July’s Jamming Open Submission Calls

Submission Hints

How did you come to the point in life where you now find yourself? Two factors were likely in play: choice and chance.

The choices you make are clearly a factor in shaping your life. For example: a woman in one universe elopes with her high school sweetheart, but they are too young to make the marriage work and divorce at any early age; in a second universe, she marries him after they graduate from university and happily becomes a stay-at-home mom; in a third universe, she doesn’t marry him and pursues a successful career. Making different choices about the same life goal can lead to very different lives..

It’s also true, though, that chance, forces that are out of our control, shapes the choices that are available to us. This may be because of the choices of others which directly affect us, or it may because of the society into which we are born. For instance: a black man sleeps in his car in the drive-thru lane of a fast food restaurant. In one universe, two white cops are sent to deal with him; forty-five minutes later, one of them has shot him dead. In a second universe, one of the white cops and a psychiatrist are sent to deal with him; after a tense confrontation, he is arrested and his car impounded. In a third universe, the psychiatrist and a social worker droid are sent to deal with him; he is sent home to sleep it off and told he can pick up his impounded car the next day. The different outcomes are a product of chance, the different structures of the societies in which the main character finds himself. The Dance is an anthology of speculative fiction short stories that explores the way different circumstances or choices change the course of our lives. How does it do this? By showing readers the consequences of different circumstances or choices in different realities in the wider context of the multiverse..

Each story submitted to The Dance must contain three parts set in three different universes. The universes should be distinct (PRO TIP: if the only difference between them is that Charlie Brown was named Charlie White or Charlie Blue, that’s not distinct enough), although they will likely contain many commonalities. Each story should explore how choice or chance affects the lives of characters and/or the world in which they live. (Bonus points if you can incorporate both chance and choice into your story.) Each story must have a speculative element, whether science fiction, fantasy, horror or some other fantastical genre.