Call for submissions: Relationships

We’re launching our next open prompt for submissions to Red Futures!

You can see our last sets of short stories which respond to the prompts New Planet, Utopia, and Automation.

For our next prompt, we are issuing an open call for submissions on the theme of "relationships." We’ve been inspired by Alfie Bown’s Dream Lovers: The Gamification of Relationships. It explores the way technologies are changing relationships. As the blurb explains:

We are in the middle of a 'desirevolution' - a fundamental and political transformation of the way we desire as human beings. Perhaps as always, new technologies - with their associated and inherited political biases - are organising and mapping the future. What we don't seem to notice is that the primary way in which our lives are being transformed is through the manipulation and control of desire itself.

Our very impulses, drives and urges are 'gamified' to suit particular economic and political agendas, changing the way we relate to everything from lovers and friends to food and politicians. Digital technologies are transforming the subject at the deepest level of desire – re-mapping its libidinal economy - in ways never before imagined possible.

We want to explore the ways in which new technologies, social relations, and alternative futures could impact relationships (broadly conceived). These can be short stories (2,000 words), longer pieces, or in different media. Contributors are welcome to join our Discord channel to discuss more.

We have set a deadline of July 31st for submissions.

Please contact jamie@redfuturesmag.com for further details.