Dr. Jerry Pournelle has an important announcement:
Accepting submissions for a new volume of the There Will Be War series. Send with cover note to submission@therewillbewar.net. Stories should preferably be 20,000 words or less. Poetry encouraged, but see the previous series; it needs to make sense. Hard science fiction mainly; urban fantasy with a military theme possibly acceptable, but mostly we want hard, realistic stories. They need not be action adventure; good command decision stories encouraged. Space opera always considered. Again see the previous nine volumes.
Nonexclusive anthology rights only are purchased. Payment on acceptance is $100 advance against pro rata share of 50% of the revenues received from the publisher. Given the sales of the previous volumes we expect this to be a respectable payment. Original works will be considered, but author is welcome to sell it elsewhere; we purchase only nonexclusive anthology rights.
There will be a hardbound print edition, paperback if the sales indicate it, and eBook publication. Contributors will receive an author’s copy. Each contribution will have an introduction by the editor. The work will contain non-fiction essays by invited contributors: again see the previous volumes.
There Will Be War has historically been a reprint anthology, so reprints are not only fine, they are preferred. But if you’re a military science fiction writer, be sure to only send in your very best, as this will essentially be a “best of” the last two decades of military science fiction. If Vol. X can somehow reach what I consider to be the heights of Vol. II, I will be extremely pleased.
And if you haven’t read There Will Be War Vol. II yet, go and get it now. Just do it. The entire series is more than merely good, it is important. But in my opinion, Volume II is the best SF anthology ever published. Seriously, it was hard to decide which of the stories most merited mention in the Amazon listing. Of particular note are “Superiority” by Arthur C. Clarke, “In the Name
of the Father” by Edward P. Hughes, “‘Caster” by Eric Vinicoff,
“Cincinnatus” by Joel Rosenberg, “On the Shadow of a Phosphor Screen” by
William Wu, and “Proud Legions”, an essay on the Korean War by T.R.
Fehrenbach.
I was talking to Dr. Pournelle recently, and one of the things I told him was that I was extremely surprised to learn, upon editing the re-released anthologies, how much influence There Will Be War had upon my intellectual development. If you have a teenage boy, this is a series that should be a part of his education.