I had a few things come up yesterday that prevented me from doing my usual sci-fi postings, so to my usual fans of sci-fi, I apologize. Hopefully I’ll provide some good links that meet our mutual high standards.

As I have traversed the ‘tubes, I am finding out quality sci-fi webzines or ezines are a rare animal. Conventional magazines that have web offerings such as Asimov, Analog and Fantasy and Science Fiction offer monthly issues most of the time, except in mid-summer and winter when they offer a bi-monthly special. They seem to have the American market locked up. Apparently the cost of maintaining, editing and finding talent to write for these private ‘zines is quite prohibitive. Plus the time dedicated has to be a labor of love, for I have seen some very artistic looking ezine covers, but alas they are years old and have only a couple of months’ worth of stories in their archives.

The British market is more open from what I’ve seen. Maybe the Brits need more escapism than Americans do. Here’s some online Brit sci-fi:

http://speculativevision.com/. It doesn’t look like a regular ‘zine, but it links to pages internally and offers interactive gaming, an art gallery, a discussion forum, interactive stories where you can pick your story path and world(s) and a section where you can download classic stories such as 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, Dracula, War Of The Worlds, At the Earth’s Core, Alice In Wonderland and others for free. Gaming and classics, could be a good marketing hook!

T3A Space: Not so much stories as it is a transfer link for SF, like Opit is for politics. Look in the right side bar and look under “Publishers”. A wealth of links.

Futurismic:’Zine that has blogs, fiction, news, and story archives. Currently under reconstruction. I will check out later after they’re done.

Vector: A critical journal of the British Science Fiction Association. It has links to articles, reviews, contacts and submissions.

Hub: A nice, clean-looking ezine that features one free downloadable story from each issue Issues 11-13, plus Special #1. Just click underneath a particular issue number where it says “online/print version” or whatever your computer uses for reading online stuff.

Clarkesworld: Another clean, smart-looking ezine that features two free short-stories, regular booksales and subscriptions.

Some of these are free, others aren’t. The Brits sure love their SF and are not afraid to try and make a pound or two from it. Next week I’ll attempt to find American ezines, not an easy task, but I know for sure there is a hardy SF following in the U.S., I should know, I’m one of them!