News:// New Online Short Fiction Magazine "Lightspeed" Launches

I just checked http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com as there has been a "Coming June 2010" page up for a while now and I was pleasantly surprised to see they have launched on the first day of the month. Just in time for my first real post too.

I love short fiction, I consume large amounts of it. I think it suits the short periods of time I have for reading but more than that I just really get a kick out of the form, it's where the really great ideas seem to crop up. It seems the restricted nature of short stories forces a different kind of storytelling, the author has to hook you quickly with no room for flabby back stories and world building. I imagine it is incredibly difficult to do well but when it is, it's beautiful. I mourned the closure of Borders mostly because it was one of the few places to stock Asmiov's, Analog, F&SF and the wonderful Interzone so I've been reading more and more of the online fiction magazines and it's always great to see a new one, particularly one with such great names attached to it.

John Joseph Adams is editing fiction, he's put out some really great anthologies (maybe a review or two in the future) and also co-hosts the Geeks Guide to the Galaxy podcast which I always enjoy. So I'm looking forward to seeing what stories he runs.

They also have Stefan Rudnicki as Audio editor, one of the best audio book narrators around among the many other things he does so really excited to see what happens with the podcast.
 
They are releasing one story and one piece of nonfiction from the magazine each week, for free or you can buy the whole thing as an ebook for $2.99. I'll definitely support the venture and buy a copy, if I get a chance to read it I might even report back. :)

Lightspeed is an online magazine focusing exclusively on science fiction. Here you can expect to see all types of science fiction, from near-future, sociological soft sf, to far-future, star-spanning hard sf, and anything and everything in between. No subject will be considered off-limits, and we encourage our writers to take chances with their fiction and push the envelope.

Each month at Lightspeed, we bring you a mix of originals and reprints, and featuring a variety of authors—from the bestsellers and award-winners you already know to the best new voices you haven’t heard of yet. When you read Lightspeed, it is our hope that you’ll see where science fiction comes from, where it is now, and where it’s going.

Lightspeed also features a variety of nonfiction features, fiction podcasts, and Q&As with our authors that go behind-the-scenes of their stories.

Our regular publication schedule each month includes two pieces of original fiction and two fiction reprints, along with four nonfiction articles. Fiction posts on Tuesdays, nonfiction on Thursdays.