I mentioned this a while ago on my own blog, but what the heck. Yo, writers! Ricasso Press wants your stories! Submit material for publication in their first anthology, Magic & Mechanica.

Submission guidelines are over here. Deadline is August 1, 2007, but editors reserve the right to close submissions early if they accept enough stories for their table of contents before that date.

So what do they want? In their own words, “Magic & Mechanica is an anthology of high fantasy stories which chronicle the collision of magic and machines. The interaction of the mystic and the technological in a fantasy world is what we are looking for, a world alive with rational magicks and impossible machines.”

This is a problematic concept. It has a lot to do with defining genres, which is never precisely safe. Ricasso Press doesn’t want “science fiction stories set in a fantasy world,” but how much mechanica can you insert into your magic before you’ve crossed the line from fantasy to science fiction? The suggestion is that if the science-driven element is necessary to the story, as in a time travel tale which puts a nuclear physicist in Victorian England, then it’s science fiction. On the other hand, anything that isn’t necessary in the story shouldn’t be there in the first place, right?

The submission guidelines are not on a static page, but have been posted instead as a new thread in a forum. The editors are on hand to answer questions asked therein. At one point, Ricasso Press’s CEO, Rob Santa (and isn’t that a great name?) posts this clarification:

Magic & Mechanica is about magic and magical things, not fantasy as a whole. The distinction is that something like an army of dragons flying past an army of mechanized warriors is not as perfectly-suited to the M&M anthology as an army of dragons (or dragon-riding wizards) fighting those warriors would be. We’ve seen several pieces that juxtapose fantasy and borderline science fiction settings, better said as blending fantasy and technology. M&M is about blending magical things and technology. The appearance of elves, faeries, unicorns and the like who do not directly intersect and interact with the technology/mechanical nature of the story is fantasy. As soon as they get their hands dirty, it’s the “collision” we’re looking for from the guidelines.

They give examples further down on that thread. They’re also describing accepted stories over here.

(Why is my head suddenly filled with clockwork automatae frolicking around a unicorn’s pool?)

In the end, it’s going to come down to the dreaded “I’ll know it when I see it” rule. You can always query the editors with story concepts and see if they say “no” right off the bat. Or you can just send it in and hope. Which is what most of us do anyway.

I suspect that this will be an anthology worth reading. Anthologies with genre-crossing themes most always are. Regardless of whether you submit, you should totally go out and advance-order a copy as soon as it becomes available.

Also of note: Ricasso Press’s second anthology, Black Dragon, White Dragon. Submission guidelines for that are over here.