Readers
Rich Horton's Market Summaries:
Summary: Some Online Sources of Fiction, 2004
Now to a variety of SF-oriented sites that occasionally publish fiction. (I'm not here include non-SF online sites that may have published a story, as for example Amazon.com, which featured an M. John Harrison story this year. I'll get to those later.)
1. Lost Pages
Lost Pages is a edited by Claude Lalumičre. Claude published four monthly issues last year, but this year slowed down and published only the occasional thematic issue. The themes this year were D. F. Lewis and Halloween. (There were also a couple stories early in the year on no theme.) 12 stories total, all short, 7 "short-shorts", for just under 19,000 words of fiction. My favorites were a Rhys Hughes pastiche of Lewis, "Gut Road"; a Don Webb horror story about zombies, "The Taste of Salt"; and Anna Tambour's weird little thing, "How to Play the Cows". I would also say that the three original D. F. Lewis stories are worth a look.
2. infinity plus
infinity plus has been around for several years. It's an outstanding general interest SF site, maintained by Keith Brooke with the help of Nick Gevers and Paul Barnett. It features plenty of articles and interviews, and a ton of stories and novel excerpts. Most of the stories are reprints, but very occasionally they publish originals. The main focus seems to be to promote authors' new releases -- hence the novel excerpts, and the occasional story drawn from a forthcoming collection.
This year I counted 4 new stories (one a novel excerpt revised to stand alone), all short, totaling some 17,000 words. The authors were Marianne Plumridge, Philip E. High, Ursula Pflug, and Adam Roberts. Roberts's "War of Another World", a satirical look at The War of the Worlds as if it were today's Iraq War, is perhaps the best.
3. SF Crowsnest
This is a European SF site, edited by Stephen Hunt, somewhat newsy and reviewsy. I saw two stories there, "Stones" by Radi Radev, and "Third World" by GF Willmetts. 4000 words total. Neither impressed me a whole lot. (The site as a whole seems a pretty worthwhile soruce for news and reviews and essays, though.)
4. SciFi Dimensions
Another newsy site, edited by John C. Snider. There were two new stories here as well, "Sleep, Perchance to Dream" by Robert Turley, and "Mark of a Genius" by Nina Munteanu. 5600 words combined. Again, neither story did much for me.
5. Fantastic Metropolis
This site, dedicated to breaking down genre barriers, publishes some provocative articles and interviews, and a fair amount of fiction -- mostly reprints and novel excerpts, but the occasional original. The editor is Luís Rodrigues. This year I saw four original short stories, totalling some 9800 words. I liked two pieces by Matthew Rossi, "The Fruit of the Tree is Discord" and "Kneel to the Son of Clay", the best.
6. Infinite Matrix
Infinite Matrix had a slow year in 2004, though editor Eileen Gunn hopes to publish more fiction in 2005. (Promised are stories from Robert Sheckley, Patrick O'Leary, Nisi Shawl, and Rudy Rucker; plus essays from William Gibson and Eleanor Arnason. That certainly whets my appetite!) This year there were only two new stories, a short-short by Leslie What, "Love Me"; and a novelette by Karen D. Fishler, "Safe Haven". Both stories are pretty good. 10500 words total.
Besides the fiction, there are regular features: an "unblog" from Howard Waldrop, and Dave Langford's "Runcible Ansible".
