As a kind-of SF writer it pains me to admit this, but I never get overly excited at the thought of interfacing with new technology. I always maintain that by the time I’ve adopted something it’s safe to assume it’s ubiquitous, and then comfort myself with the fact that William Gibson wrote Neuromancer on a portable typewriter and has been using the same Macbook now for more than a decade. If I tell you that when I upgraded my mobile last week (under some protest) it was to an identical model, basically, only with the next serial number up and in a different colour (I was still pretty traumatised) it probably won’t surprise you to learn that it took me a little while, when I first re-entered the SFF community at the beginning of the 2000s, to appreciate the growing importance of online media. I read a lot of print magazines back then and it was some years before I caught up to Strange Horizons – but it was SH more than any of them that began to re-attune my senses to what was happening and what was possible in SFF today and into tomorrow.
Strange Horizons has done and continues to do a great deal to promote new and exciting writing in SFF, fiction that pushes the boundaries and widens the remit, and their occasional ‘retrospectives’ featuring more established writers are every bit as imaginative as their promotion of fresh talent. But it’s as a forum for review and debate that I personally have found SH to be essential reading, unique in the field, an invaluable resource that is now as much a part of my creative life as any newspaper or print magazine and probably more so. It was at Strange Horizons that I first discovered and read the reviews and criticism of John Clute and Paul Kincaid, Dan Hartland and Matt Cheney, Jonathan McCalmont, Martin Lewis and Niall Harrison, all writers whose engagement with, knowledge of and commitment to the field of speculative fiction is a constant and continuing delight and inspiration, not to say a provocation and a challenge. SH has an archived index of reviews dating back to 2004 – a first port of call for anyone needing to check the back catalogue of critical writing on a particular work, as well as a fascinating snapshot of how opinion and criticism in SFF has evolved and shifted through the last decade.
The reviews team now under Abigail Nussbaum (Nic Clarke, Erin Horakova, Niall Alexander, Sofia Samatar, Michael Levy, Duncan Lawie, Lila Garrott, Liz Bourke et al I’m looking at you) is just awesome, and I feel genuinely honoured to be able to make my own contribution from time to time.
Strange Horizons is a paying market that takes the trouble to acquire the best work and that treats its contributors as professionals. It is staffed by volunteers, and run entirely on reader donations as a not-for-profit venture. SH are currently holding their annual fund drive to raise the money that will finance this irreplaceable magazine for another year and I would encourage anyone who loves SFF to support them.
I can’t imagine the critical landscape without SH. I’m looking forward to 2013’s SFnal controversies already…