Wires. Tissue. Nausea. Dark tunnels. Silicon. Doppelgangers. Insects under the skin. Nanobots. Transformation.
Donna Haraway wrote that a cyborg does not recognise the Garden of Eden.
A cyborg literature does not recognise the dichotomies of man and woman, human and machine, natural and artificial, self and other, inside and out.
A mutant literature values change, merging, and transgression over wholeness or return.
The Gothic digs down into soil. Cyberpunk peels back flesh. Corps/e wants to hear from writers who don’t flinch at what their work dredges up.
Corps/e is a new magazine, created in the hope of finding new speculative stories that are radical, uncomfortable, monstrous, and alive. Artistic integrity, engagement in the power of prose, and a love of spec fic all matter more here than the rules of structure, genre, and grammar.
If you believe in your talent but you struggle to find a home for your writing because of an experimental style, disturbing themes, graphic scenes, genre-hopping, being a downer, something people don’t get, try us.
For issue 1, we are seeking original speculative voices from anywhere in the world. Your story should engage with the vision and themes of the magazine. It should be mostly-prose in mostly-English, under 10,000 words (flash is fine), previously unpublished, and not cosy or tropey. It should not make readers feel reassured. It doesn’t matter whether or not you have had other work published. Right now, Corps/e can’t pay. Only submit if you’re okay with that.
If you’re sure you want to use AI in your process, do so. But only if you’re sure. In most cases, it’s a bad idea. So make something more interesting with it than you would have on your own; find the aspect of writing you love or what makes you an original, and focus on doing that bit yourself. AI slop doesn’t interest us; human slop doesn’t interest us.
Artists who inspired the birth of Corps/e include Larissa Lai, Sayaka Murata, Octavia E Butler, Mary Shelley, Franz Kafka, Phillip K Dick, the Wachowski sisters, H R Giger, and the clump of human brain cells in a lab that learned to play Doom.
The carcasses of frogs twitch under electric prods. Above, satellites decay and C-beams glitter in the dark. Below, always, awaits the Minotaur.
Your name and email are kept separate from your story and story notes. Submissions are read blind.
Your story’s in. You won’t get a confirmation email; if you’re reading this, it worked.
Thank you for trusting Corps/e with your art. Thank you for wanting to contribute to this project. Once decisions for this window are out, the editor will email you.
If you have any questions not satisfied here, feel free to email the editor.
Your Work
- This magazine is brand new and the editor has no way to make money off it, so you won’t be paid. As a short fiction writer they know this sucks and hope this publication gains some traction so it can change. But for now, only submit if you’re okay with this being purely a passion project on your side, as it is on Corps/e’s side.
- Everything in your story should be there for a reason, and artistically coherent and justified. That goes for both gonzo stuff and AI use. Does your method lead you down unusual avenues; does it direct your focus to the thing that makes your writing special; or are you being lazy? It shouldn’t need saying, but purely shock value hate screeds will be treated as the literary wastelands they are. Don’t waste a submission.
- Don’t censor yourself.
- Unpublished writers are extremely welcome.
How to Submit
- Use the form to submit your story.
- Put your name on the form but DON’T put your name or email in your story; that way it can be read anonymously.
- Use md format. If you’ve got a docx, this form will convert it to md for you. Then you can check nothing’s gone screwy in the conversion.
- Don’t worry about Shunn or anything like that.
- Don’t bother with a cover letter. You’ll be asked for a bio if published.
- If you want to explain or give some context on a choice you’ve made, you’re highly encouraged to use the story notes box. It’s also good for explaining your AI process, if that applies. Keep your name and email out of it.
- Submissions are open until they hit 200. The editor will try to get back within six weeks of the window closing. You will likely be asked to make edits. You can say no to this. You can of course withdraw your story if there’s a conflict of vision, but hopefully that won’t happen.
- Simultaneous submissions are fine. But don’t submit a story you’ve published elsewhere. Please only submit one story here per window.
Legal
- If Corps/e publishes your story, you’re credited as its author and you keep the copyright the whole time. What we ask for is a licence: first rights (we publish it first), three months’ exclusivity from the date we publish it, and archival rights (it stays on the site indefinitely). Once the three months are up, you’re free to reprint it anywhere. Submitting doesn’t grant us anything; this only applies if we publish you.
- Submitting sends your name, email, story title, word count, story notes, AI checkbox answer, and manuscript to Corps/e’s own database. Your name and email are only looked up when needed for talking to you, sorting your bio, or administering the database.
- Cloudflare’s Turnstile, the “prove you’re not a bot” check on this form, briefly sees your IP address; that’s all it’s for. The site’s hosting (Fly.io), database (Neon), and domain and admin login (also Cloudflare) are the infrastructure your submission passes through and is stored on, not services that read your story. Beyond that, your data isn’t shared with anyone. It isn’t sold or used for marketing.
- If your story isn’t accepted, your name, email, story, and notes are all deleted once the issue’s finished. If it is accepted, your name, email, and notes are kept for as long as needed for the published story, ie crediting you, talking to you, helping you edit, sorting a bio.
- Corps/e is the data controller for anything you send (Ireland’s Data Protection Commission is the relevant regulator). Email the editor whenever to ask what’s held on you, or to have it corrected or deleted early.