Submissions
Labyrinth Inhabitant Magazine is looking to publish well-written fiction dealing with characters who find themselves trapped in ancient, labyrinthine and/or baffling artificial environments. Relevant articles and poetry are also welcome. It's my hope that by focusing on a very specific theme, Labyrinth Inhabitant authors will create a dialogue through their stories about humanity's relationship with our increasingly artificial world. Labyrinth Inhabitant offers $20 US via PayPal for accepted short stories over 1,500 words, $40 over 5,000 words, and $10 for poetry, articles and short-shorts. In exchange, I'd like the nonexclusive right to publish and archive your work on the Labyrinth Inhabitant website, and also the nonexclusive right to include your work in a print or web-based Labyrinth Inhabitant anthology. Reprints and simultaneous submissions are acceptable. Accepted works will be displayed freely on the site along with any author bio and links you submit, not locked behind a paywall. Send submissions to labyrinthinhabitant@gmail.com. Query if you get no response in a month.
Fiction
I'd like a variety of labyrinth stories that would be categorized as science fiction, fantasy and horror. There's no firm word limit, but try to stay in the range of a short story. The central characters should live (at least for the time being) in some kind of artificial structure that they don't fully understand and which they find difficult or impossible to escape. Be imaginative in your conception of what type of labyrinth your characters might find themselves in, but please don't submit stories with no connection or only a tenuous connection to the Labyrinth Inhabitant subgenre. A good Labyrinth Inhabitant story will usually be about the characters' relationship to the setting, and will always have a setting that is memorable and interesting.
Examples of potentially good Labyrinth Inhabitant settings:- the ruins of an extinct advanced civilization, inhabited by the civilization's descendants who no longer know how to leave
- an environment that seems to be designed as a trial or test for the people living inside
- a world that is plainly a computer simulation, but which the users do not know how to turn off
- an advanced prison or zoo, from the point of view of the people stuck inside
- a labyrinth designed to protect some secret or valuable object hidden within
- an inexplicable world that nonetheless seems to be governed by some consistent rules, such as The Library of Babel.
- anything that would be more appropriately presented in a video game or role-playing game
- fan fiction or copyrighted elements
- blank or featureless settings
- characters who are in a labyrinth, dungeon, fortress or other strange environment only temporarily, to execute some kind of mission
- a sensitive, brooding guy who roams around a labyrinth for the whole story thinking about things, and then at the end he looks in a mirror and it turns out he's the minotaur. This is Labyrinth Inhabitant Magazine. I am not going to be surprised by that twist ending.
- stories in which the characters discover they're living in an artificial environment only at the end. Again, this will surprise no one.
- poorly edited writing. Even though this is a minor webzine, please submit only once you believe you have produced quality work.
- works whose only connection to the labyrinth inhabitant subgenre is that they argue that the real world is the greatest labyrinth of all. (The Two Kings and the Two Labyrinths doesn't count; one of those was a real labyrinth.)