Soft/Social Sci Fi Stories and Publications

Are you looking to sell a story, MumblingSage? if so, try Asimov's first, and F&SF obviously. Baen's Universe, SH and Abyss and Apex.

I've been trying to read asimov's nine tomorrows of late. my schedule has been busy of late so i haven't got much read time in on anything, but as i have gathered so far, it is a bit dystopian.

It's not a short story but the Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson is soft/hard the first one definitely.

I am not as knowledgeable about SF as I'd like, but good social SF is hard to pull off in short stories because of the worldbuilding space. For novels, if you haven't yet, try

L.M. Bujold, the Vorkosigan series (start with Shards of Honor)
C.J. Cherryh, Cyteen
Ursula LeGuin, Four Ways to Forgiveness

Short story markets, in addition to those already mentioned, check out Interzone. They are also a great market to submit to. Also Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show (IGMS) for both submitting and reading - not sure how much soft SF they ran lately...

sorry, nine tomorrows is not a dystopian, was just supposed to look that way.

best model for a dystopian society i have seen is in the bible actually. story doesn't take place in a dystopian society but describes one pretty well. i can't find my bible right now and can't remember where it is exactly. when i find it i'll edit this post.

This is the kind of SF I love (and write!). I'd definitely recommend Ursula LeGuin's The Left Hand of Darkness, if you haven't read it already. As far as magazines go, I know that Analog is reputed as a very hard science fiction magazine, but on the other hand Dr. Stanley Schmidt really enjoys linguistic and cultural stories (which is how I first got published, in fact). So you might find some in there if you go looking. Sheila Finch published a series of short stories called The Guild of Xenolinguists which is all about humans dealing with alternate languages and cultures. Cool stuff. As far as humans in a different social arrangement, I'm less sure. But hopefully you'll find some things there that you enjoy.

I started Left Hand of Darkness a long time ago and never got to finish it. I had to return it to the Library.

Another Soft SF novel is Moving Mars by Greg Bear. Yes there is some hard SF in it but it's definitely more Soft than Hard.

Take a look at Futurismic and diet soap. One of them might be up your alley.

Interzone?