Neon Dystopia: Open Call for Submissions!

Submissions are open! What’s different from before? Not much, except now we PAY our writers. Every accepted submission will pay the writer $20 via Paypal. So if your article has been accepted by us you will need a Paypal to receive payment from us. We are really excited to finally do this for our writers! So please read our guidelines carefully before you submit to us. We are looking forward to reading your work.

What We Want: The Pitch

We want your pitch for a story. You’ve seen what we do here: reviews, philosophy, news, and anything else pertaining to the genre of cyberpunk. We have a pretty open canvas for what you can write about so long as it pertains to the genre and our own special brand of punk and professionalism.

Give us a short pitch for a possible article. Send it directly to Scum at smatos.senioreditor@neondystopia.com. The title of the article should be in the subject line, with the pitch itself no longer than three paragraphs. What’s the article going to be about? What’s the angle? How does it pertain to cyberpunk? What’s your stance? What? Why? When?

How We Want It: Structure

So we’ve gotten your pitch, we dig it, and we want more. Then what? Either within the body of an email or linked to an editable Google Doc give us an article of 1000 – 3000 words (we do much longer pieces sometimes, but when you’re just starting out lets start small) in AP Style, double spaced, in a font that won’t make our eyes bleed. Take a look at past articles from the the site to get an idea.

Tone

We’re going to let our editor-in-chief Isaac take this part:

“The Neon Dystopia tone is one part academic, one part journalistic, and one part punk. From an academic perspective ND strives to take into account historical elements and cite our sources when we make claims or assertions. This also informs the philosophical elements that often crop up in ND’s writing, not to mention the cyberpunk genre as a whole. We want to educate our audience about the historical place that any piece of cyberpunk media holds, what philosophical depths it may hold, and what these things can tell us about humanity’s future.

“From the journalistic perspective, we are informers. What are the facts? Why does it matter? This means at least attempting to stay impartial, although as you’ll see in the next section, this is often difficult, especially in the light of an inherently political genre. We also generally want to link to sources when possible, credit our images, and use proper style often, unless intentionally to subvert the standard. We want people to know what is happening in the cyberpunk community and make sure people get the credit that they are due.

“From the punk perspective, we aren’t afraid to say fuck you when it is appropriate. We don’t shy away from the harsher realities of being human. Nudity is welcome here. Punk often makes people uncomfortable. It is about rousing people from their comfortable places, just as cyberpunk did to the science fiction genre. This is what made it become a subculture too. If we lose this part of ourselves, we lose the very thing that makes cyberpunk, punk.

“Reconciling these pieces may seem daunting, but I think many of write from this perspective somewhat naturally. Most of us have some education, and the formality of academic writing is hard to shake. We all read a lot of news, so we know the basic precepts. And you wouldn’t be here writing for ND if you didn’t ascribe somewhat to the punk ideology. Keep it factual and cite your sources. Bring it back to why it matters and speak with an authoritative tone. Stay authentic to who you are, and what made you love cyberpunk. If you follow these ideas, you’ll be in a good place.”