Short stories have always been the lifeblood of the science fiction and fantasy genres, even though novels get the lion's share of the attention. There are hundreds of great stories published every year — and a large portion of them are available for free online — but many people only read the shorts in one of the…

Molly Gloss is one of the best writers you've probably never read. Though she fits, both chronologically and thematically, into a cohort of female genre writers of feminist-inflected, anthropological SF — a group that includes Eleanor Arnason, Karen Joy Fowler, and of course Ursula K. Le Guin — Gloss is probably the…

Two of the internet's coolest fiction magazines need your support right now. Strange Horizons is having its annual fund drive, with tons of prizes for donors — but the main prize is satisfaction that you're helping to support one of the most important magazines in the field, whose unpaid staff works tirelessly to keep…

It's hard to perform a Michael Jackson routine night after night, lipsynching to the king of pop. But it gets a lot more complicated when you're being stalked by a psychotic robot — and it can only get worse when the robot decides that it's a Michael Jackson fan.

For the entire 21st century so far, Strange Horizons has been publishing amazing science fiction short stories, essays, reviews, art, poetry and more — they are the longest-running science fiction magazine online, and they make all of their content available to you for free. This all-volunteer organization has given…

Sometimes the best short stories are the ones which hint at a much larger picture, almost as if they're a window onto one person's experience of a grand saga. That's what Sigrid Ellis' "No Return Address" is like.

It's the ten-year anniversary of Strange Horizons, one of the longest-running and best science fiction magazines online. If you like to read quality SF short stories online, please consider donating to them!

What happens when scientists at sea discover a mermaid? Helen Keeble's gorgeous short story about this strange meeting has been nominated for a World Fantasy Award, and now you can read it for yourself.

All of Mark's friends are moving away, and his dog is dying. As summer fades, he takes a trip to the beach to visit his friend Charley, the alien. The one with great weed, and a gift for resurrection.

Over at Strange Horizons, Kyri Freeman's short story "Out of Sombra Canyon" takes two biologists to a remote canyon, where they're tracking the rare Green Tailed Hummingbird. What they discover is much more disturbing than an endangered species.