Hey, y’know how we publish a free piece of fiction every month? Well, Strange Horizons has been publishing a free piece of genre fiction every week. Plus poetry, and non-fiction, and reviews. All of which they pay professional rates for. None of which makes them a profit, or pays the volunteer staff and editors in anything but kudos.

And they’ve been doing it for eight years.

When I sat down to think about how to make enough money to pay for Futurismic‘s fiction, I considered but rejected the idea of having a public funding drive – the main reason being that Strange Horizons already uses that model, and I didn’t want to divert any of the spare money in the genre fiction scene away from them.

So here on Futurismic you get ads, but Strange Horizons has no ads at all. Eight years of archived professional material, completely and utterly free to read and free of distracting commercial messages. It’s a genre fiction resource to which nothing compares, which has broken many great new writers into the scene, and we’re very lucky it exists.

Which is why I suggest you may want to consider popping over to Strange Horizons and donating a few dollars, especially if you’ve ever read anything on the site. And if you’ve never read anything there, now would be a great time to start.

And if you’ve got a blog, give them a little plug, just like this one. It doesn’t cost you anything, but it’ll mean a lot to them. There are even prizes and  incentives … but personally, I’m just doing this for the love. Strange Horizons is an inspiration to web publishers everywhere; long may she sail.