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Great Science-Fiction & Fantasy Works
Science-fiction & fantasy literature: a critical list with discussions.
You can get a site directory by clicking on the “hamburger” icon () in the upper right of this page.
Or you can search this site with Google (standard Google-search rules apply).
(Be aware that “sponsored” links to other sites will appear atop the actual results.)
“Sit and be welcome, old man. You have the look of a Seeker. I, Si-Lun, have sought somewhat myself, and have a feeling for the craft.”
– The Seekers of Shar-Nun,
Ardath Mayhar
About This List
This page is not—nor is it intended to be—a set of links to most or all useful or interesting web sites related to speculative fiction: there are web sites whose whole business is to assemble (and keep current) such lists, a task beyond my abilities and my interests—though many of those link-collection sites now appear to be dead or dying. (I do have, on another page of this site, a short list of some general science-fiction and fantasy resource links.)
This list is a set of links to all those sites known to me that link (or, before their going dark, linked) to this one. The theory here is that a site that has seen fit to provide a link to this site has a higher than average chance of being relevant to the interests of persons visiting here, even if it is no longer being maintained. This list used to be a great deal longer, but this is an old site now, and many of those that linked to it back in the day have dropped their “links” page or pages. What you are now reading is a rather major upgrade and revision of this entire site, and possibly more other sites will now find (or re-find) it and link to it; but this is the the known list as it stands.
(I say “all” those sites, but that’s not so: I do not here list pages from the countless sites that are clones of Wikipedia, nor from sites that are just spammy link collections garnered from a search engine, nor from sites that fake content by “framing” other sites’ content—see the discussions farther below.
Also, it is simply internet good manners to provide “reciprocal” links to sites that link to one’s own; but I have not knowingly linked to any “web farms” or like sorts of places that exist primarily to exchange links, rather than to provide content, nor to any sites that mandate the mechanical form of a return link, such as a particular banner or graphic.
There are two main classes of sites that will have links to any given other site: search engines and actual personal (or corporate) web sites. A search engine, such as Google, automatically indexes web pages and reports back to you with a supposedly relevant list (ok, stop laughing) when you do a particular search; other sites link as seems appropriate to their operators.
And then there are raw spam pages; the operators of such sites want only to bring visitors, in the hope that they will thereby get clicks on ads held on those pages, so they do not construct real pages but simply scoop up (typically by stealing results from search engines) snippets from any and every page their automated software can find relative to some arbitrary term, and present no real content whatever. Obviously, I do not (knowingly) link to any of those.
Beyond search engines and spam farms, though, are “real” web sites. There is a myriad of such sites relating, with varying degrees of relevance, to science fiction and fantasy: any search engine will provide you with vastly more possibilities than you will be able to look through even in a very long night (or week) of diligent work (I know that well).
I have, for convenience of presentation, tried to sort these links into categories, though that has been difficult. At the top level, I have tried to separate them into institutional and personal pages, where “institutional” is anything not apparently the work of a single person, or the work of a single person who chooses to remain anonymous. The personal pages I have further subdivided into those dealing wholly with speculative fiction and more general ones, and further I have pulled blogs out into a sub-category of their own (further divided into those for which the blogger can be identified and those where she or he has chosen to be anonymous or effectively so). All in all, it’s not a rigorous system, but I think it helpful.
I have had to give up listing and linking to forum postings, as they have grown to unmanageable numbers (and also tend to disappear or get new URLs rather frequently.)
Within types, I have listed the institutional and anonymous-blog links in alphabetical order by site name (omitting “the” or “a/an”), while personal pages are indexed by the owner’s last name. None of that is notably fair, but I could think of no other fairer.
Each link takes you to the front page of the site in question; beneath that link, in slightly smaller type, is a link to the site’s page where the actual link to here appears (those are not always obvious, being sometimes hidden behind anything from a remark to a mere numeral, but they’re there—I check).
Here are the sites; if you know of any others, pleaseemail me with the particulars.
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