So I mentioned in my post a few days ago, where I gushed about my love of online magazines, that I would post a follow-up where I list some of the best ones. Here we go then. Please note that this is just a taster based on my own reading habits and by no means definitive. Please do comment below with your favourites so we can all find new good stuff out there. I’ve copied the About section from each of their sites to give you an idea of what they do. Click the title to visit their site.
Online Spec-Fic magazines you should be reading:
Lightspeed
Lightspeed is an online science fiction and fantasy magazine. In its pages, you will find science fiction: from near-future, sociological soft SF, to far-future, star-spanning hard SF—and fantasy: from epic fantasy, sword-and-sorcery, and contemporary urban tales, to magical realism, science-fantasy, and folktales. No subject is off-limits, and we encourage our writers to take chances with their fiction and push the envelope.
Lightspeed was a finalist for the 2011 Hugo Award, and stories from Lightspeed have been nominated for the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, and the Theodore Sturgeon Award.
Edited by bestselling anthologist John Joseph Adams, every month Lightspeed brings you a mix of originals and reprints, and featuring a variety of authors—from the bestsellers and award-winners you already know to the best new voices you haven’t heard of yet. When you read Lightspeed, it is our hope that you’ll see where science fiction and fantasy comes from, where it is now, and where it’s going.
Clarkesworld
Clarkesworld is a monthly science fiction and fantasy magazine first published in October 2006. Each issue contains at least three pieces of original fiction from new and established authors. Our fiction is also collected by issue in signed chapbooks, ebook editions/subscriptions and in our annual print anthology, Realms.
Strange Horizons
Strange Horizons is a magazine of and about speculative fiction and related nonfiction.
Speculative fiction includes science fiction, fantasy, horror, slipstream, and all other flavors of fantastika. Work published in Strange Horizons has been shortlisted for or won Hugo, Nebula, Rhysling, Theodore Sturgeon, James Tiptree Jr., and World Fantasy Awards.
The Red Penny Papers
One rainy afternoon, I found my dear sister-in-law alone in the sitting room. To my shock and potential mortification, she had my collection of sensational literature out of its (obviously inadequate) hiding spot behind the leather-bound editions of Thackeray. She looked up from an eight-part adventure of Black Bess to say, “My dear Maggie! What is this rubbish?”
“Clara, my love, they’re adventures.”
“They’re those– those red pennies!”
“You mean penny bloods, my dear? Or perhaps penny dreadfuls?”
“Oh, yes. Perhaps I do.”
She looked from the lurid literature in her lap to me, and then back again several times. And then she finally said, “Have you any more?”
And so were born the Red Penny Papers.
Incidentally, Red Penny Papers are publishing my novelette, The Darkest Shade of Grey, in four episodes, starting this Friday. It’s a story I’m very proud of and I hope you guys like it too.
Wily Writers
The Wily Writers site publishes two short stories per month in both audio and text formats. They host a celebrity editor for each theme, and they choose the stories along with the producer (Angel Leigh McCoy).
They publish only short fiction that falls under the genre umbrella of speculative fiction: horror, fantasy, science fiction, and paranormal romance/mystery/adventure, and have specific themes that they ask writers to follow.
I’ve had great experiences with Wily Writers over the years. They’ve published two of my stories, Stand Off and Declan’s Plan, and I’m the current guest editor, where I’ve picked two great post-apoc stories for this month.
Cosmos
COSMOS is a literary science magazine with a global following. Australia’s #1 science media brand, it reaches 400,000 people every month via a print magazine, a daily online news website and a weekly e-newsletter. Our COSMOS Teacher’s Notes reach 65% of Australian high schools, and we produce a wide range of quality editorial products (such as websites, booklets, posters and DVDs) for a range of clients.
COSMOS internationally respected for its literary writing, excellence in design and engaging breadth of content. It’s the winner of 45 awards, including the Magazine of the Year trophy in both 2009 and 2006, and twice Editor of the Year, at the annual Publishers Australia Excellence Awards. COSMOS has also won the American Institute of Physics Science Writing Award, the Reuters/IUCN Award for Excellence in Environmental Journalism, the City of Sydney Lord Mayor’s Sustainability Award and an Earth Journalism Award.
While this is primarily a print magazine, with fiction included in the print edition, they have an excellent online section of fiction for stories they can’t fit in the print edition.
ticon4
ticon4 launched in 2008, the fourth incarnation of TiconderogaOnline, which began way back in 1999.
Originally published by Russell B. Farr, the webzine is now edited by Liz Grzyb. We provide fiction, reviews, interviews and other tidbits to do with speculative fiction.
ticon4 is part of independent publisher Ticonderoga Publications, and is able to present you with excellent fiction for free, through donations and book sales.
Hub
Hub started as a physical magazine in December 2006. Originally intended to sell as a bi-monthly title, with the very best new fiction, features, news, reviews and interviews, the magazine was well-received by all those that read it.
Despite healthy orders and a growing subscriber base, Hub was unable to attract the advertising revenue necessary for this type of magazine to survive, and the print edition folded after just two issues.
Buoyed by the reception Hub had received, I decided to keep the momentum going. Rather than allow Hub to fold, I and co-editor Alasdair Stuart turned the magazine into an electronic journal. Foolishly optimistic, we decided that Hub was to become a weekly magazine, publishing one piece of short fiction every issue, along with regular reviews and occasional features and interviews. The first electronic edition (issue 3) was distributed to around 900 readers on April 20th, 2007.
Kasma SF
Based in Ottawa, Canada, Kasma SF is a completely free online magazine featuring quality science fiction from some of the genre’s brightest new (and sometimes more established) voices. We publish fiction on the first of every month, our blog weekly, so have a look around, have fun, and please check back often.
My story, Mistaken Identity, was published at Kasma SF in 2011.
Redstone
Redstone Science Fiction publishes quality stories from across the science fiction spectrum. We are interested in everything from post-cyberpunk to new space opera. We want to live forever. Get us off this rock.
We have all been reading Science Fiction and Fantasy since we were children. It has been a key element in our lives.
From writing and submitting our own stories, we’ve learned that there are only a handful of online & print magazines that pay a professional rate for original science fiction stories.
We decided that there needed to be one more.
We know the magazine will probably not be profitable, but we have planned for that.
We will focus on producing a quality science fiction magazine and on exploring every opportunity to make Redstone Science Fiction a long-term success.
Abyss & Apex
There’s no About page for me to copy and paste for this one, but Abyss & Apex is a great magazine with consistently good fiction.
Daily Science Fiction
Original Science Fiction and Fantasy every weekday. Welcome to Daily Science Fiction, an online magazine of science fiction short stories. We publish “science fiction” in the broad sense of the word: This includes sci-fi, fantasy, slipstream—whatever you’d likely find in the science fiction section of your local bookstore. Our stories are mostly short short fiction each Monday through Thursday, hopefully the right length to read on a coffee break, over lunch, or as a bedtime tale. Friday’s weekend stories are longer.
*****
This was only a quick selection, and only a selection of online magazines. Much as I love them, there are loads of great print and other format magazines out there and it’s worth checking them all out. And, if you’re a writer, you should be submitting to all these places too!
So, I know I’ve missed plenty – fill in the gaps. What are your favourite online SF/F magazines? Give us a link in the comments.
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I got up a bit earlier than usual this morning to be a guest on the Dead Robots’ Society Podcast along with David Wood. We had a lot of fun, talked about genre fiction and horror especially. Of course, we were mostly talking up Dark Rite as that’s the new and current thing.
You should know by now what a fan I am of podcast short fiction. I wrote about 
