Planetary Stories is dedicated to publishing space adventure fiction of the type a pulp magazine reader of the 1940s would find in Thrilling Wonder Stories, Astonishing Stories, Super Science -- and especially in the legendary Planet Stories. Our templates are the works of Leigh Brackett and Henry Kuttner and Ross Rocklynne and C.L. Moore. Ed Hamilton, Murray Leinster, Jack Vance, Jack Williamson, Keith Laumer, E.E. Smith. But we are also fond of modern writers like Catherine Asaro, David Drake, David Weber, Lois McMasters Bujold, Larry Niven. We want adventure stories set on other worlds or between them. We want heroes like Northwest Smith, Eric John Stark, Morgan Chane and Sydney Hallmeyer. We want prose written by writers who care about language and style. We want stories filled with wonder, emotion, imagination and adventure. Nor do we object to humor. We need to find a few writers who enjoy space opera as much as we do and who can turn that enjoyment into entertaining stories.

This is your official invitation to let us see what you can do. Not that you should need one, of course. While we have run longer stories, we prefer a wordcount of five thousand words or less.

In addition, we're making some changes in our Pulp Spirit feature. In the past, Pulp Spirit has been a single story -- usually one of Jerry Page's Armadillo yarns, but we've also run detective and western fiction. Now we are expanding Pulp Spirit to run several stories and a feature each issue. Not just the Armadillo but straight pulp stories of various types, including detective and western, though not limited to those forms. How many we run will depend on what we get that's worthy of publication. We're also carrying Jerry Page's "PulpRack," the extremely popular pulp fiction review feature that ran in the pulp collector's journal Flashback during the 90s and early 2000s.

Of course Planetary Stories is one of those "for the love of" markets. There's no pay. But if you can find a rate exchange scale to convert love of space opera and pulp fiction into cash, you'll discover that our rates are commensurate with the best in the field.

To all you cartoonists and artists out there, we also welcome your assistance! We can always use sf and fantasy fillos and, if you'll get in touch with us, we'll be glad to let you use your talent in illustrating a story.

Please! Single-spaced mss, no headers, footers, or page numbers. Email as either a .doc or .rtf attachment to LieutenantLuna@yahoo.com -- and, while we do use First Web Rights, and do claim copyright, all rights revert to contributor upon publication.

Illustrations from Planet Comics (c) Fiction House BACK