Orson Scott Card’s new quarterly online science fiction and fantasy magazine, Intergalactic Medicine Show, went live over the weekend. The first issue includes my fantasy short story “Taint of Treason.” (Link is to a preview of the story. To read the whole story, you must pay $2.50 to buy the entire issue.) Other authors with stories in the first issue include Orson Scott Card himself, Dave Wolverton (aka David Farland), Scott M. Roberts, John Brown, Rachel Ann Dryden, Edmund R. Schubert and Robert Stoddard.
OSC is hoping to make a subscription-based webzine work, and one of the keys to that is exemplified in this issue by his novelette “Mazer in Prison.” It’s a very interesting prequel to his most popular novel, Ender’s Game, and OSC has promised that each issue will feature a story set in the Ender world. Hopefully, readers will come for the Endery goodness and then stick around to read the rest of the stories.
The first issue also includes a serialization of OSC’s first (and out-of-print) science fiction novel, Hot Sleep. The first issue contains part one of five. Since the magazine is quarterly, you might think that means it will take over a year to get all five parts of the novel, but that’s not the case. Over the course of the next quarter, all four remaining parts will be released to readers who have bought the first issue.
In addition to the updated novel content, there will be updated monthly columns (book reviews by John Joseph Adams, for example) available to subscribers.
Updated content is not the only advantage the webzine format offers over regular print magazines. An audio version of “Mazer in Prison” read by Audie-winner Stefan Rudnicki is available for download.
The entire issue will remain permanently online, so subscribers will always have access to whichever issues they have purchased.
So, if you like reading science fiction and fantasy, I suggest you give Intergalactic Medicine Show a try. At only $2.50 per issue, you’ll get more words for your buck than you will at the bookstore.