• Bottleneck seeks short speculative and science fiction approximately 3,000-8,000 words in length

• Simultaneous submission are welcome, but please let us know as soon as you have decided to move forward with a submitted piece at another publication

• Submissions are free

• Bottleneck is not currently a paying market

• We acquire first North American serial rights, which return back to the author upon publication; we ask that you acknowledge Bottleneck in any additional publications or reprints that come after

Please refrain from sending:

• Multiple submissions at once

• Reprint submissions

• Submissions generated in any part by AI (We do love stories about robots written by humans. Do you have a 100% human generated story about a frustrated AI struggling to get their fiction published in a literary magazine? We’d read that!)

• Stories featuring cruelty, mean-spiritedness, gratuitous violence, or erotica, and anything that relies on or expresses racism, sexism, LGBTQ-phobias, or other denigration of marginalized people and communities

Formatting preferences:

And if all that sounds shiny, please send us submissions formatted like so:

• 12 point font (something conventional and easy to read - Arial, Georgia, and Times New Roman all work great) 

• Double-spaced

• 1” margins

• No extra space or hard return between paragraphs

• Number each page

• Provide your name, email, story title, and total word count at the top of your document

How to submit:

• Share your submission as a .docx, PDF, or a Google doc to bottleneck.sf@gmail.com

• Include “Story Submission: [Your Story Title Here]” in the subject line

• Please provide a short, professional bio approximately 100 words or less

• If so inclined, in the body of the email, we’d love your elevator pitch for the story: comp titles, or “it’s like A meets B, but in the setting of C.” If you’re willing to share a sentence or two on the origin, inspiration, themes, or meaning behind your piece, please do!