About BCS
Beneath Ceaseless Skies (ISSN 1946-1046) is a SFWA-qualifying, pro-rate online magazine dedicated to publishing the best in literary adventure fantasy.
We were the runner-up in storySouth's Million Writers Award for the Best New Online Magazine of 2008. At the close of 2009, reviewer and editor Rich Horton called us "a really important source of fantasy."
We love traditional adventure fantasy, including classics from the pulp era and the new wave of post-Tolkien fantasy. But we also love how the recent influence of literary writing on fantasy short fiction has expanded the genre, allowing writers the freedom to use literary devices such as tight points-of-view, round characters, unreliable narrators, discontinuous narratives, and others. This sophisticated level of craft has made fantasy short fiction more powerful than ever before.
We want stories that combine the best of both these styles—adventure fantasy plots in vivid secondary worlds, but written with a literary flair. Beneath Ceaseless Skies will feature exciting stories set in awe-inspiring places that are told with all the skill and impact of modern literary-influenced fantasy.
That's what we mean by literary adventure fantasy. It could also be called modern traditional fantasy or literary swords and sorcery. There are many current short fiction markets that specialize in literary-style fantasy, and a hardy few that still publish adventure fantasy, but there is no magazine focusing on stories that combine both. Until now.
Beneath Ceaseless Skies publishes two stories per issue, with a new issue every two weeks. Readers can subscribe by email notification or by RSS feed. We also release selected stories as Audio Fiction podcasts every two weeks. We maintain an online forum and a Facebook page to update submitting writers and to encourage reader discussion of all things fantasy.