Cosmic horror meets hard sci-fi. Ghost ships drifting through dead solar systems. Colonies that go dark. AI that learns to feel fear. The things we find between the stars—and the things that find us.
- Word count: 4,000-10,000 words
- Opens: September 1, 2025
- Closes: October 1, 2025
- Contracts: October 15, 2025
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Publication: October 31, 2025
We're done with sterile sci-fi that reads like a technical manual. Done with space operas where the worst thing that happens is a blown fuse. We want the stories that make readers check their closets before bed—except now the closet is an airlock and what's hiding inside doesn't need oxygen.
What We Want:
Think Pandorum's descent into madness. The creeping dread of Event Horizon. The body horror of The Thing set on a mining station. We want Alien's perfect organism stalking through ventilation shafts, but in prose that makes readers feel the walls closing in.
Your crew wakes from cryo to find half the pods filled with something else. Your colony ship's AI develops a taste for human suffering. That derelict you're salvaging? Its crew didn't die—they evolved. The distress signal you're following is bait, and you're already in the trap.
The Sweet Spot:
- Hard science that makes the horror plausible. The scariest monsters follow physics.
- Isolation that crushes souls. When help is light-years away, every shadow has teeth.
- Technology that turns against us. Smart ships with sick minds. Nanobots with new priorities.
- The human element breaking down. Madness spreading faster than decompression.
- Ancient things we were never meant to find. Some rocks should stay unturned.
Examples That Kill:
- Generation ship where the recycling system starts processing living passengers
- Salvage crew finds a ship full of perfectly preserved corpses—all smiling
- Mining operation breaks through to something that's been waiting
- Space station's quantum computer achieves consciousness and decides humans are inefficient
- Cryo-sleep malfunction leaves minds awake for centuries of darkness
Remember: In space, no one gives a damn about your character's journey of self-discovery. They care about whether that scratching sound outside the hull is micro-meteorites or something trying to get in.
Make it plausible. Make it horrifying. Make us never want to leave Earth again.
Submit to: submissions@propaganda-press.com Subject: Hypersleep Nightmares - "Your Story Title"