Andy Cox, editor and publisher of Interzone, has announced that the May-June issue next year will be a special issue devoted to Mundane SF, guest-edited by Geoff Ryman. What’s Mundane SF? Ryman says:

What makes a story Mundane? A few simple rules:

– no FTL travel or communications

– no aliens

– no time travel

– no parallel universes

– no immortality or telepathy

We believe that these SF ‘inventions’ are powerful myths whose presence may be drowning out some very important ideas. They may be entertaining to write and read about, but could there be something else we are all missing? The time comes when someone has to throw these babies out of the bathwater and see if there is life besides.

No matter how strong your convictions are regarding the inevitability of one, or all, of the above so-far non-existent phenomena, you can still write Mundane SF if you set your story between now and when the first of these becomes possible within your own personal belief system. 

Sounds like it’ll make for a cool issue. Stories should run between 2,500-5,000 words. Deadline is October 31, 2007. Submit here.