This Friday we’re asking—what are the online publications (whether fantasy, spec-fic, or more general) that you read and why?
Here’s are some of my favorites:
Abyss & Apex – Short fiction and poetry that is invariably solid stuff.
Brain Harvest – Speculative flash fiction, often very cutting edge.
The Escapist – Nonfiction and “the mouthpiece of the gaming generation”. A wide range of articles with an active community.
Io9 – Nonfiction about science fiction, and lots of awesome. Recent good stuff includes a zombie pin-up calendar, robot posters, and what women will look like in the future.
Strange Horizons – Fiction, poetry and articles. Some favorite SH fiction: Carol Emshwiller’s A Safe Place To Be, Shweta Narayan’s Charms, Genevieve Valentine’s 29 Union leaders Can’t Be Wrong and Bespoke. SH is often the best source for superhero fiction, including Leah Bobet’s They Fight Crime!, Tony Frazier’s No Love For The Middleman, and Paul Melko’s Doctor Mighty and the Case of Ennui.
I really like Tor.com. I think it’s still Steampunk month, too.
Yeah, tor.com has a WEALTH of good stuff.
I enjoy Beneath Ceaseless Skies – traditional, with an emphasis on language and proving that old ideas can be reincarnated well.
Nanoism sometimes strays into fantasy, and the Weird Tales flash video shorts got me interested in Twitter fiction and really really short fantasy.
Strange Horizons definitely, but also Subterranean Online, Clarkesworld, and Shadow Unit.
All are fiction publications. I think SubPress’s online zine is probably one of the strongest I’ve ever read.
Shadow Unit is one of my favorite things ever. It’s like a blend of Criminal Minds and The X-Files, only the monsters are all human. The team has finished up the second season (out of a planned five, I believe), and it’s just outstanding.
Even if they hadn’t been the first pro-rate magazine to buy a story from me, I’d still give huge props to Beneath Ceaseless Skies. As a reader, I’m just thrilled by their focus on secondary world/adventure fantasy.
I lament the recent loss of Farrago’s Wainscot and Lone Star Stories.
The ones I follow most faithfully are Clarkesworld, Fantasy, Strange Horizons, and Beneath Ceaseless Skies.
Subterranean and Tor.com I think to check periodically, (the mercenary in me won’t let me read them as regularly as the first list because they don’t have open submissions…) as well as Abyss & Apex and Ideomancer, followed by others that I enjoy but don’t follow as closely.
The main draw to me on all these is the fiction. All of them tend to have the kinds of stories that appeal to me–not every story, but a good number of them. I do like that I can rely on SH for poetry every week (and Ideomancer and A&A have poetry too). And I read most of the non-fiction, including book reviews, at the first list of zines, at least to skim them. But the fiction is the main draw.