Sharp Fiction

This issue is a big milestone for Blood Knife, because for the first time ever we’re publishing a piece of original fiction—in this case, the excellent I Sexually Identify as the “I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter” Controversy by June Martin. I loved this story from the first time I read it, and if you haven’t yet read it, you should definitely do so now.

Going forward, we’ll be including a new piece of original short fiction in alternating issues of Blood Knife. (And hopefully in every issue in the not-too-distant future.) It will be a regular feature of the magazine, and that means we’re going to do our best to maintain the same standards of theme and quality that we’ve always tried to follow.

Original fiction is something people have been asking us about since Day One. And it makes sense: just as there are certain types of media criticism that rarely see the light of day, there’s lots of excellent short fiction out there that never seems to find the right home.

Maybe it doesn’t fit easily into an established—or popular—genre. Maybe there are unusual or extreme stylistic decisions. Maybe the tone or content are too off-putting, or the concept too avant-garde, or it just runs contrary to what most publications are looking to publish right now.

But a great deal of the power of science fiction and fantasy has always been their ability to provoke, to stand out, to have sharp edges—to take things about our world that we’ve grown comfortable with and twist them into a sharp, pointed jab in the chest. This is what gives fiction, especially genre fiction, the ability to reframe and reveal culture, to break the reader out of familiar patterns of thought and interpretation, to open up new possibilities and understandings. And that means we need spaces that actively seek out fiction that doesn’t fit easily anywhere, that stands out, that challenges—and so that’s what we want to be.

We had two goals when we started Blood Knife: Pay writers fairly, and put out content that you wouldn’t find anywhere else. The same holds true of our fiction program, which will focus on publishing unusual, unique, or otherwise uncommon short fiction, and which will pay SFWA-qualifying pro rates from day 1 (with the goal of becoming an SFWA Qualifying Market as soon as we meet the other requirements).

You can see our full fiction requirements (and how to submit) on our submissions page. But to be brief, we are looking for very short fiction to begin with—1200 words max, with plans to expand soon. We want fiction that explores the weird, the doomed, the off-putting, the unusual, and the alienating—not the hopeful, the comforting, or the upbeat. And we’re looking for fiction that jibes with our magazine in both tone (cyberpunk, dark fantasy, and cosmic & gothic horror especially) and politics (anti-capitalist, anti-fascist, anti-racist, pro-LGBTQ).

But most importantly, we’re looking for fiction that you simply won’t find anywhere else.

Thanks for reading.

— Kurt Schiller, Editor