Dystopian

Stories that explore the multi-layered interactions of politics, religion, ecology, technology, and human emotion. As well as issues like misogyny, tyranny, violence against women, limited reproductive rights, restricted access to education, loss of autonomy, environmental devastation, and others. No one category of sci-fi can accurately convey one author or novel. There are overlaps in stories that categories merely try to organize, albeit unsuccessfully. Is The Martian hard sci-fi or fantasy sci-fi? Is Red Rising political sci-fi or just good ol’ young adult dystopian?

Fantasy Sci-fi

One cannot help but remember sci-fi classics like Dune by Frank Herbert, a futuristic novel based on a distant planet covered with desert wastelands, gigantic sandworms, and a society that feuds over power and control. And then there are the more contemporary bestsellers like The Themis Files (or the Sleeping Giants series) by first-time novelist Sylvain Neuvel. A trilogy that blends together elements of sci-fi, political thriller and apocalyptic fiction between earth and a race from another planet. 

These stories and many others have helped bring a niche category to mainstream reader attention. Space operas such as Red Rising (Pierce Brown), Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card), A Wrinkle In Time (Madeleine L’Engle), The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams), and SO many more. We love these submissions.

Hard Sci-fi

Some authors shine in how they’re able to depict chaos and agony and the meaningless. Isaac Asimov‘s sci-fi series known as the Foundation Trilogy which predict an unavoidable end to the Galactic Empire, followed by 30,000 years of chaos. In Hard sci-fi we are looking for stories revolving around scientific and technical consistency. They often act as inspiration for many future scientists and explorers, perhaps seriously predicting machines and technology of the future.

Feminist Dystopian

It’s no coincidence that these books have appeared in greater numbers — and garnered increasing readership — during the first two years of the Trump presidency, following the Women’s March and the eruption of the #MeToo movement. Perhaps we find comfort in visualizing our darkest futures, so that we may not become them. These submissions are very welcome.

The first that usually comes to mind: Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Everyone’s favorite book right now which also imagines a future dystopia in which fertile women are rounded up and all deviation from the prescribed conservative norm is severely punished. The Farm, by debut author Joanne Ramos, is  one in which women (aka: “Hosts”) are monitored 24/7, isolated from the outside world, and forced to abandon everything from their former lives, all in pursuit of growing “perfect” babies. 

For this book proposal theme, Publishizer is seeking a broad range of new and unique sci-fi and dystopian fiction stories that will excite even the most well-read nihilistic wonderers who dream of new-born farming, robots, aliens, and the existential doom of humanity.