Science fiction images and adventures are more popular than ever with young people, yet very little high quality written SF is aimed straight for the vast market of adventure-minded teens. Much of it follows overly familiar tropes, like Star Wars and its copycats, or else offers bleak, dystopian visions of some future in which all our efforts failed to make a better world. Few such tales offer anything pertinent to the reader's life, right here in our own tense post-millennial era.
Here's a fresh idea. How about crafting stories that involve young protagonists from here and now, throwing them into exhilarating quests across space and time? What if a leader of that vital expedition to rescue a lost space colony happens to be a student from Central High School? What if you were asked to contact an alien civilization?
In the 24th century, people live in the very opposite of a dystopia! All our best efforts in the difficult 21st century bore fruit! Only now their near-utopia is in desperate peril. Suddenly, they need heroes with grit and determination, who can teach them how to face trouble and prevail. So they reach back through time, in order to fetch those heroes... but only teenagers can survive the journey from our present to the future.
So the heroes must be young people — youths from our own time of troubled hope, grabbed out of their normal lives and sent on dangerous missions in order to save the future. Teens from today, and from other eras deeper in the past, must be "yanked" to an uncertain tomorrow, where only their courage and savvy innovation can save the day.
It's time for a new world of science fiction possibilities, one that’s about adventure, hope... and a whole lot of fun! We welcome proposals from both established authors and a new generation of writers with skill and imagination who wish to expand this bold universe.
Email queries and requests for the OUT OF TIME series bible to Managing Editor STEPHEN W. POTTS at stephenwpotts@gmail.com .
See the newest (and reissued) Out of Time YA novels.
David Brin's science fiction novels have been New York Times Bestsellers, winning multiple Hugo, Nebula and other awards. At least a dozen have been translated into more than twenty languages. They range from bold and prophetic explorations of our near-future to Brin's Uplift series, envisioning galactic issues of sapience and destiny (and star-faring dolphins!). Learn More
Short stories and novellas have different rhythms and artistic flavor, and Brin's short stories and novellas, several of which earned Hugo and other awards, exploit that difference to explore a wider range of real and vividly speculative ideas. Many have been selected for anthologies and reprints, and most have been published in anthology form. Learn More
Since 2004, David Brin has maintained a blog about science, technology, science fiction, books, and the future — themes his science fiction and nonfiction writings continue to explore. Learn More
Who could've predicted that social media — indeed, all of our online society — would play such an important role in the 21st Century — restoring the voices of advisors and influencers! Lively and intelligent comments spill over onto Brin's social media pages. Learn More
David Brin's Ph.D in Physics from the University of California at San Diego (the lab of nobelist Hannes Alfven) followed a masters in optics and an undergraduate degree in astrophysics from Caltech. Every science show that depicts a comet now portrays the model developed in Brin's PhD research. Learn More
Brin's non-fiction book, The Transparent Society: Will Technology Force Us to Choose Between Freedom and Privacy?, continues to receive acclaim for its accuracy in predicting 21st Century concerns about online security, secrecy, accountability and privacy. Learn More
Brin speaks plausibly and entertainingly about trends in technology and society to audiences willing to confront the challenges that our rambunctious civilization will face in the decades ahead. He also talks about the field of science fiction, especially in relation to his own novels and stories. To date he has presented at more than 200 meetings, conferences, corporate retreats and other gatherings.Learn More
Brin advises corporations and governmental and private defense- and security-related agencies about information-age issues, scientific trends, future social and political trends, and education. Urban Developer Magazine named him one of four World's Best Futurists, and he was cited as one of the top 10 writers the AI elite follow. Past consultations include Google, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble, and many others. Learn More
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