Sci Fiction was an digital publication that ran from 2000 to 2005, during which time it was the leading online science fiction magazine. Published by Syfy (then called the Sci-Fi Channel) and edited by Ellen Datlow, works in the magazine won multiple awards, including the very first Nebula Award presented to an online-published story. Sci Fiction helped raise the overall status of online-published fiction[1] and has been said to have achieved for online magazines what Astounding Magazine did six decades earlier for print SF magazines.[2]
Sci Fiction was launched in May 2000 as a "prestige object"[3] of the Sci-Fi Channel's website after producer Craig Engler approached Ellen Datlow about starting the magazine.[4] Datlow was already a well-known editor of online magazines, having previously edited the online incarnation of OMNI and Event Horizon.[4]
While Sci Fiction was called a magazine, it didn't exist under a unique url but instead was part of the larger SciFi.com website,[2] with Datlow published a new story and a classic reprint each week.[4] The magazine also had its own bulletin board and archives.[4] The magazine paid twenty cents a word for fiction, which was three times the rate offered by the leading science fiction and fantasy print magazines.[4]
The first story Datlow published was Freeing the Angels by Pat Cadigan and Chris Fowler on May 19, 2000, an updated cyberpunk-style story.[4]
In late 2005 the Sci-Fi Channel announced that it would be shutting down the magazine,[5] a decision evidently made because the magazine was not a major revenue generator for the channel.[2] The decision was heavily criticized,[5] with Gardner Dozois noting the magazine was "killed by shortsighted corporate bean counters at The Sci Fi Channel."[6] It is believed that part of the reason why Sci Fiction was shut down is because at that time most people used dial-up to reach the internet, meaning longer online fiction was "difficult and slow to access."[7] In addition, the magazine was buried within the larger Sci-Fi Channel website, making it hard to find.[7]
Sci-Fi announced their intention to remove the Sci Fiction archived content as of June 2007, although some of it was still available over a year later.[8] It has since been removed completely.
Legacy
Many of the stories that were originally published on Sci Fiction are now unable to be accessed and no longer in print, which Mike Ashley says leads people to overlook the magazine's achievements.[1] But Ashley says that despite this, because of Sci Fiction "the status of online fiction set a new benchmark."[1]
The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction said that Sci Fiction "achieved for Online Magazines what John W Campbell Jr's Astounding had achieved for Pulp sf sixty years before."[2]Gardner Dozois said that at the time, the magazine was "the most important and universally recognized place on the Internet to reliably find SF, fantasy and horror of high professional quality."[6]
Datlow later described her work on the magazine by saying, "If there was still any doubt that online venues could produce outstanding fiction, Sci Fiction demolished them for good."[9]
In 2005, Datlow won her second Hugo Award for Best Editor and the website itself won a Hugo for Best Website. She also won her first Locus Award for Best Editor in 2005.
Classic reprints in Sci Fiction
Among the classic stories reprinted in Sci Fiction were:
↑"Sci Fiction Archive". Sci Fiction. Archived from the original on March 4, 2009. As of Friday, June 15, 2007, SCI FICTION will no longer be availabe[sic] on SCIFI.COM.
↑Digital Domains: A Decade of Science Fiction and Fantasy edited by Ellen Datlow, Prime Books, 2010, page 11.
Dozois, Gardner (2006). "Summation: 2005". The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Third Annual Collection. St. Martin's Press. ISBN978-0312353346.
Ashley, Mike (2022). The Rise of the Cyberzines: The Story of the Science-Fiction Magazines from 1991 to 2020; The History of the Science-Fiction Magazines Volume V. Liverpool University Press. ISBN978-1835537770.
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