We’d like to introduce you to our newest project…Mars Station Beta. This will be a shared world project, much like The Divided States of America.
The year is 2052. It has been two years since the unexplained destruction of Mars Station Alpha, and now the human race has decided to go back to Mars, but on an even more massive scale.
Mars Station Beta is made up of ten different modules that are all interconnected with each other and around a central lab/recreation area. There are a total of 50 colonists on the station with another 50 on their way from Earth. The base is a multi-national project, funded by the largest nations on Earth, with representatives from all of those nations, as well as a few of the best and brightest from the “lesser” nations. While nationalism is still an issue, it’s not as big of an issue following the short duration World War III that swept the Earth in 2022.
Mars Station Beta has been established in Elysium Plantia. Mars Station Alpha had been established in Argyre Planitia, but so far, no one has visited the station to try to determine what happened to the 20 colonists. All that is known is that their final transmission was, “I can’t believe there are…” Before that transmission, there were no signs of problems with the base.
Mars Station Beta is commanded by Roger Anderson, a hard-nosed military man from the United States. While he is a fair leader, he has little patience with the scientists on the base because they don’t have the same type of discipline as the military members.
The second in command is Vasili Andropova, a former member of the Russian military, who has now devoted herself to the pursuit of genetic research. She tolerates Commander Anderson, but she has little patience for his sense of discipline.
Writer’s Guidelines
If you’d like to contribute to Mars Station Beta, we’re looking for individual stories of at least 2,500 words.
How we will publish: This will not be an anthology (at first). We will be publishing each story as an individual e-story, and these stories will be distributed to all of the usual sales markets.
Pay: This will depend entirely on how the story sells. We will be doing a 50/50 split with each author of the profits from the story, with royalties being paid on our normal quarterly schedule. If this project takes off, we will be doing a print anthology, or possibly many print anthologies, and then there will be further payment at that point for reprint rights.
Rights: We are looking for first rights on any story.
Price of stories: The pricing of stories will depend on their length. Stories from 2,500 words to 5,000 words will be priced at 99 cents. Stories that are 5,001 words to 10,000 words will be priced at $1.49, and stories that are over 10,000 words will be priced at $1.99. Obviously the longer the story, the higher the royalty, but we prefer quality over length.
Overall theme: We are not looking for an overall theme to the stories. We want quality stories. Stories should be about characters other than the two commanders. It’s fine to include them as background characters, but we’d like to see stories about the other characters. If you’d like to share character or story ideas with other writers, we can set up a private Facebook group for this project that will allow everyone to throw ideas out and play off of each other’s ideas.
All stories should be sent to editor (at) nomadicdeliriumpress (dot) com with the subject line reading “Mars Station Beta Submission.”
The January 2018 issue of Spaceports & Spidersilk is now available.
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