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.com for 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).
Other sites of general interest include: Ansible (news.ansible.co.uk/Ansible), the online version of multiple Hugo-winner David Langford’s long-running fanzine Ansible; Book View Café (www.bookviewcafe.com) is a “consortium of over twenty professional authors,” including Vonda N. McIntyre, Laura Ann Gilman, Sarah Zittel, Brenda Clough, and others, who have created a website where work by them—mostly reprints, and some novel excerpts—is made available for free.
Sites where podcasts and SF-oriented radio plays can be accessed have also proliferated in recent years: at Audible (www.audible.com), Escape Pod (www.escapepod.org, podcasting mostly SF), SF Squeecast (sfsqueecast.com), The Coode Street Podcast (jonathanstrahan.podbean.com), The Drabblecast (www.drabblecast.org), StarShipSofa (www.starshipsofa.com), Far Fetched Fables (www.farfetchedfables.com), new companion to StarShipSofa, concentrating on fantasy, SF Signal Podcast (www.sfsignal.com), Pseudopod (www.pseudopod.org, podcasting mostly fantasy), Podcastle (www.podcastle.org), podcasting mostly fantasy, and Galactic Suburbia (galacticsuburbia.podbean.com). Clarkesworld routinely offers podcasts of stories from the ezine, and The Agony Column (agonycolumn.com) also hosts a weekly podcast. There’s also a site that podcasts nonfiction interviews and reviews, Dragon Page Cover to Cover (www.dragonpage.com).