is the editor of the zombie anthology Rigor Amortis, which was a Barnes and Noble Top 10 pick in 2011, and short fiction author, published in The Aether Age: Helios, Goldfish Grim and Heroes! She has a strong background in organizing, supporting and launching Kickstarter projects, such as Geek Love, the highest-funded anthology in Kickstarter's history. Her fiction has been published in The Aether Age: Helios, Goldfish Grim and M-Brane SF. She is the Communications Director for the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.

Andrew Liptak earned his Master of Arts in Military History from Norwich University, and has written extensively about military science fiction for io9 and SF Signal, and has written for such websites as Kirkus Reviews, and Strange Horizons, as well as Military History for magazines such as Armchair General and the Norwich Record. He is currently an editorial assistant for Lightspeed Magazine. His first story, 'Fragmented', is set to be published by Galaxy's Edge Magazine.

We want to tell some different stories. Science Fiction, and military science fiction in particular, is a good look at the world today, where military actions are certainly relevant. We aim to tell some new stories that look at the future of warfare, and the people, robots and aliens involved.

We've grown up reading stories from authors such as Robert Heinlein, Joe Haldeman, Orson Scott Card, Timothy Zahn, C.J. Cherryh, Lois McMaster Bujold and others that have laid the foundations for 'military science fiction' as a distinct genre.

War Stories isn't an anthology of bug hunts and unabashed jingoism. It's a look at the people ordered into impossible situations, asked to do the unthinkable, and those unable to escape from hell. It's stories of courage under fire, and about the difficulties in making decisions that we normally would never make. It's about what happens when the shooting stops, and before any trigger is ever pulled.

Our cover art is by the fantastic, Hugo Award winning artist Galen Dara, who's worked for such places as Fireside Magazine, Lightspeed Magazine, Geek Love and Apex's own Glitter and Mayhem anthology. She'll also be contributing some additional, interior artwork.

Together, we're both connected to the military community through our lives and education, and we feel that now is the time for a modern, relevant look at the state of the world around us.

Our publisher is Apex Publications, which has published such acclaimed anthologies such as Glitter & Mayhem and The Apex Book of World SF.

Here are just a few of our authors to get you started. We've got more authors coming, and we'll be updating you throughout the campaign as they're accepted. Here's the early Table of Contents:

Joe Haldeman

Joe was drafted during the Vietnam War, serving between 1967-69 in the Central Highlands of Vietnam as a combat engineer with the 4th Division (1/22nd Airmobile Bn.) where he earned the Purple Heart and other standard medals. Upon returning to the United States, he turned to writing, and his first novel, War Year, was published in 1972. His second novel, The Forever War, was published in 1974, and would go on to win the Hugo Award for Best Novel, the Nebula Award for Best Novel, the Locus Award for Best Novel and the Ditmar Award for International SF. Since that time, he has published 18 novels and numerous short stories, earning the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel, Nebula Award for Best Novella, Best Short Story (Graves) and Best Novel (Camouflage), the Rhysling Award (x3), World Fantasy Award (Graves) and the James Tiptree, Jr. Award. He currently teaches creative writing at MIT in Cambridge, MA. In 2010, he was awarded the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award.

We will be reprinting Joe's story, 'Graves'.





Keith Brooke

Keith published his first novel, Keepers of the Peace in 1990, and has alternatively worked as a full time writer, editor and teacher since that time. In 2010, he earned his PhD from the University of Essex, where he teaches creative writing at the graduate and undergraduate levels. In 1997, he founded the Infinity Plus website, which was relaunched in 2010 as an ebook imprint. His next novels, Expatria and Expatria Incorporated were published in 1991 and 1992, and a fourth, Lord of Stone, came in 2001, marking a resurgence in novels: Genetopia was published in 2006, The Accord in 2009, and The Unlikely World of Faraway Frankie in 2010. His latest, alt.human (Harmony in the US), was published in 2012, and was shortlisted for the Philip K. Dick Award.

We will be reprinting Keith's story 'War 3.01'.

Susan Jane Bigelow

Susan is a librarian, writer and political columnist. She’s the author of the three Extrahumans books and The Daughter Star, the first in a series of epic space opera novels. Her work has appeared in the Lambda Award-winning The Collection: Short Fiction from the Transgender Vanguard from Topside Press, and Queers Dig Time Lords. She also writes a weekly Connecticut-focused political column at CTNewsJunkie.com. Susan can be found wandering around northern Connecticut and western Massachusetts with her wife, covered in cat hair.

Maurice Broaddus

Maurice has written hundreds of short stories, essays, novellas, and articles. His dark fiction has been published in numerous magazines, anthologies, and web sites, including Asimov’s Science Fiction, Cemetery Dance, Apex Magazine, and Weird Tales Magazine. He is the co-editor of the Dark Faith anthology series (Apex Books) and the author of the urban fantasy trilogy, Knights of Breton Court (Angry Robot Books). He has been a teaching artist for over five years, teaching creative writing to students of all ages. Visit his site at www.MauriceBroaddus.com.

F. Brett Cox

F. Brett Cox’s fiction, poetry, essays, and reviews have appeared in numerous publications. With Andy Duncan, he co-edited the anthology Crossroads: Tales of the Southern Literary Fantastic (Tor, 2004). A native of North Carolina, he is Associate Professor of English at Norwich University and lives in Vermont with his wife, playwright Jeanne Beckwith.

Thoraiya Dyer

Thoraiya is a three-time Aurealis Award-winning, three-time Ditmar Award-winning Australian writer based in the Hunter Valley, New South Wales. Her short fiction has appeared in Clarkesworld, Apex, Nature and Cosmos and is forthcoming in Analog. A petite collection of four original stories, “Asymmetry,” is available from Twelfth Planet Press. Find her online at Goodreads or www.thoraiyadyer.com.

Jake Kerr

Jake Kerr is a science fiction author of short fiction whose works have appeared in Lightspeed, Fireside, Escape Pod, the Chinese literary journal Zui Found, anthologies, and other publications. His first published story, “The Old Equations,” was nominated for the Nebula, Theodore Sturgeon Memorial, and the StorySouth Million Writers awards. He lives in Texas, with his wife and three daughters.

Rich Larson

Rich was born in West Africa, has studied in Rhode Island, and at 21 now lives in Edmonton, Alberta. He was a finalist for the 2013 Dell Award and won the 2012 Rannu Prize for Writers of Speculative Fiction. In 2011 his cyberpunk novel Devolution was a finalist for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. His short work has since received honorable mention from Writers of the Future and appears or is forthcoming in Lightspeed, DSF, Strange Horizons, Apex Magazine, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, AE and many others. Find him at Amazon.com/author/richlarson.







Yoon Ha Lee

Yoon’s first story was published in 1999 in the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and since then, has appeared in Clarkesworld, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Electric Velocipede, Lightspeed Magazine, Tor.com and others. Her first collection, Conservation of Shadows, was published earlier this year.

Ken Liu

Ken won the Science Fiction & Fantasy Translation Award, the World Fantasy Award, the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award, and has been a finalist for the Hugo, Locus, Theodore Sturgeon and Nebula awards. His fiction has appeared at Fantasy & Science Fiction, Asimovs, Analog, Strange Horizons, Lightspeed and Clarkesworld Magazines, among other places. He’s worked as a programmer, lawyer and translator. His translation of the Chinese hard science fiction trilogy, The Three Body Trilogy will be published by Tor sometime in 2014.

Karin Lowachee

Karin was born in South America, grew up in Canada, and worked in the Arctic. Her first novel Warchild won the 2001 Warner Aspect First Novel Contest. Both Warchild (2002) and her third novel Cagebird (2005) were finalists for the Philip K. Dick Award. Cagebird won the Prix Aurora Award in 2006 for Best Long-Form Work in English and the Spectrum Award also in 2006. Her second novel, Burndive, debuted at #7 on the Locus Bestseller List. Her books have been translated into French, Hebrew, and Japanese, and her short stories have appeared in anthologies edited by Julie Czerneda, Nalo Hopkinson, and John Joseph Adams. Her latest novel, The Gaslight Dogs, was published in 2010.

T.C. McCarthy

T.C. McCarthy’s debut Military SF trilogy The Subterrene War (Germline, Exogene and Chimera) appeared in 2011, and its first entry, Germline, earned the 2012 Compton Crook award, presented for best first novel by the Baltimore Science Fiction Society. His short fiction has appeared in Per Contra: The International Journal of the Arts, Literature and Ideas, in Story Quarterly and in Nature. He is also a PhD scientist (Geology) and a Fulbright Fellow.

Linda Nagata

Linda is the recipient of the Locus Award for Best First Novel for The Bohr Makerin 1996, and the Nebula Award for Best Novella for Goddesses in 2000, the first digitally published book to receive the award. Her short fiction has appeared in Analog Science Fiction & Fact, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Lightspeed Magazine, and Asimovs, and has released the following novels: The Bohr Maker (1995), Deception Well (1997), 3 Vast (1998), 4 Tech-Heaven (1995) Limit of Vision (2001), Memory (2003), The Dread Hammer (2012), Hepen the Watcher (2012) and The Red: First Light (2013).

Mike Sizemore

Mike is the author behind the a television show currently being pitched to Hollywood called Slingers. Since then, he’s written pilot and feature scripts, as well as an adaptation of Howl’s Moving Castle for the London Stage with Stephen Fry. He’s currently writing a digital series about superheroes called Caper, which is due out in January 2014.

Janine Spendlove

Janine is an author and active duty KC-130 pilot in the United States Marine Corps. She is best known for her War of the Seasons (The Human, The Half-blood and the forthcoming The Hunter) and her stories have appeared in Time Traveled Tales, A Hero By Any Other Name and Heroes! anthologies among other locations.

James L. Sutter

James is the fiction editor for Paizo Publishing, and a co-creator of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game campaign setting. He’s the author of Death’s Heretic, which was a finalist for the Compton Crook Award for best first novel, and was ranked #3 on the list of best Fantasy releases of 2011. He’s currently writing a new novel. Additionally, his short fiction has appeared at Escape Pod, Podcastle and Pseudopod, Starship Sofa, Apex Magazine, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and the anthologies Geek Love and Machine of Death.

There's more authors to come, who've expressed an interest, are writing and will be submitting stories to us. As this Kickstarter continues forward, we'll continue to announce authors who have been accepted. We here at War Stories are committed to a diverse pool of authors, and we highly encourage women, people of color and LGBT to submit their stories to us for consideration.

Submissions

As we're working on funding this campaign, we will be opening the anthology up for additional submissions. We are seeking original military science fiction of 1000-7500 words. Stories of 5000 words or less are preferred. We’re starting with a pay rate of 5¢/word for original fiction. This rate is will change provided we reach a certain funding level with the Kickstarter.

What we’re looking for in a story: We want top-notch military science fiction stories that are contemporary, innovative, relevant and exciting. We want to speak to the civilians and soldiers of the last decade, keeping in mind the collective experiences of the wars in the Middle East and Africa, from all sides of conflicts. We’re not looking for stories that are necessarily set in the present or near future, but stories that take to heart the major themes and lessons that we've seen. Stories on different planets, timelines, with power armor, spaceships, robots and more are welcome.

We believe that the science fiction/fantasy genre’s diversity is its greatest strength, and we wish that viewpoint to be reflected in our story content and our submission queues; we welcome submissions from writers of every race, religion, nationality, gender, and sexual orientation. We are particularly interested in receiving stories from POC and female authors.

For up-to-date details on submissions, visit the War Stories Submissions page.

Stretch Goals:

Our current funding level is in place to ensure that each of our authors receive the proper compensation for their time in the trenches. However, we would like to go above and beyond that goal.

At $12,000, we'll introduce some additional interior artwork.

At $15,000, we'll increase our pay rate for our authors by 1 cent per word to $.06.

At $20,000, we will be issuing a challenge coin to all backers at the $45 level and above.

At $25,000, we'll increase our pay rate for our authors by an additional cent per word to $.07.

Where your funds go:

We're seeking to raise a minimum of $10,000 to fund this anthology. While we are backed by Apex Publications, this amount allows us to pay all of our authors a professional (SFWA) rate of $.05 per word. If we go higher, we'll be able to pay our authors more.

Your pledge will both go towards helping pay for our authors and their talent, but it will also go to cover Galen Dara's artwork, the copy editing and typesetting process, as well as providing copies of the physical and electronic books to backers. What we have left over will go towards fulfilling rewards and our shipping costs, which we've worked to calculate into our backer levels.

Partner Kickstarter Campaigns

Kickstarting and Crowdfunding require a lot of help and networking. In that spirit, we'd like to point you to some other Kickstarters that we've come across that we think you should consider pledging to as well!

War of the Seasons, a fantasy trilogy by Janine K. Spendlove - They've funded, but help them reach their stretch goals!