Do any of you have any ideas on this topic or know of publications which have relaxed inhabitions? Publications which push the threshold?

I wrote a poem about an alien beauty contest that ends with the other aliens (males) rushing the stage and eating the winner(female). Actually found a market for that and got it published. The first market sent me back a personalized rejection yelling at me for how awful the subject matter was.

I've got another story is WIP where a guy has to eat his wife in order to get her resurrected. Haven't had the heart (shock!) to finish it.

It all depends on who is willing to look it over. There are some far out markets out there. They may not pay much, but they publish.

So I guess there is a market for that sort of thing out there---even if the publishers don't realize it.

Also...to a great extent, the dark / disgusting stuff that does get published, gets published under the name of well-known writers (like Stephen King, mentioned in the posts above this). Unknowns or lesser names might have trouble breaking through the editorial inhibitions.

Often the darkest stuff (human nature, not necessarily sci-fi) are in mags that talk about Noir and Hardboiled.

Then...I saw a call for short story submissions with the criteria being that it had to have been rejected before. The premise being that they would publish just about anything no matter the subject matter (as long as it was well-written, natch). I sent mine off. Got an almost immediate rejection with the reason my story was rejected: TOO OFFENSIVE.

By the way, "Survivor Type", by Stephen King is actually pretty good. Yeah, it's a bit unbelievable, but this is from the same guy that wrote about a laundry press that ate people (and even got up and walked away to eat people). If you can stomach it (he-he), it is a unique little tale.