Dunno if you’ve looked around lately, but there seems to be a lot of good science fiction popping up on this Interweb thing. And, as I frantically search for more things to distract me from NaNoWriMo, I shall point at a few of my favorite time-sinks to distract you from my shameful word count.
Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show – Stories, articles, essays, and reviews, updated weekly. ‘Taint free, there’s a small monthly fee, but you get some of the best-written stuff out there right now including backstories about Card’s characters from his Ender series, available as text or as downloadable MP3s. He reads his work well, and that happens with few writers.
Jim Baen’s Universe – Stories and columns from Baen Books favorite writers, including Mike Resnick, Eric Flint, Gene Wolf, Wen Spencer, and more. This is a subscription service — you can read the first chunk of each story for free but it costs to get the rest — and different levels of subscriptions can also net you access to writers at cons, free e-books, autographed copies, and even Tuckerization (getting your name used as a character). Baen Books is probably the longest-running science fiction e-book promoter, with a huge library of completely DRM-free e-books available for free download, and this is their next step in making web publishing work.
Strange Horizons – It may not be the first science fiction magazine launched on the Web, but it may be the most successful. Original articles, fiction, poetry, and artwork from beginning and established writers and artists. It’s also listed as a non-profit organization; all profits made from donations go towards paying the contributors (the staff is all-volunteer) and holding writing workshops.
Any more out there? Hurry up, I’m running out of excuses…
Thanks, on the last magazine there’s even an article about the place I live !