Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Strange Horizons fund drive!



While the traditional sf magazines struggle to figure out why their readerships continually decline despite ever more infantile tentacle porn on the covers, and commercially funded online journals come and go, the mysterious elves of Strange Horizons continue to broadcast great new sf every week from their magical servers secreted in the basement of a 1908 warehouse in downtown Dubuque (not far at all from the Lovecraftian effigy mounds north of town).

Strange Horizons publishes great work by new writers and established writers—not just short fiction, but quality criticism and beautiful poetry.

Where else do the practitioners of that ultimate esoteric art, speculative poetry, find a well-read paying market to publish a new poem every week?

Where else does a young writer place a story about Borges on The Love Boat and magical realism as a weapon of mass destruction?

Where else do you find several new professional reviews every week of new work in the field?

Strange Horizons is probably the most successful example in the genre of a non-profit business model. Which means every once in a while they need to conduct a fund drive, which they're doing right now. A few bucks goes a long way to helping them pay their writers, update their web design, and continue to make the disproportionate contributions they make to the field. The tireless editors, folks like Susan Marie Groppi, Jed Hartman and Karen Meisner aren't getting paid, but they need our help to be able to pay their contributors and keep the project running.

Donate now! You might even be able to select from the fabulous prizes, including autographed copies of Fast Forward 2 and original art by yours truly for the sold-out Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet 23!