Элинор Арнасон: The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Fifth Annual Collection

An ezine devoted to “literary adventure fantasy,” Beneath Ceaseless Skies ( www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com), edited by Scott H. Andrews, published good stuff by Richard Parks, Stephen Case, Carrie Vaughn, Sarah Saab, Tony Pi, M. Bennardo, Marissa Lingen, Rose Lemberg, Kameron Hurley, Jeremy Sim, and others.

Strange Horizons ( www.strangehorizons.com), the oldest continually running electronic genre magazine on the internet, started in 2000. Niall Harrison stepped down as editor-in-chief, to be replaced by Jane Crowley and Kate Dollarhyde. There wasn’t a lot of SF to be found in Strange Horizons this year, which seems to have swerved back to mostly slipstream, but they did publish interesting work by Ana Hurtado, Helena Bell, Iona Sharma, Su-Yee Lin, and others.

Newish magazine Uncanny ( uncannymagazine.com), edited by Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas, which has won the best semiprozine Hugo two years in a row in 2016 and 2017, had entertaining stories by Naomi Kritzer, Sarah Pinsker, Sam J. Miller and Lara Elena Donnelly, Seanan McGuire, Vina Jie-Min Prasad, Sarah Monette, N. K. Jemisin, Fran Wilde, Tina Connelly, and others.

Galaxy’s Edge ( www.galaxysedge.com), edited by Mike Resnick, reached its fifth year of publication, and is still going strong; it’s available in various downloadable formats, although a print edition is available from BN.com and Amazon.com for $5.99 per issue. They continued to publish entertaining original stuff this year, although the reprint stories here are still stronger than the original stories.

The quality of the fiction seemed to go up at Apex Magazine this year, ( www.apex-magazine.com) which published good work by Rich Larson, Lavie Tidhar, Nisi Shawl, Tobias S. Buckell, S. B. Divya, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Ken MacLeod, Nick Mamatas and Tim Pratt, and others. Jason Sizemore is the new editor, having taken over the position last year.

Abyss & Apex ( www.abyssapexzine.com) ran interesting work by Rich Larson, James Van Pelt, Jon Rollins, Angus McIntyre. Jordan Taylor, and others, although little of it could be considered to be core science fictiton. Wendy S. Delmater, the former longtime editor, has returned to the helm, replacing Carmelo Rafala.

Kaleidotrope ( www.kaleidotrope.net), edited by Fred Coppersmith, which started in 2006 as a print semiprozine but transitioned to digital in 2012, published interesting work by Cat Sparks, Octavia Cade, Ken Brady, and others.

Long-running sword and sorcery print magazine Black Gate , edited by John O’Neill, transitioned into an electronic magazine in September of 2012 and can be found at www.blackgate.com. They no longer regularly run new fiction, although they will be regularly refreshing their nonfiction content, essays, and reviews, and the occasional story will continue to appear.

Other ezines that published worthwhile, if not often memorable stuff, included Ideomancer Speculative Fiction ( www.ideomancer.com), edited by Leah Bobet; Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show ( www.intergalacticmedicineshow.com), now edited by Scott R. Roberts under the direction of Card himself; SF/fantasy ezine Daily Science Fiction ( dailysciencefiction.com) edited by Michele-Lee Barasso and Jonathan Laden, which publishes one new SF or fantasy story every single day for the entire year; Shimmer Magazine ( www.shimmezine.com), edited by E. Catherine Tobler, which leans heavily toward fantasy, and GigaNotoSaurus (giganotosaurus.org), edited by Rashida J. Smith, which publishes one story a month.

The World SF Blog ( worldsf.wordpress.com), edited by Lavie Tidhar, was a good place to find science fiction by international authors, and also published news, links, round-table discussions, essays, and interviews related to “science fiction, fantasy, horror, and comics from around the world.” The site is no longer being updated, but an extensive archive is still accessible there.

A similar site is International Speculative Fiction ( http://internationalSF.wordpress.com), edited by Roberto Mendes.

Weird Fiction Review ( weirdfictionreview.com), edited by Ann VanderMeer and Jeff VanderMeer, which occasionally publishes fiction, bills itself as “an ongoing exploration into all facets of the weird,” including reviews, interviews, short essays, and comics.

Other newcomers include Omenana Magazine of Africa’s Speculative Fiction ( omenana.com), edited by Chinelo Onwualu and Chiagozie Fred Nwonwu; Persistent Visions ( persistentvisionsmag.com), edited by Heather Shaw; Shoreline of Infinity ( www.shorelineofinfinity.com), edited by Noel Chidwick; Terraform ( motherboard.vice.com/terraform),editedby Claire Evans and Brian Merchant; and Fiyah: Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction ( www.fiyahlitmag.com), edited by Justina Ireland.

Below this point, it becomes harder to find center-core SF, or even genre fantasy/horror, with most magazines featuring slipstream or literary surrealism instead. Such sites include Fireside Magazine ( firesidefiction.com), edited by Brian White; Revolution SF ( www.revolutionsf.com); Heliotrope ( www.heliotropemag.com); and Interfictions Online ( interfictions.com), executive editor Delila Sherman, fiction editors Christopher Barzak and Meghan McCarron.

Original fiction is not the only thing available to be read on the internet, though. Lots of good reprint SF and fantasy can be found there as well, sites where you can access formerly published stories for free. Such sites include Strange Horizons , Tor.com , Clarkesworld , Lightspeed , Subterranean , Abyss & Apex , Beyond Ceaseless Skies , Apex Magazine ; most of the sites that are associated with existent print magazines, such as Asimov’s , Analog , and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction , make previously published fiction and nonfiction available for access on their sites as well, and also regularly run teaser excerpts from stories coming up in forthcoming issues. Hundreds of out-of-print titles, both genre and mainstream, are also available for free download from Project Gutenberg ( www.gutenberg.org), and a large selection of novels, collections, and anthologies, can either be bought or be accessed for free, to be either downloaded or read on-screen, at the Baen Free Library ( www.baen.com/library). Sites such as Infinity Plus ( www.infinityplus.co.uk) and The Infinite Matrix ( www.infinitematrix.net) may have died as active sites, but their extensive archives of previously published material are still accessible (an extensive line of Infinity Plus Books can also be ordered from the Infinity Plus site).

But beyond the search for good stories to read, there are plenty of other reasons for SF/fantasy fans to go on the internet. There are many general genre-related sites of interest to be found, most of which publish reviews of books as well as of movies and TV shows, sometimes comics or computer games or anime, many of which also feature interviews, critical articles, and genre-oriented news of various kinds. The best such site is Locus Online ( www.locusmag.com), the online version of the newsmagazine Locus , where you can access an incredible amount of information—including book reviews, critical lists, obituary lists, links to reviews and essays appearing outside the genre, and links to extensive database archives such as the Locus Index to Science Fiction and the Locus Index to Science Fiction Awards. The previously mentioned Tor.com is also one of the most eclectic genre-oriented sites on the internet, a website that, in addition to its fiction, regularly publishes articles, comics, graphics, blog entries, print and media reviews, book “rereads” and episode-by-episode “rewatches” of television shows, as well as commentary on all the above. The long-running and eclectic The New York Review of Science Fiction has ceased print publication, but can be purchased in PDF, epub, mobi formats, and POD editions through Weightless Press ( weightlessbooks.com; see also www.nyrsf.comfor information). Other major general-interest sites include Io9 ( www.io9.com), SF Site ( www.sfsite.com), although it’s no longer being regularly updated, SFRevu ( www.sfsite.com/sfrevu), SFCrowsnest ( www.sfcrowsnest.com), SFScope ( www.sfscope.com), Green Man Review ( greenmanreview.com), The Agony Column ( trashotron.com/agony), SFFWorld ( www.sffworld.com), SFReader ( forums.sfreader.com), and Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist ( www.fantasyhotlist.blogspot.com). A great research site, invaluable if you want bibliographic information about SF and fantasy writers, is Fantastic Fiction ( www.fantasticfiction.co.uk). Another fantastic research site is the searchable online update of the Hugo-winning The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction ( www.sf-encyclopedia.com), where you can access almost four million words of information about SF writers, books, magazines, and genre themes; there is also The Encyclopedia of Fantasy , with similar articles about fantasy and fantasy writers. Reviews of short fiction as opposed to novels are very hard to find anywhere, with the exception of Locus and Locus Online , but you can find reviews of both current and past short fiction at Best SF ( www.bestsf.net), as well as at pioneering short-fiction review site Tangent Online ( www.tangentonline.com).