Sci Fiction

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Online magazine

title: "Sci Fiction" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["online-magazines-published-in-the-united-states", "defunct-science-fiction-magazines-published-in-the-united-states", "magazines-established-in-2000", "magazines-disestablished-in-2005", "science-fiction-webzines", "hugo-award–winning-works"] description: "Online magazine" topic_path: "geography/united-states" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci_Fiction" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Online magazine ::

::data[format=table title="Infobox website"]

FieldValue
nameSci Fiction
logo[[File:Sci Fiction logo.GIF
urlscifi.com/scifiction/
commercialYes
typeOnline Magazine
ownerscifi.com
authorEllen Datlow
launch_dateMay 2000
current_statusDefunct (since 2005)
::

| name = Sci Fiction | favicon = | logo = [[File:Sci Fiction logo.GIF|100px]] | screenshot = | caption = | url = scifi.com/scifiction/ | commercial = Yes | type = Online Magazine | registration = | allegiance = | owner = scifi.com | author = Ellen Datlow | launch_date = May 2000 | current_status = Defunct (since 2005) | revenue = Sci Fiction was a Hugo Award winning 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, fiction from 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 and has been said to have achieved for online magazines what Astounding Magazine did six decades earlier for print SF magazines.

History

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, with Datlow publishing a new story and a classic reprint each week. The magazine also had its own bulletin board and archives. 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.

The first story Datlow published was Freeing the Angels by Pat Cadigan and Chris Fowler on May 19, 2000, an updated cyberpunk-style story.

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. Craig Engler of the Sci-Fi Channel also noted that the magazine attracted relatively few visitors and that "keeping track of the rights to its stories was too much trouble." The decision to shut down the magazine was heavily criticized, with Gardner Dozois noting the magazine was "killed by shortsighted corporate bean counters at The Sci Fi Channel." 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." In addition, Sci-Fi Channel had buried the magazine within their larger website, making it hard to find.

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.{{cite web|title=Sci Fiction Archive|work=Sci Fiction|url=http://www.scifi.com/scifiction/archive.html|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20090304013308/http://www.scifi.com/scifiction/archive.html| archivedate=March 4, 2009|quote=As of Friday, June 15, 2007, SCI FICTION will no longer be on SCIFI.COM.}} 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, because of Sci Fiction "the status of online fiction set a new benchmark."

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." And according to Gardner Dozois, the magazine was at the time "the most important and universally recognized place on the Internet to reliably find SF, fantasy and horror of high professional quality."

Ellen 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."

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.

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:

List of new stories published in ''Sci Fiction''

Original stories published in the year 2000

::data[format=table]

Chip Crockett's Christmas CarolElizabeth HandDecember 6, 2000https://web.archive.org/web/20010723043616/http://www.scifi.com/scifiction/originals/originals_archive/hand/
::

References

Notes

Bibliography

; Books

  • {{cite book |last= Dozois |first= Gardner |chapter= Summation: 2005 |title= The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Third Annual Collection |publisher=St. Martin's Press |year=2006 |isbn=978-0312353346}}

External resources

References

  1. Mike Ashley. "Sci Fiction". The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.
  2. Jason Sanford. (13 November 2005). "SciFi Channel wades deeper into muck by dropping SciFiction journal". [[StorySouth]].
  3. [https://news.ansible.uk/a240.html Ansible 240] by [[David Langford]], July 2007, accessed 1/27/26.
  4. ''Digital Domains: A Decade of Science Fiction and Fantasy'' edited by Ellen Datlow, Prime Books, 2010, page 11.
  5. "Richard Bowes". Science Fiction Awards Database.
  6. "[https://www.thehugoawards.org/hugo-history/2005-hugo-awards/ 2005 Hugo Awards,]" The Hugo Awards, accessed 1/27/26.

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online-magazines-published-in-the-united-statesdefunct-science-fiction-magazines-published-in-the-united-statesmagazines-established-in-2000magazines-disestablished-in-2005science-fiction-webzineshugo-award–winning-works