Sci Fiction

Sci Fiction was launched in May 2000 as a "prestige object" of the Sci-Fi Channel's website after producer Craig Engler approached Ellen Datlow about starting the magazine. Datlow was already a well-known editor of online magazines, having previously edited the online incarnations of OMNI and Event Horizon. 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, In late 2005 the Sci-Fi Channel announced that it would be shutting down the magazine, a decision evidently made because the magazine was not a major revenue generator for the channel. The decision to shut down the magazine was heavily criticized, 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. But Ashley says that despite this, "the status of online fiction set a new benchmark" because of Sci Fiction. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction has stated that Sci Fiction "achieved for Online Magazines what John W Campbell Jr's Astounding had achieved for Pulp sf sixty years before." == Awards ==

During the six years of the magazine's existence, stories published in Sci Fiction won four Nebula Awards, a Theodore Sturgeon Award, a World Fantasy Award, a Million Writers Award, and an International Horror Guild Award. Among these was Linda Nagata's "Goddesses" which won the Nebula Award for Best Novella for 2000. This was the first time that a piece of fiction originally published on a website won a Nebula. Ironically, a story published a few weeks earlier than Nagata's novella, "The Cure for Everything" by Severna Park, won the Nebula Award for Best Short Story in 2002. This story would have been the first online-published story to win a Nebula except that a quirk in the award rules meant it didn't make the award's final ballot until the following year. In 2002 Ellen Datlow won her first Hugo Award for Best Editor, the first time the award was given to an editor of an online magazine. In 2003 stories from the webzine won three awards, the Nebula Awards for Best Short Story ("What I Didn't See" by Karen Joy Fowler) and Best Novelette ("The Empire of Ice Cream" by Jeffrey Ford), and the Theodore Sturgeon Award for Lucius Shepard's novella "Over Yonder". A short story Datlow published a few months before Sci Fiction was shut down, "There's a Hole in the City" by Richard Bowes, won the 2006 storySouth Million Writers Award and the International Horror Guild Award for Best Short Form. The story was also a finalist for the 2006 Nebula Award for Best Short Story and the Gaylactic Spectrum Award for Best Short Fiction. 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: • The Ship Who Sang by Anne McCaffrey • When It Changed by Joanna Russ • I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison • The Day the Martians Came by Frederik Pohl • Love Is the Plan the Plan Is Death by James Tiptree, Jr. • The Screwfly Solution by James Tiptree, Jr. • The Sliced-Crosswise Only-On-Tuesday World by Philip José Farmer • When I Was Miss Dow by Sonya Dorman • The Dandelion Girl by Robert F. Young • Aye, and Gomorrah by Samuel R. Delany • Star Light, Star Bright by Alfred Bester • The Great Wall of Mexico by John Sladek. ==List of new stories published in Sci Fiction ==

Original stories published in the year 2000 ==See also==

• • Sci Fiction archive • Sci Fiction's awards and nominations at The Locus Index to Science Fiction Awards • List of all stories published in Sci Fiction