Introduction
OMNI Magazine, the science and science fiction magazine launched by Kathy Keeton and Bob Guccione in October 1978, was the first slick magazine to regularly publish science fiction and fantasy as part of the monthly mix. It was gorgeous, innovative (look at old issues and you can see how several current genre magazines have taken their layouts and other production elements straight out of OMNI) and published some very good stories over the years. I feel privileged to have worked there as fiction editor for almost seventeen years. The print magazine went completely online September 1996, but the year before, as an experiment, Editor Keith Ferrell persuaded Ford Motors to sponsor the publication of eight original novellas (and one reprint) on AOL’s primitive website, over a period of a year.
Nine original stories were published on OMNI Online between September 1996 and the shuttering of the site March 1998, including three reprinted herein: “Thirteen Phantasms,” by James P. Blaylock, first online story to win the World Fantasy Award (also nominated for the Theodore Sturgeon Award), “Get a Grip” by Paul Park, nominated for the World Fantasy Award, and “Mr Goober’s Show” by Howard Waldrop. I also initiated a series of online round robins, in which four writers would participate, writing sections of a story arc that continued from the last writer’s section.
After OMNI Online folded, I and my three former OMNI colleagues: Robert Killheffer, Pamela Weintraub, and Kathleen Stein created the webzine, Event Horizon: Science Fiction-Fantasy-Horror, with the intent of driving other types of work projects to our web production company, Event Horizon Web Productions. We’d produced two online conventions for Eos Books while still at OMNI online and we produced one more under the aegis of Event Horizon. The webzine included online chats, superstrings (our new name for round robins), and nonfiction commentary by such provocateurs as Lucius Shepard, Paul Riddell, Douglas E. Winter, Barry N. Malzberg, Howard Waldrop, Jack Womack, and David J. Schow.
Rob edited the nonfiction and I edited the fiction (until I took over both duties when Rob took another job and no longer had time). Among the twenty-two stories published between August 1988 and July 1999 were Kelly Link’s “The Specialist’s Hat” and “The Girl Detective” (the former, a winner of the World Fantasy Award, the latter, reprinted herein), two stories by Severna Park (one included herein), two stories by Jeffrey Ford (one herein), plus a variety of other new stories and a few of my favorite previously published stories.
SCIFI.COM, the SCI FI Channel’s (renamed SyFi in July 2009) website, is a prominent and visible force in the science fiction field and on the web since its launch in 1995. The intention of SCIFI.COM, originally called The Dominion, was to be an entertaining accompaniment to the SCI FI Channel and evolved by 1999, to become the science fiction destination on the web, presenting daily news coverage and interviews with luminaries of the field, book reviews, audio dramas, animation and videos, and by late 1999—when I was hired—a fiction area that would showcase some of the best short science fiction and fantasy (and occasionally horror) being written, and enable readers to rediscover classics of the field. The sub-site was named SCIFICTION and was launched May 19th 2000 with a collaboration by Pat Cadigan and Christopher Fowler and a Robert A. Heinlein classic.
For almost six years the site published one original piece of fiction per week, including stories and novellas by an array of talented established writers and newcomers.
Linda J. Nagata’s novella “Goddesses” was the first piece of work added by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Association’s Nebula award jury to actually win the award. Other stories from SCIFICTION subsequently were nominated or won the Nebula award, Japan’s Seiun Award, The British Science Fiction Association Award, the Million Writers Award, The Theodore Sturgeon Award, Australia’s Aurealis Award, the Hugo Award, and the World Fantasy Award.
If there was still any doubt that online venues could produce outstanding fiction, SCIFICTION demolished them for good.