Free Speculative Fiction Online: Link policy

Link policy

Authors

An author is eligible to be listed if

The author meets the requirements for SFWA full membership, which are e.g.
‘Three Paid Sales of prose fiction (such as short stories) to Qualifying Professional Markets’.
See here for a list of Qualifying Short Fiction Venues.
Note: Early fantastic fiction authors (Wells etc.) are currently not included. See the Links page for sources for ‘pre-genre’ SF.

Note that in any case new authors are mostly not added automatically, even if they start to qualify:
I have a backlog of thousands of potential links and no resources to handle these regularly. If you miss an eligible author here, contact me.

Stories

Note: Throughout the site, the term ‘story’ refers to works of any length, including novels, but excluding poetry and microfiction.
A story by a qualifying author (as defined above) is eligible to be listed if

1) It has been published in one of the SFWA’s Qualifying Short Fiction Venues, such as
one of the major print magazines (Asimov’s, Analog, F & SF) or one of the following:
or
2) It has been published in another professional market (actually paying $0.08+/word for the respective story), such as:
or
3) It has been published in one of the following semi-professional markets.
These are mainly included for historic reasons, but would not actually qualify under the current policy.
or
4) It has been published in one of the following established (but non-professional) webzines.
These are mainly included for historic reasons, but would not actually qualify under the current policy.

Stories published elsewhere (even in paying markets) and unpublished stories will no longer be added in most cases.
They are often available via the respective author’s homepage though.

To summarize, all fiction from the magazines displayed above is eligible to be included (if the author meets the requirements).

Quick Check

What I’ll link to: Stories (by eligible authors) from professional print and online magazines and anthologies.
What I won’t link to: Fan fiction, self-published fiction, unpublished fiction.
Non-SF. Stories that cannot be downloaded. Poetry. Interactive Fiction. Microfiction (stories shorter than 400 words).
For everything in between: See the detailed link policy.