The Space Heist Anthology
Pyrite, to be published March 2027.
The next anthology in the Minerals series will be Pyrite aka Fool’s Gold. Pyrite is a very special mineral, used in the manufacture of paper, lithium batteries, radios, solar panels, and marcasite jewellery. It is unstable in oxygen rich conditions, and much more brittle than native gold. Although it has an attractive lustre, that is its weakness, as humans using it for building material have found out the hard way. In Thai culture, pyrite is thought to guard against demons, but in the West we associate it with chasing unreliable dreams.
Pyrite will feature spacefaring stories where those sorts of dreams are a key feature. Stories of scavenging, piracy, and prospecting. What lures your characters through the stars? Think Blake’s 7 Meets Ocean’s 11.
What we will love: stories that focus on character and which are set in space.
What we don’t want: stories or pitches made with AI. Stories set on Earth.
For this anthology we want to include fewer stories, and for those stories to be longer length than usual, with a word count of 10,000-25,000. Bear in mind SFWA categories put stories of 7500-17499 words in the novelette category, and stories of 17500-39999 words in the novella category. We are aiming for stories to be mainly long novelettes or shorter novellas.
Stories will be paid at 1p a word to a maximum of £100.
Submission window opens 1st November 2026, closes 30th November 2026 – send to donna@theslab.press
Reprints: no thank you, but happy to receive first English translations of stories that have been published in other languages, or first print rights to stories that have previously only been published as audio.
English language only.
Can I send you a pitch for a story? I don’t want to waste my time writing a story you won’t like. – No, please don’t send me pitches. Write a great story and send me that during the submissions window. I will have likely have hundreds of stories to read, so if you don’t want to write it, then don’t.
What’s your stance on AI? – It reminds me of the corporate world and bosses sending out verbose newsletters about “productivity”, while the capable people spend even more time correcting everything that the giant plagiarism machine users forgot/didn’t realise they needed to edit out. Please do not use it to write your story. I don’t mind you using a spellchecker, but use your own brain to create please. Please note that this editor is also an IT Trainer and extremely au fait with the structure and tone that most AI assistants produce.
The Slab Press 