CLOSED FOR SUBMISSIONS ON MARCH 31
THIS EXQUISITE TOPOLOGY
a collection of happy abstractions
Edited by
Naomi Simone Borwein and Chun Hyon Lee
“The continuous reforming and deforming of levels of narrative reality around moments of joy…”
Payment
FF/F $25
Poetry $10
Deadline
Open Until Filled
What we are looking for
slipstream, speculative—science fiction, horror, fantasy, weird— and fabulist pieces exploring the radiance, awe, and exuberant thrall of “This Exquisite Topology” in short stories (1k-6k), flash fiction (~500-1k), or poetry (no line limit).
Submitted works should be cast through the lens of joy, exploring deformations and reformations of new landscapes and environments, new worlds, new beings, new moments of singularity or multiplicity, new visions, new paradoxes, or a redressing of old ones. Happy endings are not a requirement, just an engagement with the notion of happiness and the concept of Topology, using a speculative approach.
But what is topology?
Topology is “the study of geometric properties and spatial relations unaffected by the continuous change of shape or size of figures” (Oxford Dictionary). Consider “properties of spaces that are invariant [don’t change] under any continuous deformation.” These “[o]bjects can be stretched and contracted,” like the narrative landscape itself but still “remain unbroken.” Topology is also used in string theory “for describing the space-time structure of [the] universe” (University of Waterloo, “What is Topology?”).
In speculative fiction and poetry, Topology also constitutes blending genres and states that rupture categorizations and create new ones.
The idea of “speculative topology,” as “a paradoxical topology,” floats “beyond the limitations of temporal thinking, [and] can grasp the [narrative] object in its inherent contradictions,” thereby creating “a new ‘imaginary’ capable of” embodying and overcoming the very limitations of how bodies, physical and symbolic objects, beings, topographical spaces, are constituted together and in singularity (as transcendental aesthetics and stylistics). From the perspective of our anthology, This Exquisite Topology, “[t]he spectral Other is thus ineradicable,” forever fomenting “an attempt to estrange people from the laws of the [fictional] world” (Taheri 2021, 18-20; Lacan, 2001, 472; Hegel, 2008, 160–161).
You are invited to write your own version of a world inhabited by “an entity that lacks concrete existence and which is yet impossible to escape.” This world, where, the “speculative proposition” is a paradox, where the spectral becomes the material and vice versa, functioning like a speculative mobius strip.
Deforming “otherworldly realms,” this topological “tightrope upon which” we “walk is situated precisely between” different worlds, where a “spectre is nothing other than the torsion on the surface creating the illusion of height and the fear that we may fall” (Taheri 2021, 55, emphasis my own). Herein, lies the inherent horror and awe.
Our theme connotes the reforming and deforming of every level of narrative reality from the cellular make up of plants to the organic, abstraction of the living universe, the living sun: from x-ray crystallography, to the way plants breathe, to the “transmembrane crystal structure[s] [… that] showed the exquisite topology and orientation of […] that which is striking the seemingly homogeneous.” Like these transactions, in stories and poetry, the visual and symbolic “cues and information” control and generate material reality. Stories and poems should restructure terrain[s] of contingently assembled durations, velocities, intensities’” (Jacobs and Merriman, 2011, 218; Deisenhofer et al. 1985; Swanson et al., 1990; emphasis my own).
From Earth to the cosmos, the scattering of the stars and their living warp and curvature, that make up the starscape, can be mapped out in urban spaces in many types and forms of environments that create “material spaces of hope” and reveal the multiple “topological inflections of things” (Barba Lata and Duineveld 2019, 1769).
How do we define “Exquisite”?
For this collection we are looking for powerful depictions, with verve; for stories that transcend concrete parameters of the space-time of being. But these works should embrace the serene, blissful, intoxicating, tranquil, ecstasy, pleasure, happiness, joy, “Happy tears,” while reveling in delight; perhaps expressing philic/manic obsession and irresistible desire; clamoring for Freedom (eleutheromania or eleutherophilia the “mania or frantic zeal for freedom”), for deformation, for the transformation of being and states of awareness; expressing awe of the living universe—space, solar, stellar, (helio ‘refracted and divine’), showcasing solar bodies; earthly bodies; beyond being and knowing.
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
Please submit 1-5 poems (with a maximum of 100 lines for each poem), 1 short story (of 1k-6k words), or up to 2 flash fiction pieces (500-1k each).
Only original unpublished work
Payment is $10 per poem and $25 per short story or flash (paid via PayPal). A physical copy of the book can be sent to you in lieu of payment.
Submit via email: angrygablepress (at) gmail (dot) com
Subject header: LAST NAME, GENRE: “Title”
Cut and paste your work into the body of your e-mail and include a 100-word bio in third person along with a cover letter. Please also include a line or word count in your cover letter. If your submission is accepted, we will ask for a Word Document of your work.
Simultaneous submissions are allowed, but please notify us immediately if it has been accepted elsewhere.
We will not accept AI-written work.
No multiple submissions
The anthology will be published in print and ebook format.*
*All contributors will be offered a chance to review their galley proofs before publication. All contributors will receive an electronic copy of This Exquisite Topology. No AI artwork will be included in the volume.
We are open to creative interpretations of this theme.
We are not seeking stories of an erotic nature, though sex may be a topic.
We are not interested in anything featuring sexual violence, or unnecessarily graphic violence of any kind, against humans or animals.
See also Submissions
Check out our anthology, Extrasensory Overload : an anthology of speculative excess, to get a sense of what we publish.
Angry Gable Press 