESUB – reject with a “we liked it”, here are some of the editors thoughts of where we’d like to see you fix things up and resubmit it.  If it’s better it should get a HOLD if you are willing to put in the effort to do some “fixing up”.

HOLD – we like it, it may need some minor fixing up, but it will be considered in the final selection.

Once the anthology closes, then we will look at all the held stories and decide, so it may turn out that while the story was good, it didn’t make the final pick even so – or it might be picked.  That really depends on its size, if it’s unique because we cant put in 5 excellent stories that are about the same thing.  A whole number of reasons will decide on which stories are selected.

At the end of the week, we’ll give a bit of a tally on the type of stories we’ve received and placed HOLDS on, or RESUBs.  But interesting to note we are still getting shorter stories, where some 10K ones would do well, and dare I say if you take out the planet and substitute it for Earth – if it still works – then it’s NOT for us.  We are still getting some of those stories, but less of them.

HD Weirdest Planets Doc.mkv:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOBjlZz5ZHk&feature=related

Newfound Alien Planet Best Candidate Yet to Support Life
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=habitable-planet-gj-667cc&WT.mc_id=SA_WR_20120209

Gallery: Strangest Alien Planets:
http://www.space.com/159-strangest-alien-planets.html

Top 10 Exoplanets: Weird Worlds in a Galaxy Not So Far Away [slide show]
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=top-10-exoplanets

7 Amazing exoplanets [Interactive]:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=7-amazing-exoplanets-interactive

Unlikely Suns Reveal Improbable Planets
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=improbable-planets
This URL previews an article in Scientific American, June 2009.
Refer to the June 2009 issue for the full text of the article.

Habitable Zones Around Alien Suns May Depend on Chemistry
 http://www.space.com/14443-alien-planets-habitable-zones-star-chemistry.html

We’ve seen some really interesting subs to date.  But MOST of them have suffered from the same problem. While they tell a wonderful story, if you took the planet away from the story and ask if it would it still work? The answer is normally Yes.  If the answer is yes, then the story has failed for the Extreme Planets Anthology.  The planet or world MUST be integral into the plot.  Take the harsh planet aspects away and there are massive holes in the story, then your story is on the right track. Then the other question that a writer needs to ask is – is this an Earth-like planet or is it MUCH harsher?  If the story appears like a nice blue-Earth-like planet with arctic winds, or desert climates, and the hero doesn’t have to face the harsh  (EXTREME) conditions of that world as well as some other problem, then again, the story has failed to be an Extreme Planets Anthology piece. Ask the question, what extreme challenge is placed in front of our hero that he wouldn’t experience on Earth. Take away the atmosphere, or mix it up, or change the ground make-up, or the sky.  Add some extra moons, change the tides, lock the planet to a twin, or to an extreme non-earth star and then write.

So if you do have a wonderful story set on earth, and it rocks, then change the world, give your hero another layer of hardship to deal with, and make it extreme.   Don’t just set it on the world, set it IN the world, so it can’t be teased apart.  That’s what we’re after.

Word count: We’ve read 193,000 words to date.

Gender mix: 15% of subs have been from female authors, but just under 75% of subs on hold are by male writers.

Word range of subs: 3,590 – 12,600 words.

Average word count of holds: 6,900 words.

To hit the mark, think of a character in trouble, add an extreme world and make the extreme conditions part of the problem.  Refer to the blog posts below for more advice.

Addendum 1: # ALL requested HOLDS (but one) have been asked to enhance / rewrite their stories.

The Extreme Planets team has set up a Facebook page if you want to join in the discussion on the book, stories people would like to see, and a general debate on what exactly is an extreme planet.

Australia’s Cosmos Magazine has produced some rather fine articles over the years that initially sparked my interest in exoplanets. Jeff Harris and I identified these articles from their website which could be of interest to writers submitting stories for this anthology:

Weird worlds

Issue 27 of Cosmos, June 2009 by Lewis Dartnell  

Could planets made of diamond or iron exist? While hundreds of exoplanets have already been discovered, it could just be a matter of time before we find some truly bizarre ones.

Catalogue of strange new worlds

Cosmos Online, Monday, 21 May 2007, by Liz Williams

A planet resembling a hot snowball discovered orbiting a distant star is the latest addition to a growing list of extrasolar planets with bizarre properties.

Searching for other worlds

Cosmos Online, 7 April 2010, by Jacqui Hayes

Where should we be looking for extraterrestrials? A small, roving telescope is helping scientists to find planets capable of harbouring life.

Alien life

Cosmos Online, 10 August 2010, by Lewis Dartnell  

The discovery of life on other planets may be just around the corner – but will we recognise it when we see it?

The rocky road to Earthlike planets

Cosmos Online, 12 May 2011, by Richard A. Lovett

Only a few years ago, the idea of finding Earth-like worlds circling distant planets was in the realm of science fiction. But now, astronomers say, there is incontrovertible proof that at least one such rocky world exists.

Want some ideas on what kinds of extreme planets scientists are starting to speculate about and identify out there in the cosmos? Try this link on Space.com.

I’ve been very interested in the planets astronomers are detecting around other suns. What they are finding is so unexpected, and so different to what we have previously imagined possible.   But is it really that strange? Life seems to evolve and adapt to all kinds of conditions, so why can’t planets.

There are Jupiter sized planets out there orbiting so close to their suns their surface temperatures are thousands of degrees. Worlds with extreme eliciptical orbits. Massive rocky planets three times the diameter and half a dozen times as massive as the Earth. Planets that are 12 billion years old (consider the Universe is only 13.7 billion years old). Planets that are covered in oceans many hundreds of kilometres thick. Planets, it seems, appear wherever they can survive, just like life.

D.L. Snell recently interviewed David Conyers on what the three editors are looking for in submissions for the Extreme Planets anthology.

D.L. Snell conducted the interview to give writers a better idea of what the editors of this specific market are seeking; however, most editors (including those of Extreme Planets) are open to ideas outside of the preferences discussed here, as long as they fit the basic submission guidelines.

D.L.: What authors do you enjoy, and why does their writing captivate you?  

David: The science fiction authors that I have enjoyed whose ideas and style are relevant to the Extreme Planets anthology include Alastair Reynolds, Iain M. Banks, Greg Egan, Peter F. Hamilton, David Brin, Neal Asher, Ken Macleod, Charles Stross, Stephen Baxter, Robert Reed and Greg Bear. These authors can write tales with a pace, have good characters and most of all leave me with a sense of wonder. When I finish reading their works I feel like the universe is bigger and more wondrous than I had ever imagined, and that the scale of space is just huge. They also get the science and technology right, creating believable futures.

Read the rest of the interview here.