Submitting an article
We will 'consider' all articles submitted but they must relate to the site's theme of science fact and/or fiction (and associated exotica, whimsy etc.). Do please include a paragraph at the end about yourself and feel free to give any links to your home page and one or two of your relevant works or SF projects. Please note that links need to work and that once a year we check the site to weed out non-functioning links and there associated text. (We will not include links that are likely to be temporary.) Articles should typically be between 1,000 and 2,000 words. Articles can be submitted as an MS Word document but please note that Concatenation is a text-only site and does not contain pictures though of course we will be pleased to link with picture pages on other sites. Send to info [-at-] concatenation [-dot-] org and put something clearly SF in the subject line so we know it is not spam.
Please also note that Concatenation is, and always has been, volunteer run. No payment is made for articles. The only concession we do make is to professional writers in that we give them a certain leeway in the material they submit. As indicated above, some writers view appearing on the site as a way or raising their profile (so contributors include your links) but others as a way of getting something off their chest that normally would not see print commercially, or even for fun.
Submitting a convention review
Concatenation welcomes SF convention reviews of typically between 1,000 and 2,000 words long provided that they are either of a country's national SF convention or an international convention such as the Eurocon or Worldcon. We positively do not carry reviews of regional conventions: there are many other websites that do that. Reviews of specialist conventions that have a clear international dimension will sometimes be included. For instance the site contains reviews of the Festival of Fantastic Films for while this is a small (200-300 attending) event it ran an internationally respected film (both independent and amateur) competitions and did attract some 5% of its attendance from overseas as well as showcase SF films from around the World.
If you do wish to submit a convention review then again add a paragraph about yourself at the end together with any web link if appropriate. Do please note that Concatenation's site's surfers include both literary, cinematic and media SF enthusiasts and so your convention review should attempt to cater for each of these. Typically your review needs to include: when and where the convention was held, who were the Guests, some report of the nature and aspects of the programme, a paragraph on the venue city and an indication of what it was like to attend. Any amusing incidents, speaker quotes and so forth would also be welcome. Adaptations of a convention review that may also appear elsewhere in a specialist fanzine are also welcome: there is nothing wrong with getting mileage out of good material however it is courteous to inform both the fanzine editor as well as ourselves of your intention to do this. Finally even if English is not your first language do please feel free to submit a review of your country's national convention, we will be happy to go over your review for you.
Link exchanges
In principle Concatenation welcomes link exchanges but we do it with a certain style, so please bear with us on this. First we are happy for you to link to any page on the site. If you are running a convention as part of a series of conventions that we have reviewed in the past then you may wish to ensure that your convention's publicity material includes the web addresses of these reviews. If you are an author or a publisher of a book we have reviewed then again you may wish your book's publicity to include the appropriate web address of our review. Because Concatenation was founded in 1987 and has been on the web since 1997, we are probably a reasonable bet for a long-lasting link and are somewhat net-rot resistant. Having said that it would really help us if you (also) linked to our home page. (Please...)
Regarding us linking to you, please note that we keep our links page quite small. There are many other SF sites with very large portal pages and we see little point in yet again duplicating this service. However we do include links in a number of ways and you are free to explore any of these with us.
First links on our convention diary of national and international conventions are most welcome. Second, as per above, we welcome links within our SF and science articles but these need to be to sites (pages) that are long-lived. Finally, third, we include links in our news bulletins. Our philosophy is this, our site is both a topical and a reference site and we have found that our regulars like to have links presented to them at the moment they read relevant material on various pages. For this reason we do not confine links solely to a portal page and we know from other sites with which we have had a link exchange that most prefer this. This is probably because our policy results in increased link usage than the tradition of having a single huge list of links which is rarely used. Sometimes a link not on our links portal page can be better than one on it as search engines can pick up on the relevance to your site from the content of the text surrounding the link.
Getting a book or a video promoted
We do list British Isles forthcoming book and DVD releases in our news bulletins (as well as forthcoming film releases on our diary page) however we do require full marketing details: see our news bulletins. Because we only have three news bulletins a year you do need to get us this information as soon as you have it. We also publish fiction, non-fiction and fact book reviews as well as graphic novels. For this we naturally require the book or graphic novel. However to avoid disappointment please note our broad policy on reviews. Fiction: we do review works of SF but tend not to review works of fantasy unless it is something exceptional or we are feeling frisky. There are the occasional exceptions but these are rare. We do cover books on SF and fantasy. Non-fiction books relating to science fiction be they history of SF or books on aspects of the genre are regularly reviewed. Finally we do review popular science books written at the New Scientist level and occasionally first year undergraduate level. (Some of the reviews we write occasionally also appear in print in academic scientific journals (as one of the team has a relationship with a number of scientific publications).) However we do not review pseudoscience, new age mysticism and related works unless they have a clear relationship to real science. We are (obviously) acutely aware of the relationship between science fact and fiction and are fully cognisant of science fiction being 'fiction' even if it can promulgate an appreciation of, and an interest in, 'real' science.
We do not review vanity press published books but do occasionally publish reviews from British small press publications and European ones if the book is in English and of relevance to European SF.
We do not review books published outside of the British Isles with the very occasional exception of those of authors whose other books are known in western Europe, or are non-fiction books available through UK retailers whose subject matter is of likely core interest to scientists who like SF.
We occasionally will publish two reviews of the same book especially if the review is heavily critical of a writer of whom we (and arguably our regular visitors) might expect better. We tend not to repeatedly review books from authors that have had a number of negative reviews from us as this neither provides our site's visitors or the author with a meaningful service.
If we give an author an unsually negative review then we will use a different reviewer the next time we review them. If an author gets three negative reviews from three different reviewers then we will never review them again (Note: the record extends back into our print magazine days before the internet, but only several authors to date are ones we avoid.)
About The Science Fact and Fiction Concatenation
Concatenation began life in 1987 as an annual print fanzine distributed to the then two UK Easter conventions and the managers of a score of specialist SF shops. It reviewed science and SF for the year and had a peak print run of 5,000. In 1997 it moved to the internet and in 2002 increased its updates and re-introduced (from its print days) news columns. Judging from site visits and site hits, these moves have proved popular. Site growth since the turn of the millennium to date (2009) has been 20% a year so doubling every 3 or 4 years! It shows no signs of slowing. Do check our Google score and site ranking for searches on things like 'science fiction news' and/or 'science fiction book reviews' (see also how many other sites are out there and where we come with respect to these).
Concatenation receives a five-figure number of unique visits a month (and many more hits - excluding search engine hits and multiple page visits as part of a single unique visit). The number of visitors to the site is increasing so Concatenation runs what is called a 'sticky' site. Nearly two thirds of visitors to the site are from the British Isles, a third from North America, and between 5-10% from other countries.
Nearly all of those most closely involved with Concatenation are, or have, worked as professional scientists be it in academia, industry or governmental and non-governmental organizations. Consequently much of the site either has takes a hard SF approach or has reference to science. This is not to decry softer aspects of the genre, but that our specialisation is very much that of the science fact and fiction interface.
You may have noticed that our site design is very simple and is mainly text-only without art work, pictures, video, sounds etc. We do link to other sites that have bells, whistles and tinsel. (If you want eye-candy and frills then go elsewhere.) All we try to do is provide a seasonal coverage of key events within the SF world albeit through a British-European prism of SF buffs many of whom are scientists.
We hope that the information on this page helps you to contribute to the site as we continue its development. Meanwhile elsewhere there is further information on our introductory editorial and also a summary of our history.
[Submitting articles or convention reviews | Link exchanges]
[Worldcon/Eurocon organisers | Providing news | Book /DVD promotion | Fiction | About Concatenation]
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[Date: 03.12.30 | Contact | Copyright | Privacy]