The Climate Crisis is the biggest challenge humanity has ever faced. Never has the impact of our modern civilisations on the Earth been so clearly evident. There is no single person on the planet who is not directly affected. Even if somehow, we all banded together today and did everything within our global collective power to mitigate the effects, we would still feel the impact of the changes we have wrought on the biosphere for centuries to come.
As temperatures rise, as the seas rises, as weather patterns change, as biodiversity shrinks, as large-scale catastrophes become common place; like zoonotic outbreaks of Ebola and Corona virus from humans moving into, consuming, and drastically reducing wild areas; storm surge flooding; wild fires; etc., so too do we change. The relative ecological and climatological calm that has persisted for tens of thousands of years, that has allowed us as a species to thrive, is no more. In response to this instability many once leading countries have instead of reaching out turned inward, looked to isolation as a solution, encouraged the rise of fear-based extremist attitudes, policies, and practices. But is this who we are, are we as a species driven only by fear, no, it is historically evident that it is co-operation which has best served us. Just as we are rapidly approaching a climate tipping point, a thermal runaway that could irreparably imperil the entire biosphere, so to must we as a species reach a tipping point in common consensus and action to change how we live, and hopefully the latter comes before the former.
Given this specific theme of Climate Crisis, AfroSFv4 is asking you to look forward a single decade into the near future of 2031. How have we responded, how has the Earth? Do you see a continuing apocalypse, or have we risen to the challenge, and if so how? We are looking for well-researched, carefully extrapolated, deeply character driven narratives that explore this most imperative theme.
Works submitted may be: Science Fiction short stories only as per the theme and guidelines:
1) Only African writers are eligible (writers born in Africa, or having domiciled in for over 10 years, and/or holding citizenship in an African country).
2) The submitted work must be an original work, nothing that infringes the copyright of, or is derived from, another author’s work of fiction, is overly lewd, hate speech, etc.
3) Must be unpublished (not previously published in print or online).
4) No simultaneous submissions (only submitted to AfroSFv4 and no other publications).
5) No multiple submissions (submit only one work).
6) Single works with multiple authors will be considered as long as they all meet our African writer criteria.
7) Submission format: UK English, double spaced, font Times New Roman 12pt.
8) Word Count: Minimum: 1500 Words, Maximum: 10k Words.
9) Deadline for submissions is 30th June 2020.
10) All works to be submitted through Submittable: https://afrosf.submittable.com/submit/137149/afrosfv4
11) To be edited by Ivor W. Hartmann and published by StoryTime, for any problems or queries please contact: storytime.publishing@gmail.com